I wish to say something now in regard to the Dred Scott decision, as dealt with by Judge Douglas.  In that “memorable debate” between Judge Douglas and myself, last year, the judge thought fit to commence a process of catechising me, and at Freeport I answered his questions, and propounded some to him.  Among others propounded to him was one that I have here now.  The substance, as I remember it, is, “Can the people of a United States Territory, under the Dred Scott decision, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits, prior to the formation of a State constitution?” He answered that they could lawfully exclude slavery from the United States Territories, notwithstanding the Dred Scot decision.  There was something about that answer that has probably been a trouble to the judge ever since.

The Dred Scott decision expressly gives every citizen of the United States a right to carry his slaves into the United States Territories.  And now there was some inconsistency in saying that the decision was right, and saying, too, that the people of the Territory could lawfully drive slavery out again.  When all the trash, the words, the collateral matter, was cleared away from it, all the chaff was fanned out of it, it was a bare absurdity,—­no less than that a thing may be lawfully driven away from where it has a lawful right to be.  Clear it of all the verbiage, and that is the naked truth of his proposition,—­that a thing may be lawfully driven from the place where it has a lawful right to stay.  Well, it was because the judge could n’t help seeing this that he has had so much trouble with it; and what I want to ask your especial attention to, just now, is to remind you, if you have not noticed the fact, that the judge does not any longer say that the people can exclude slavery.  He does not say so in the copyright essay; he did not say so in the speech that he made here; and, so far as I know, since his re-election to the Senate he has never said, as he did at Freeport, that the people of the Territories can exclude slavery.  He desires that you, who wish the Territories to remain free, should believe that he stands by that position; but he does not say it himself.  He escapes to some extent the absurd position I have stated, by changing his language entirely.  What he says now is something different in language, and we will consider whether it is not different in sense too.  It is now that the Dred Scott decision, or rather the Constitution under that decision, does not carry slavery into the Territories beyond the power of the people of the Territories to control it as other property.  He does not say the people can drive it out, but they can control it as other property.  The language is different; we should consider whether the sense is different.  Driving a horse out of this lot is too plain a proposition to be mistaken about; it is putting him on the other side of the fence.