e is in the right, I do not feel
myself at all competent or inclined to answer him. I say to him, "Give it
to them,--give it to them just all you can!" and, on the other hand, I
say to Carlin, and Jake Davis, and to this man Wogley up here in Hancock,
"Give it to Douglas, just pour it into him!"

Now, in regard to this matter of the Dred Scott decision, I wish to say a
word or two. After all, the Judge will not say whether, if a decision is
made holding that the people of the States cannot exclude slavery, he will
support it or not. He obstinately refuses to say what he will do in that
case. The judges of the Supreme Court as obstinately refused to say
what they would do on this subject. Before this I reminded him that at
Galesburgh he said the judges had expressly declared the contrary, and you
remember that in my Opening speech I told him I had the book containing
that decision here, and I would thank him to lay his finger on the place
where any such thing was said. He has occupied his hour and a half, and he
has not ventured to try to sustain his assertion. He never will. But he is
desirous of knowing how we are going to reverse that Dred Scott decision.
Judge Douglas ought to know how. Did not he and his political friends
find a way to reverse the decision of that same court in favor of the
constitutionality of the National Bank? Didn't they find a way to do it so
effectually that they have reversed it as completely as any decision ever
was reversed, so far as its practical operation is concerned?

And let me ask you, did n't Judge Douglas find a way to reverse the
decision of our Supreme Court when it decided that Carlin's father--old
Governor Carlin had not the constitutional power to remove a Secretary of
State? Did he not appeal to the "MOBS," as he calls them? Did he not make
speeches in the lobby to show how villainous that decision was, and how it
ought to be overthrown? Did he not succeed, too, in getting an act passed
by the Legislature to have it overthrown? And did n't he himself sit down
on that bench as one of the five added judges, who were to overslaugh the
four old ones, getting his name of "judge" in that way, and no other? If
there is a villainy in using disrespect or making opposition to Supreme
Court decisions, I commend it to Judge Douglas's earnest consideration.
I know of no man in the State of Illinois who ought to know so well about
how much villainy it takes to oppose a decision of the Supre