local and domestic regulations in each locality;
and they organized the Federal government on this fundamental
assumption.[687]

With Lincoln's other proposition Douglas also took issue. He refused
to enter upon any crusade against the Supreme Court. "I do not choose,
therefore, to go into any argument with Mr. Lincoln in reviewing the
various decisions which the Supreme Court has made, either upon the
Dred Scott case, or any other. I have no idea of appealing from the
decision of the Supreme Court upon a constitutional question to the
decision of a tumultuous town meeting."[688]

Neither could Douglas agree with his opponent in objecting to the
decision of the Supreme Court because it deprived the negro of the
rights, privileges, and immunities of citizenship, which pertained
only to the white race. Our government was founded on a white basis.
"It was made by the white man, for the benefit of the white man, to be
administered by white men." To be sure, a negro, an Indian, or any
other man of inferior race should be permitted to enjoy all the
rights, privileges, and immunities consistent with the safety of
society; but each State should decide for itself the nature and extent
of these rights.

On the next evening, Republican Chicago greeted its protagonist with
much the same demonstrations, as he took his place on the balcony from
which Douglas had spoken. Lincoln found the flaw in Douglas's armor at
the outset. "Popular sovereignty! Everlasting popular sovereignty!
What is popular sovereignty"? How could there be such a thing in the
original sense, now that the Supreme Court had decided that the people
in their territorial status might not prohibit slavery? And as for the
right of the people to frame a constitution, who had ever disputed
that right? But Lincoln, evidently troubled by Douglas's vehement
deductions from the house-divided-against-itself proposition, soon
fell back upon the defensive, where he was at a great disadvantage. He
was forced to explain that he did not favor a war by the North upon
the South for the extinction of slavery; nor a war by the South upon
the North for the nationalization of slavery. "I only said what I
expected would take place. I made a prediction only,--it may have been
a foolish one, perhaps. I did not even say that I desired that slavery
should be put in course of ultimate extinction. I do say so now,
however."[689] He _believed_ that slavery had endured, because until
the Neb