e to institute a
comparison between right and wrong. You may turn over everything
in the Democratic policy from beginning to end, whether in the
shape it takes on the statute book, in the shape it takes in the
Dred Scott decision, in the shape it takes in conversation, or the
shape it takes in short maxim-like arguments--it everywhere
carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in it.

[Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, pp. 233-4.

That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in
this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself
shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two
principles--right and wrong--throughout the world. They are the
two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of
time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common
right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is
the same principle, in whatever shape it develops itself. It is
the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and
I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the
mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation
and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as
an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical
principle.

[Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 56.

As to the vaunted popular sovereignty principle, Lincoln declared it
"the most arrant Quixotism that was ever enacted before a
community.... Does he mean to say that he has been devoting his life
to securing to the people of the Territories the right to exclude
slavery from the Territories? If he means so to say, he means to
deceive; because he and every one knows that the decision of the
Supreme Court, which he approves and makes especial ground of attack
upon me for disapproving, forbids the people of a Territory to exclude
slavery. This covers the whole ground from the settlement of a
Territory till it reaches the degree of maturity entitling it to form
a State constitution. So far as all that ground is concerned, the
Judge is not sustaining popular sovereignty, but absolutely opposing
it. He sustains the decision which declares that the popular will of
the Territories has no constitutional power to exclude slavery during
their territorial existence."

By no means the least interesting of the many points to