upon this issue.

He says this Dred Scott case is a very small matter at most,--that it has
no practical effect; that at best, or rather, I suppose, at worst, it is
but an abstraction. I submit that the proposition that the thing which
determines whether a man is free or a slave is rather concrete than
abstract. I think you would conclude that it was, if your liberty depended
upon it, and so would Judge Douglas, if his liberty depended upon it.
But suppose it was on the question of spreading slavery over the new
Territories that he considers it as being merely an abstract matter, and
one of no practical importance. How has the planting of slavery in new
countries always been effected? It has now been decided that slavery
cannot be kept out of our new Territories by any legal means. In what do
our new Territories now differ in this respect from the old Colonies when
slavery was first planted within them? It was planted, as Mr. Clay once
declared, and as history proves true, by individual men, in spite of the
wishes of the people; the Mother Government refusing to prohibit it, and
withholding from the people of the Colonies the authority to prohibit it
for themselves. Mr. Clay says this was one of the great and just causes of
complaint against Great Britain by the Colonies, and the best apology
we can now make for having the institution amongst us. In that precise
condition our Nebraska politicians have at last succeeded in placing our
own new Territories; the government will not prohibit slavery within them,
nor allow the people to prohibit it.

I defy any man to find any difference between the policy which originally
planted slavery in these Colonies and that policy which now prevails in
our new Territories. If it does not go into them, it is only because no
individual wishes it to go. The Judge indulged himself doubtless to-day
with the question as to what I am going to do with or about the Dred Scott
decision. Well, Judge, will you please tell me what you did about the
bank decision? Will you not graciously allow us to do with the Dred Scott
decision precisely as you did with the bank decision? You succeeded in
breaking down the moral effect of that decision: did you find it necessary
to amend the Constitution, or to set up a court of negroes in order to do
it?

There is one other point. Judge Douglas has a very affectionate leaning
toward the Americans and Old Whigs. Last evening, in a sort of weeping
tone, he des