ff their
responsibility on to the immigrants into Kansas. This feeling that it
was indifferent Lincoln pursued and chastised with special scorn. But
the principle of freedom that they were surrendering was the principle
of freedom for themselves as well as for the negro. The sense of the
negro's rights had been allowed to go back till the prospect of
emancipation for him looked immeasurably worse than it had a generation
before. They must recognise that when, by their connivance, they had
barred and bolted the door upon the negro, the spirit of tyranny which
they had evoked would then "turn and rend them." The "central idea"
which had now established itself in the intellect of the Southern was
one which favoured the enslavement of man by man "apart from colour."
A definite choice had to be made between the principle of the fathers,
which asserted certain rights for all men, and that other principle
against which the fathers had rebelled and of which the "divine right
of kings" furnished Lincoln with his example. In what particular
manner the white people would be made to feel the principle of tyranny
when they had definitely "denied freedom to others" and ceased to
"deserve it for themselves" Lincoln did not attempt to say, and perhaps
only dimly imagined. But he was as convinced as any prophet that
America stood at the parting of the ways and must choose now the right
principle or the wrong with all its consequences.

The principle of tyranny presented itself for their choice in a
specious form in Douglas' "great patent, everlasting principle of
'popular sovereignty.'" This alleged principle was likely, so to say,
to take upon their blind side men who were sympathetic to the
impatience of control of any crowd resembling themselves but not
sympathetic to humanity of another race and colour. The claim to some
divine and indefeasible right of sovereignty overriding all other
considerations of the general good, on the part of a majority greater
or smaller at any given time in any given area, is one which can
generally be made to bear a liberal semblance, though it certainly has
no necessary validity. Americans had never before thought of granting
it in the case of their outlying and unsettled dominions; they would
never, for instance, as Lincoln remarked, have admitted the claim of
settlers like the Mormons to make polygamy lawful in the territory they
occupied. In the manner in which it was now employed the pro