"
Then followed his critical analysis of the legislative objects and
consequences of the Nebraska Bill, and the judicial effects and
doctrines of the Dred Scott decision, with their attendant and related
incidents. The first of these had opened all the national territory to
slavery. The second established the constitutional interpretation that
neither Congress nor a territorial legislature could exclude slavery
from any United States territory. The President had declared Kansas to
be already practically a slave State. Douglas had announced that he did
not care whether slavery was voted down or voted up. Adding to these
many other indications of current politics, Mr. Lincoln proceeded:
"Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche,
which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision
declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a
State to exclude slavery from its limits.... Such a decision is all that
slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States.... We shall
lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the
verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality,
instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State."
To avert this danger, Mr. Lincoln declared it was the duty of
Republicans to overthrow both Douglas and the Buchanan political
dynasty.
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