Scott
decision would make slavery lawful everywhere.

[Sidenote] Ibid., p. 82.

It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under
the Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided
that under the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial
Legislature can do it. When that is decided and acquiesced in, the
whole thing is done. This being true, and this being the way, as I
think, that slavery is to be made national, let us consider what
Judge Douglas is doing every day to that end. In the first place,
let us see what influence he is exerting on public sentiment. In
this and like communities public sentiment is everything. With
public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can
succeed. Consequently, he who molds public sentiment goes deeper
than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes
statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.

The Democratic policy in regard to that institution will not
tolerate the merest breath, the slightest hint, of the least
degree of wrong about it. Try it by some of Judge Douglas's
arguments. He says he "don't care whether it is voted up or voted
down" in the Territories. I do not care myself, in dealing with
that expression, whether it is intended to be expressive of his
individual sentiments on the subject, or only of the national
policy he desires to have established. It is alike valuable for my
purpose. Any man can say that who does not see anything wrong in
slavery, but no man can logically say it who does see a wrong in
it; because no man can logically say he don't care whether a wrong
is voted up or voted down. He may say he don't care whether an
indifferent thing is voted up or down, but he must logically have
a choice between a right thing and a wrong thing. He contends that
whatever community wants slaves has a right to have them. So they
have, if it is not a wrong. But if it is a wrong, he cannot say
people have a right to do wrong. He says that upon the score of
equality slaves should be allowed to go into a new Territory, like
other property. This is strictly logical if there is no difference
between it and other property. If it and other property are equal,
his argument is entirely logical. But if you insist that one is
wrong and the other right, there is no us