n. Another of the
issues he says that is to be made with me is upon his devotion to the Dred
Scott decision, and my opposition to it.

I have expressed heretofore, and I now repeat, my opposition to the
Dred Scott decision; but I should be allowed to state the nature of
that opposition, and I ask your indulgence while I do so. What is fairly
implied by the term Judge Douglas has used, "resistance to the decision"?
I do not resist it. If I wanted to take Dred Scott from his master, I
would be interfering with property, and that terrible difficulty that
Judge Douglas speaks of, of interfering with property, would arise. But
I am doing no such thing as that, but all that I am doing is refusing to
obey it as a political rule. If I were in Congress, and a vote should come
up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new Territory,
in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it should.

That is what I should do. Judge Douglas said last night that before the
decision he might advance his opinion, and it might be contrary to the
decision when it was made; but after it was made he would abide by
it until it was reversed. Just so! We let this property abide by the
decision, but we will try to reverse that decision. We will try to put it
where Judge Douglas would not object, for he says he will obey it until it
is reversed. Somebody has to reverse that decision, since it is made, and
we mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably.

What are the uses of decisions of courts? They have two uses. As rules of
property they have two uses. First, they decide upon the question before
the court. They decide in this case that Dred Scott is a slave. Nobody
resists that, not only that, but they say to everybody else that persons
standing just as Dred Scott stands are as he is. That is, they say that
when a question comes up upon another person, it will be so decided again,
unless the court decides in another way, unless the court overrules its
decision. Well, we mean to do what we can to have the court decide the
other way. That is one thing we mean to try to do.

The sacredness that Judge Douglas throws around this decision is a degree
of sacredness that has never been before thrown around any other decision.
I have never heard of such a thing. Why, decisions apparently contrary
to that decision, or that good lawyers thought were contrary to that
decision, have been made by that very court before. It is the