f we raise corn here we must make sugar-cane grow here
too, and we must make those things which grow North grow in the South.
All this I suppose he understands I am in favour of doing. Now, so much
for all this nonsense--for I must call it so. The Judge can have no
issue with me on a question of establishing uniformity in the domestic
regulations of the States.

A little now on the other point,--the Dred Scott decision. Another of
the issues, he says, that is to be made with me is upon his devotion to
the Dred Scott decision and my opposition to it.

I have expressed heretofore, and I now repeat, my opposition to the Dred
Scott decision; but I should be allowed to state the nature of that
opposition, and I ask your indulgence while I do so. What is fairly
implied by the term Judge Douglas has used, "resistance to the
decision"? I do not resist it. If I wanted to take Dred Scott from his
master I would be interfering with property, and that terrible
difficulty that Judge Douglas speaks of, of interfering with property,
would arise. But I am doing no such thing as that; all that I am doing
is refusing to obey it as a political rule. If I were in Congress, and a
vote should come up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited
in a new Territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote
that it should.

That is what I would do. Judge Douglas said last night that before the
decision he might advance his opinion, and it might be contrary to the
decision when it was made; but after it was made he would abide by it
until it was reversed. Just so! We let this property abide by the
decision, but we will try to reverse that decision. We will try to put
it where Judge Douglas would not object, for he says he will obey it
until it is reversed. Somebody has to reverse that decision, since it is
made; and we mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably.

What are the uses of decisions of courts? They have two uses. First,
they decide upon the question before the court. They decide in this case
that Dred Scott is a slave. Nobody resists that. Not only that, but they
say to everybody else that persons standing just as Dred Scott stands
are as he is. That is, they say that when a question comes up upon
another person it will be so decided again, unless the court decides
another way, unless the court overrules its decision. Well, we mean to
do what we can to have the court decide the other way. That is one thing
w