doctrine," he said, "that leaves the people perfectly free
to form and regulate their institutions for themselves, in their own
way, and your party will be united and irresistible in power.... If
Kansas wants a slave-State constitution, she has a right to it; if she
wants a free-State constitution, she has a right to it. It is none of my
business which way the slavery clause is decided. I care not whether it
is voted down or voted up. Do you suppose, after the pledges of my honor
that I would go for that principle and leave the people to vote as they
choose, that I would now degrade myself by voting one way if the
slavery clause be voted down, and another way if it be voted up? I care
not how that vote may stand.... Ignore Lecompton; ignore Topeka; treat
both those party movements as irregular and void; pass a fair bill--the
one that we framed ourselves when we were acting as a unit; have a fair
election--and you will have peace in the Democratic party, and peace
throughout the country, in ninety days. The people want a fair vote.
They will never be satisfied without it.... But if this constitution is
to be forced down our throats in violation of the fundamental principle
of free government, under a mode of submission that is a mockery and
insult, I will resist it to the last."

Walker, the fourth Democratic governor who had now been sacrificed to
the interests of the Kansas pro-slavery cabal, also wrote a sharp letter
of resignation denouncing the Lecompton fraud and policy; and such was
the indignation aroused in the free States, that although the Senate
passed the Lecompton Bill, twenty-two Northern Democrats joining their
vote to that of the Republicans, the measure was defeated in the House
of Representatives. The President and his Southern partizans bitterly
resented this defeat; and the schism between them, on the one hand, and
Douglas and his adherents, on the other, became permanent and
irreconcilable.

IX

The Senatorial Contest in Illinois--"House Divided against Itself"
Speech--The Lincoln-Douglas Debates--The Freeport Doctrine--Douglas
Deposed from Chairmanship of Committee on Territories--Benjamin on
Douglas--Lincoln's Popular Majority--Douglas Gains Legislature--Greeley,
Crittenden, _et al._--"The Fight Must Go On"--Douglas's Southern
Speeches--Senator Brown's Questions--Lincoln's Warning against Popular
Sovereignty--The War of Pamphlets--Lincoln's Ohio Speeches--The John
Brown Raid--Lincoln's C