but he did not see how Congress could exclude the
people of a territory from admission as a state if they saw fit to adopt
a constitution legalizing the ownership of slaves. He favored the
gradual abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and the total
exclusion of it from the territories of the United States by act of
Congress.

Moreover, he drove Douglas into a hole by asking how he squared
"squatter sovereignty" with the Dred Scott decision; how, in other
words, the people of a territory could abolish slavery when the Court
had declared that Congress, the superior power, could not do it under
the Constitution? To this baffling question Douglas lamely replied that
the inhabitants of a territory, by "unfriendly legislation," might make
property in slaves insecure and thus destroy the institution. This
answer to Lincoln's query alienated many Southern Democrats who believed
that the Dred Scott decision settled the question of slavery in the
territories for all time. Douglas won the election to the Senate; but
Lincoln, lifted into national fame by the debates, beat him in the
campaign for President two years later.

=John Brown's Raid.=--To the abolitionists the line of argument pursued
by Lincoln, including his proposal to leave slavery untouched in the
states where it existed, was wholly unsatisfactory. One of them, a grim
and resolute man, inflamed by a hatred for slavery in itself, turned
from agitation to violence. "These men are all talk; what is needed is
action--action!" So spoke John Brown of New York. During the sanguinary
struggle in Kansas he hurried to the frontier, gun and dagger in hand,
to help drive slave owners from the free soil of the West. There he
committed deeds of such daring and cruelty that he was outlawed and a
price put upon his head. Still he kept on the path of "action." Aided by
funds from Northern friends, he gathered a small band of his followers
around him, saying to them: "If God be for us, who can be against us?"
He went into Virginia in the autumn of 1859, hoping, as he explained,
"to effect a mighty conquest even though it be like the last victory of
Samson." He seized the government armory at Harper's Ferry, declared
free the slaves whom he found, and called upon them to take up arms in
defense of their liberty. His was a hope as forlorn as it was desperate.
Armed forces came down upon him and, after a hard battle, captured him.
Tried for treason, Brown was condemned to deat