In these things
there is explosive matter enough to blow up half a dozen national
conventions, if it gets into them; and what gets very rife outside of
conventions is very likely to find its way into them."
And again, to another warm friend in Columbus, Ohio, he wrote in a
letter dated July 28, 1859:
"There is another thing our friends are doing which gives me some
uneasiness. It is their leaning toward 'popular sovereignty.' There are
three substantial objections to this. First, no party can command
respect which sustains this year what it opposed last. Secondly Douglas
(who is the most dangerous enemy of liberty, because the most insidious
one) would have little support in the North, and, by consequence, no
capital to trade on in the South, if it were not for his friends thus
magnifying him and his humbug. But lastly, and chiefly, Douglas's
popular sovereignty, accepted by the public mind as a just principle,
nationalizes slavery, and revives the African slave-trade inevitably.
Taking slaves into new Territories, and buying slaves in Africa, are
identical things, identical rights or identical wrongs, and the argument
which establishes one will establish the other. Try a thousand years for
a sound reason why Congress shall not hinder the people of Kansas from
having slaves, and when you have found it, it will be an equally good
one why Congress should not hinder the people of Georgia from importing
slaves from Africa.
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