said that
he would not accept the nomination of the Democratic party, if the
convention should interpolate into the party creed "such new issues as
the revival of the African slave-trade, or a congressional slave code
for the Territories."[792] And to leave no doubt as to his attitude he
wrote a second letter, devoted exclusively to this subject; it also
found its way, as the author probably intended it should, into the
newspapers. He opposed the revival of the African slave-trade because
it was abolished by one of the compromises which had made the Federal
Union and the Constitution. "In accordance with this compromise, I am
irreconcilably opposed to the revival of the African slave-trade, in
any form and under any circumstances."[793] How deeply this
unequivocal condemnation lacerated the feelings of the South, will
never be known until the economic necessities and purposes of the
large plantation owners are more clearly revealed.

The captious criticism of the Freeport doctrine by Southerners of the
Calhoun-Jefferson Davis school was less damaging, from a legal point
of view, than the sober analysis of Lincoln. The emphasis in Lincoln's
famous question at Freeport fell upon the word _lawful_: "Can the
people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way," etc. Douglas
had replied to the question of legal right by an assertion of the
power of the people of the Territories. This answer, as Lincoln
pointed out subsequently, was equivalent to saying that "a thing may
be lawfully driven away from where it has the lawful right to
be."[794] As a prediction, Douglas's simple statement, that if the
people of a Territory wanted slavery they would have it, and if they
did not, they would not let it be forced on them, was fully justified
by the facts of American history. It has been characteristic of the
American people that, without irreverence for law, they have not
allowed it to stand in the way of their natural development: they have
not, as a rule, driven rough-shod over law, but have quietly allowed
undesirable laws to fall into innocuous desuetude.

But such an answer was unworthy of a man who prided himself upon his
fidelity to the obligation of the Constitution and the laws. Feeling
the full force of Lincoln's inexorable logic,[795] but believing that
it was bottomed on a false premise, Douglas endeavored to give his
Freeport doctrine its proper constitutional setting. During the
summer, he elaborated an historical