e power claimed for the Supreme Court by Judge Douglas, Mr.
Jefferson holds, would reduce us to the despotism of an oligarchy.

Now, I have said no more than this,--in fact, never quite so much as this;
at least I am sustained by Mr. Jefferson.

Let us go a little further. You remember we once had a National Bank. Some
one owed the bank a debt; he was sued, and sought to avoid payment on the
ground that the bank was unconstitutional. The case went to the Supreme
Court, and therein it was decided that the bank was constitutional. The
whole Democratic party revolted against that decision. General Jackson
himself asserted that he, as President, would not be bound to hold a
National Bank to be constitutional, even though the court had decided it
to be so. He fell in precisely with the view of Mr. Jefferson, and acted
upon it under his official oath, in vetoing a charter for a National Bank.
The declaration that Congress does not possess this constitutional power
to charter a bank has gone into the Democratic platform, at their
National Conventions, and was brought forward and reaffirmed in their last
Convention at Cincinnati. They have contended for that declaration, in the
very teeth of the Supreme Court, for more than a quarter of a century.
In fact, they have reduced the decision to an absolute nullity. That
decision, I repeat, is repudiated in the Cincinnati platform; and still,
as if to show that effrontery can go no further, Judge Douglas vaunts in
the very speeches in which he denounces me for opposing the Dred Scott
decision that he stands on the Cincinnati platform.

Now, I wish to know what the Judge can charge upon me, with respect to
decisions of the Supreme Court, which does not lie in all its length,
breadth, and proportions at his own door. The plain truth is simply this:
Judge Douglas is for Supreme Court decisions when he likes and against
them when he does not like them. He is for the Dred Scott decision because
it tends to nationalize slavery; because it is part of the original
combination for that object. It so happens, singularly enough, that I
never stood opposed to a decision of the Supreme Court till this, on the
contrary, I have no recollection that he was ever particularly in favor of
one till this. He never was in favor of any nor opposed to any, till the
present one, which helps to nationalize slavery.

Free men of Sangamon, free men of Illinois, free men everywhere, judge ye
between him and me