cial and confidential
friend for the last twenty years."[732]

Lincoln begged leave to doubt the authenticity of this new evidence,
in view of the little episode at Ottawa, concerning the Springfield
resolutions. At all events the whole story was untrue, and he had
already declared it to be such.[733] Why should Douglas persist in
misrepresenting him? Brushing aside these lesser matters, however,
Lincoln addressed himself to what had now come to be known as
Douglas's Freeport doctrine. "I hold," said he, "that the proposition
that slavery cannot enter a new country without police regulations is
historically false.... There is enough vigor in slavery to plant
itself in a new country even against unfriendly legislation. It takes
not only law but the enforcement of law to keep it out." Moreover, the
decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case had created
constitutional obligations. Now that the right of property in slaves
was affirmed by the Constitution, according to the Court, how could a
member of a territorial legislature, who had taken the oath to
support the Constitution, refuse to give his vote for laws necessary
to establish slave property? And how could a member of Congress keep
his oath and withhold the necessary protection to slave property in
the Territories?[734]

Of course Lincoln was well aware that Douglas held that the Court had
decided only the question of jurisdiction in the Dred Scott case; and
that all else was a mere _obiter dictum_. Nevertheless, "the Court did
pass its opinion.... If they did not decide, they showed what they
were ready to decide whenever the matter was before them. They used
language to this effect: That inasmuch as Congress itself could not
exercise such a power [_i.e._, pass a law prohibiting slavery in the
Territories], it followed as a matter of course that it could not
authorize a Territorial Government to exercise it; for the Territorial
Legislature can do no more than Congress could do."[735]

The only answer of Douglas to this trenchant analysis was a reiterated
assertion: "I assert that under the Dred Scott decision [taking
Lincoln's view of that decision] you cannot maintain slavery a day in
a Territory where there is an unwilling people and unfriendly
legislation. If the people are opposed to it, our right is a barren,
worthless, useless right; and if they are for it, they will support
and encourage it."[736]

Douglas made much of Lincoln's evident unwillin