nterfere with
slave property, it certainly left that proposition open to fair
inference by the phrasing and emphasis of the critical passages. It
should be noted that Douglas, in quoting the decision, misplaced the
decisive clause so as to bring it in juxtaposition to the reference to
the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution, thus redistributing the
emphasis and confusing the real significance of the foregoing
paragraph.[798] Douglas stated subsequently that he did not believe
the decision of the Court reached the power of a territorial
legislature, because there was no territorial legislature in the
record nor any allusion to one; because there was no territorial
enactment before the Court; and because there was no fact in the case
alluding to or connected with territorial legislation.[799] All this
was perfectly true. The opinion of the Court was _obiter dicens_; but
the Court expressed its opinion nevertheless. As Lincoln said, men
knew what to expect of the Court when a territorial act prohibiting
slavery came before it. Yet this was what Douglas would not concede.
He would not admit the inference. Congress could confer powers upon a
territorial legislature which it could not itself exercise. The
dividing line between Federal and local authority was so drawn as to
permit Congress to institute governments with legislative, judicial,
and executive functions but without permitting Congress to exercise
those functions itself. From Douglas's point of view, a Territory was
not a dependency of the Federal government, but an inchoate
Commonwealth, endowed with many of the attributes of sovereignty
possessed by the full-fledged States.

So unusual an event as a political contribution by a prominent
statesman to a popular magazine, created no little excitement.[800]
Attorney-General Black came to the defense of the South with an
unsigned contribution to the Washington _Constitution_, the organ of
the administration.[801] And Douglas, who had meantime gone to Ohio to
take part in the State campaign, replied caustically to this critique
in his speech at Wooster, September 16th. Black rejoined in a pamphlet
under his own name. Whereupon Douglas returned to the attack with a
slashing pamphlet, which he sent to the printer in an unfinished form
and which did him little credit.[802]

This war of pamphlets was productive of no results. Douglas and Black
were wide apart upon their major premises, and diverged inevitably in
th