e mean to try to do.

The sacredness that Judge Douglas throws around this decision is a
degree of sacredness that has never been before thrown around any other
decision. I have never heard of such a thing. Why, decisions apparently
contrary to that decision, or that good lawyers thought were contrary
to that decision, have been made by that very court before. It is the
first of its kind; it is an astonisher in legal history; it is a new
wonder of the world; it is based upon falsehood in the main as to
the facts,--allegations of facts upon which it stands are not facts
at all in many instances,--and no decision made on any question--the
first instance of a decision made under so many unfavourable
circumstances--thus placed, has ever been held by the profession as law,
and it has always needed confirmation before the lawyers regarded it as
settled law; but Judge Douglas will have it that all hands must take
this extraordinary decision made under these extraordinary circumstances
and give their vote in Congress in accordance with it, yield to it, and
obey it in every possible sense. Circumstances alter cases. Do not
gentlemen here remember the case of that same Supreme Court some
twenty-five or thirty years ago, deciding that a national bank was
constitutional? I ask if somebody does not remember that a national bank
was declared to be constitutional? Such is the truth, whether it be
remembered or not. The bank charter ran out, and a re-charter was
granted by Congress. That re-charter was laid before General Jackson. It
was urged upon him, when he denied the constitutionality of the bank,
that the Supreme Court had decided that it was constitutional; and
General Jackson then said that the Supreme Court had no right to lay
down a rule to govern a coordinate branch of the government, the members
of which had sworn to support the Constitution,--that each member had
sworn to support the Constitution as he understood it. I will venture
here to say that I have heard Judge Douglas say that he approved of
General Jackson for that act. What has now become of all his tirade
against "resistance to the Supreme Court"?

My fellow-citizens, getting back a little,--for I pass from these
points,--when Judge Douglas makes his threat of annihilation upon the
"alliance," he is cautious to say that that warfare of his is to fall
upon the leaders of the Republican party. Almost every word he utters
and every distinction he makes has its sign