the Judge can charge upon me, with respect to
decisions of the Supreme Court, which does not lie in all its length,
breadth, and proportions at his own door. The plain truth is simply this:
Judge Douglas is for Supreme Court decisions when he likes and against
them when he does not like them. He is for the Dred Scott decision because
it tends to nationalize slavery; because it is part of the original
combination for that object. It so happens, singularly enough, that I
never stood opposed to a decision of the Supreme Court till this, on the
contrary, I have no recollection that he was ever particularly in favor of
one till this. He never was in favor of any nor opposed to any, till the
present one, which helps to nationalize slavery.

Free men of Sangamon, free men of Illinois, free men everywhere, judge ye
between him and me upon this issue.

He says this Dred Scott case is a very small matter at most,--that it has
no practical effect; that at best, or rather, I suppose, at worst, it is
but an abstraction. I submit that the proposition that the thing which
determines whether a man is free or a slave is rather concrete than
abstract. I think you would conclude that it was, if your liberty depended
upon it, and so would Judge Douglas, if his liberty depended upon it.
But suppose it was on the question of spreading slavery over the new
Territories that he considers it as being merely an abstract matter, and
one of no practical importance. How has the planting of slavery in new
countries always been effected? It has now been decided that slavery
cannot be kept out of our new Territories by any legal means. In what do
our new Territories now differ in this respect from the old Colonies when
slavery was first planted within them? It was planted, as Mr. Clay once
declared, and as history proves true, by individual men, in spite of the
wishes of the people; the Mother Government refusing to prohibit it, and
withholding from the people of the Colonies the authority to prohibit it
for themselves. Mr. Clay says this was one of the great and just causes of
complaint against Great Britain by the Colonies, and the best apology
we can now make for having the institution amongst us. In that precise
condition our Nebraska politicians have at last succeeded in placing our
own new Territories; the government will not prohibit slavery within them,
nor allow the people to prohibit it.

I defy any man to find any difference between the pol