buke to the
partisans of faction and lawless violence. If unfortunately any
considerable portion of the people of the United States shall so far
forget their obligations to society as to allow the partisan leaders
to array them in violent resistance to the final decision of the
highest judicial tribunal on earth, it will become the duty of all the
friends of order and constitutional government, without reference to
past political differences, to organize themselves and marshal their
forces under the glorious banner of the Union, in vindication of the
Constitution and supremacy of the laws over the advocates of faction
and the champions of violence."

Proceeding then with a statement of the case, he continued: "The
material and controlling points in the case, those which have been
made the subject of unmeasured abuse and denunciation, may be thus
stated: 1st. The court decided that under the Constitution of the
United States, a negro descended from slave parents is not and cannot
be a citizen of the United States. 2d. That the act of March 6, 1820,
commonly called the Missouri Compromise act, was unconstitutional and
void before it was repealed by the Nebraska act, and consequently did
not and could not have the legal effect of extinguishing a master's
right to his slave in that Territory. While the right continues in
full force under the guarantees of the Constitution, and cannot be
divested or alienated by an act of Congress, it necessarily remains a
barren and a worthless right, unless sustained, protected, and
enforced by appropriate police regulations and local legislation,
prescribing adequate remedies for its violation. These regulations and
remedies must necessarily depend entirely upon the will and wishes of
the people of the Territory, as they can only be prescribed by the
local legislatures. Hence the great principle of popular sovereignty
and self-government is sustained and firmly established by the
authority of this decision."

It is scarcely possible that Douglas convinced himself by such a
glaring _non sequitur_; but he had no other alternative. It was a
desperate expedient to shield himself as well as he might from the
damaging recoil of his own temporizing statesmanship. The declaration
made thus early is worthy of historical notice as being the substance
and groundwork of the speaker's famous "Freeport doctrine," or theory
of "unfriendly legislation," to which Lincoln's searching interrogatories
dro