n as law, and it has
always needed confirmation before the lawyers regarded it as settled
law. But Judge Douglas will have it that all hands must take this
extraordinary decision, made under these extraordinary circumstances,
and give their vote in Congress in accordance with it, yield to it and
obey it in every possible sense.

"Circumstances alter cases. Do not gentlemen remember the case of that
same Supreme Court, some twenty-five or thirty years ago, deciding that
a National Bank was Constitutional? * * * The Bank charter ran out,
and a recharter was granted by Congress. That re-charter was laid
before General Jackson. It was urged upon him, when he denied the
Constitutionality of the Bank, that the Supreme Court had decided that
it was Constitutional; and General Jackson then said that the Supreme
Court had no right to lay down a rule to govern a co-ordinate branch of
the Government, the members of which had sworn to support the
Constitution--that each member had sworn to support that Constitution as
he understood it. I will venture here to say, that I have heard Judge
Douglas say that he approved of General Jackson for that act. What has
now become of all his tirade about 'resistance to the Supreme Court?'"

After adverting to Judge Douglas's warfare on "the leaders" of the
Republican party, and his desire to have "it understood that the mass of
the Republican party are really his friends," Mr. Lincoln said: "If you
indorse him, you tell him you do not care whether Slavery be voted up or
down, and he will close, or try to close, your mouths with his
declaration repeated by the day, the week, the month, and the year. Is
that what you mean? * * * Now I could ask the Republican party, after
all the hard names that Judge Douglas has called them by, all his
repeated charges of their inclination to marry with and hug negroes--all
his declarations of Black Republicanism--by the way, we are improving,
the black has got rubbed off--but with all that, if he be indorsed by
Republican votes, where do you stand? Plainly, you stand ready saddled,
bridled, and harnessed, and waiting to be driven over to the
Slavery-extension camp of the Nation--just ready to be driven over, tied
together in a lot--to be driven over, every man with a rope around his
neck, that halter being held by Judge Douglas. That is the question.
If Republican men have been in earnest in what they have done, I think
that they has better not do