e to know?

When we get back, we get to the point of the right of the people to make a
constitution. Kansas was settled, for example, in 1854. It was a Territory
yet, without having formed a constitution, in a very regular way, for
three years. All this time negro slavery could be taken in by any few
individuals, and by that decision of the Supreme Court, which the Judge
approves, all the rest of the people cannot keep it out; but when they
come to make a constitution, they may say they will not have slavery. But
it is there; they are obliged to tolerate it some way, and all experience
shows it will be so, for they will not take the negro slaves and
absolutely deprive the owners of them. All experience shows this to be so.
All that space of time that runs from the beginning of the settlement
of the Territory until there is sufficiency of people to make a State
constitution,--all that portion of time popular sovereignty is given up.
The seal is absolutely put down upon it by the court decision, and Judge
Douglas puts his own upon the top of that; yet he is appealing to the
people to give him vast credit for his devotion to popular sovereignty.

Again, when we get to the question of the right of the people to form
a State constitution as they please, to form it with slavery or without
slavery, if that is anything new, I confess I don't know it. Has there
ever been a time when anybody said that any other than the people of a
Territory itself should form a constitution? What is now in it that Judge
Douglas should have fought several years of his life, and pledge himself
to fight all the remaining years of his life for? Can Judge Douglas find
anybody on earth that said that anybody else should form a constitution
for a people? [A voice, "Yes."] Well, I should like you to name him; I
should like to know who he was. [Same voice, "John Calhoun."]

No, sir, I never heard of even John Calhoun saying such a thing. He
insisted on the same principle as Judge Douglas; but his mode of applying
it, in fact, was wrong. It is enough for my purpose to ask this crowd
whenever a Republican said anything against it. They never said anything
against it, but they have constantly spoken for it; and whoever will
undertake to examine the platform, and the speeches of responsible men of
the party, and of irresponsible men, too, if you please, will be unable to
find one word from anybody in the Republican ranks opposed to that popular
sovereignty