raint on the power of the
Territories was left open in the Nebraska act. Put this and that
together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere
long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision declaring that the
Constitution of the United States does not permit a _State_ to exclude
slavery from its limits. And this may especially be expected if the
doctrine of "care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up" shall
gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a
decision can be maintained when made.

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in
all the States. Welcome, or unwelcome, such decision is probably
coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present
political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down
pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of
making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead that
the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and
overthrow the power of that dynasty is the work now before all those
who would prevent that consummation. That is what we have to do. How
can we best do it?

There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet
whisper us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there
is with which to effect that object. They wish us to _infer_ all from
the fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the
dynasty; and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point,
upon which he and we have never differed. They remind us that he is a
great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be
granted. But "a living dog is better than a dead lion." Judge
Douglas, if not a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and
toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't
care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the "public
heart" _to care nothing about it_. A leading Douglas Democratic
newspaper thinks Douglas's superior talent will be needed to resist the
revival of the African slave-trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to
revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really
think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has
labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves
into the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a
sacred right to buy them where they can