pass such a law, and abide by it when passed? Because the Constitution
makes provision that the owners of slaves shall have the right to
reclaim them. It gives the right to reclaim slaves; and that right is,
as Judge Douglas says, a barren right, unless there is legislation that
will enforce it.

The mere declaration, "No person held to service or labour in one State,
under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of
any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or
labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such
service or labour may be due," is powerless without specific legislation
to enforce it. Now, on what ground would a member of Congress who is
opposed to slavery in the abstract, vote for a fugitive law, as I would
deem it my duty to do? Because there is a constitutional right which
needs legislation to enforce it. And, although it is distasteful to me,
I have sworn to support the Constitution; and, having so sworn, I
cannot conceive that I do support it if I withhold from that right any
necessary legislation to make it practical. And if that is true in
regard to a fugitive-slave law, is the right to have fugitive slaves
reclaimed any better fixed in the Constitution than the right to hold
slaves in the Territories? For this decision is a just exposition of the
Constitution, as Judge Douglas thinks. Is the one right any better than
the other? If I wished to refuse to give legislative support to slave
property in the Territories, if a member of Congress, I could not do it,
holding the view that the Constitution establishes that right. If I did
it at all, it would be because I deny that this decision properly
construes the Constitution. But if I acknowledge with Judge Douglas that
this decision properly construes the Constitution, I cannot conceive
that I would be less than a perjured man if I should refuse in Congress
to give such protection to that property as in its nature it needed....

_From Lincoln's Reply to Judge Douglas at Charleston, Illinois.
September 18, 1858_

Judge Douglas has said to you that he has not been able to get from me
an answer to the question whether I am in favour of negro citizenship.
So far as I know, the Judge never asked me the question before. He shall
have no occasion ever to ask it again, for I tell him very frankly that
I am not in favour of negro citizenship.... Now my opinion is, that the
different States h