held unconstitutional.

Judge Douglas says if the Constitution carries slavery into the
Territories, beyond the power of the people of the Territories to control
it as other property; then it follows logically that every one who swears
to support the Constitution of the United States must give that support
to that property which it needs. And, if the Constitution carries slavery
into the Territories, beyond the power of the people, to control it as
other property, then it also carries it into the States, because the
Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Now, gentlemen, if it were
not for my excessive modesty, I would say that I told that very thing to
Judge Douglas quite a year ago. This argument is here in print, and if it
were not for my modesty, as I said, I might call your attention to it. If
you read it, you will find that I not only made that argument, but made it
better than he has made it since.

There is, however, this difference: I say now, and said then, there is no
sort of question that the Supreme Court has decided that it is the right
of the slave holder to take his slave and hold him in the Territory; and
saying this, judge Douglas himself admits the conclusion. He says if that
is so, this consequence will follow; and because this consequence
would follow, his argument is, the decision cannot, therefore, be that
way,--"that would spoil my popular sovereignty; and it cannot be possible
that this great principle has been squelched out in this extraordinary
way. It might be, if it were not for the extraordinary consequences of
spoiling my humbug."

Another feature of the judge's argument about the Dred Scott case is,
an effort to show that that decision deals altogether in declarations of
negatives; that the Constitution does not affirm anything as expounded
by the Dred Scott decision, but it only declares a want of power a total
absence of power, in reference to the Territories. It seems to be his
purpose to make the whole of that decision to result in a mere negative
declaration of a want of power in Congress to do anything in relation to
this matter in the Territories. I know the opinion of the Judges states
that there is a total absence of power; but that is, unfortunately; not
all it states: for the judges add that the right of property in a slave is
distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution. It does not stop
at saying that the right of property in a slave is recognized in the
Cons