itories? I will state--and I have an able man
to watch me--my understanding is that popular sovereignty, as now applied
to the question of slavery, does allow the people of a Territory to have
slavery if they want to, but does not allow them not to have it if they do
not want it. I do not mean that if this vast concourse of people were in a
Territory of the United States, any one of them would be obliged to have a
slave if he did not want one; but I do say that, as I understand the Dred
Scott decision, if any one man wants slaves, all the rest have no way of
keeping that one man from holding them.

When I made my speech at Springfield, of which the Judge complains, and
from which he quotes, I really was not thinking of the things which he
ascribes to me at all. I had no thought in the world that I was doing
anything to bring about a war between the free and slave states. I had no
thought in the world that I was doing anything to bring about a political
and social equality of the black and white races. It never occurred to
me that I was doing anything or favoring anything to reduce to a dead
uniformity all the local institutions of the various States. But I must
say, in all fairness to him, if he thinks I am doing something which leads
to these bad results, it is none the better that I did not mean it. It
is just as fatal to the country, if I have any influence in producing
it, whether I intend it or not. But can it be true that placing this
institution upon the original basis--the basis upon which our fathers
placed it--can have any tendency to set the Northern and the Southern
States at war with one another, or that it can have any tendency to
make the people of Vermont raise sugar-cane, because they raise it in
Louisiana, or that it can compel the people of Illinois to cut pine logs
on the Grand Prairie, where they will not grow, because they cut pine
logs in Maine, where they do grow? The Judge says this is a new principle
started in regard to this question. Does the Judge claim that he is
working on the plan of the founders of government? I think he says in some
of his speeches indeed, I have one here now--that he saw evidence of a
policy to allow slavery to be south of a certain line, while north of
it it should be excluded, and he saw an indisposition on the part of the
country to stand upon that policy, and therefore he set about studying the
subject upon original principles, and upon original principles he got
up