he people of a Territory have no
right to exclude slavery from a Territory; that if any one man chooses to
take slaves into a Territory, all the rest of the people have no right
to keep them out. This being so, and this decision being made one of the
points that the Judge approved, and one in the approval of which he says
he means to keep me down,--put me down I should not say, for I have never
been up,--he says he is in favor of it, and sticks to it, and expects to
win his battle on that decision, which says that there is no such thing
as squatter sovereignty, but that any one man may take slaves into a
Territory, and all the other men in the Territory may be opposed to it,
and yet by reason of the Constitution they cannot prohibit it. When that
is so, how much is left of this vast matter of squatter sovereignty, I
should like 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