urity entitling it to form a State
Constitution. * * * This being so, the period of time from the first
settlement of a Territory till it reaches the point of forming a State
Constitution, is not the thing that the Judge has fought for, or is
fighting for; but, on the contrary, he has fought for, and is fighting
for, the thing that annihilates and crushes out that same Popular
Sovereignty. Well, so much being disposed of, what is left? Why, he is
contending for the right of the People, when they come to make a State
Constitution, to make it for themselves, and precisely as best suits
themselves. I say again, that is Quixotic. I defy contradiction when I
declare that the Judge can find no one to oppose him on that
proposition. I repeat, there is nobody opposing that proposition on
principle. * * * Nobody is opposing, or has opposed, the right of the
People when they form a State Constitution, to form it for themselves.
Mr. Buchanan and his friends have not done it; they, too, as well as the
Republicans and the Anti-Lecompton Democrats, have not done it; but on
the contrary, they together have insisted on the right of the People to
form a Constitution for themselves. The difference between the Buchanan
men, on the one hand, and the Douglas men and the Republicans, on the
other, has not been on a question of principle, but on a question of
fact * * * whether the Lecompton Constitution had been fairly formed by
the People or not. * * * As to the principle, all were agreed.

"Judge Douglas voted with the Republicans upon that matter of fact. He
and they, by their voices and votes, denied that it was a fair emanation
of the People. The Administration affirmed that it was. * * * This
being so, what is Judge Douglas going to spend his life for? Is he
going to spend his life in maintaining a principle that no body on earth
opposes? Does he expect to stand up in majestic dignity and go through
his apotheosis and become a god, in the maintaining of a principle which
neither man nor mouse in all God's creation is opposing?"

After ridiculing the assumption that Judge Douglas was entitled to all
the credit for the defeat of the Lecompton Constitution in the House of
Representatives--when the defeating vote numbered 120, of which 6 were
Americans, 20 Douglas (or Anti-Lecompton) Democrats, and 94 Republicans
--and hinting that perhaps he placed "his superior claim to credit, on
the ground that he performed a good act