The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, vol 3 | Page 9

his opposition to
Judge Douglas. He said that a friend of our Senator Douglas had been
talking to him, and had, among other things, said to him:
"...why, you don't want to beat Douglas?" "Yes," said he, "I do want to
beat him, and I will tell you why. I believe his original Nebraska Bill
was right in the abstract, but it was wrong in the time that it was
brought forward. It was wrong in the application to a Territory in
regard to which the question had been settled; it was brought forward at
a time when nobody asked him; it was tendered to the South when the
South had not asked for it, but when they could not well refuse it; and
for this same reason he forced that question upon our party. It has sunk
the best men all over the nation, everywhere; and now, when our
President, struggling with the difficulties of this man's getting up, has
reached the very hardest point to turn in the case, he deserts him and I
am for putting him where he will trouble us no more."
Now, gentlemen, that is not my argument; that is not my argument at
all. I have only been stating to you the argument of a Buchanan man.
You will judge if there is any force in it.
Popular sovereignty! Everlasting popular sovereignty! Let us for a
moment inquire into this vast matter of popular sovereignty. What is
popular sovereignty? We recollect that at an early period in the history
of this struggle there was another name for the same thing,--"squatter
sovereignty." It was not exactly popular sovereignty, but squatter
sovereignty. What do those terms mean? What do those terms mean
when used now? And vast credit is taken by our friend the Judge in
regard to his support of it, when he declares the last years of his life
have been, and all the future years of his life shall be, devoted to this
matter of popular sovereignty. What is it? Why, it is the sovereignty of
the people! What was squatter sovereignty? I suppose, if it had any
significance at all, it was the right of the people to govern themselves,

to be sovereign in their own affairs while they were squatted down in a
country not their own, while they had squatted on a Territory that did
not belong to them, in the sense that a State belongs to the people who
inhabit it, when it belonged to the nation; such right to govern
themselves was called "squatter sovereignty."
Now, I wish you to mark: What has become of that squatter
sovereignty? what has become of it? Can you get anybody to tell you
now that the people of a Territory have any authority to govern
themselves, in regard to this mooted question of slavery, before they
form a State constitution? No such thing at all; although there is a
general running fire, and although there has been a hurrah made in
every speech on that side, assuming that policy had given the people of
a Territory the right to govern themselves upon this question, yet the
point is dodged. To-day it has been decided--no more than a year ago it
was decided--by the Supreme Court of the United States, and is insisted
upon to-day that the 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