placed it,--restricting it
from the new Territories where it had not gone, and legislating to cut
off its source by the abrogation of the slave-trade, thus putting the
seal of legislation against its spread. The public mind did rest in the
belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. But lately, I
think,--and in this I charge nothing on the Judge's motives,--lately, I
think that he and those acting with him have placed that institution on
a new basis, which looks to the perpetuity and nationalization of
slavery. And while it is placed on this new basis, I say, and I have
said, that I believe we shall not have peace upon the question, until
the opponents of slavery arrest the further spread of it, and place it
where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course
of ultimate extinction; or, on the other hand, that its advocates will
push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States,
old as well as new, North as well as South. Now, I believe if we could
arrest the spread, and place it where Washington and Jefferson and
Madison placed it, it would be in the course of ultimate extinction, and
the public mind would, as for eighty years past, believe that it was in
the course of ultimate extinction. The crisis would be past, and the
institution might be let alone for a hundred years--if it should live so
long--in the States where it exists, yet it would be going out of
existence in the way best for both the black and the white races. [A
voice: "Then do you repudiate popular sovereignty?"] Well, then, let us
talk about popular sovereignty. What is popular sovereignty? Is it the
right of the people to have slavery or not to have it, as they see fit,
in the Territories? I will state--and I have an able man to watch me--my
understanding is that popular sovereignty, as now applied to the
question of slavery, does allow the people of a Territory to have
slavery if they want to, but does not allow them not to have it if they
do not want it. I do not mean that if this vast concourse of people were
in a Territory of the United States, any one of them would be obliged
to have a slave if he did not want one; but I do say that, as I
understand the Dred Scott decision, if any one man wants slaves, all the
rest have no way of keeping that one man from holding them.

When I made my speech at Springfield, of which the Judge complains, and
from which he quotes, I really was not thinking of the t