m its limits,
prior to the formation of a State constitution?" He answered that they
could lawfully exclude slavery from the United States Territories,
notwithstanding the Dred Scot decision. There was something about that
answer that has probably been a trouble to the judge ever since.

The Dred Scott decision expressly gives every citizen of the United States
a right to carry his slaves into the United States Territories. And now
there was some inconsistency in saying that the decision was right, and
saying, too, that the people of the Territory could lawfully drive slavery
out again. When all the trash, the words, the collateral matter, was
cleared away from it, all the chaff was fanned out of it, it was a bare
absurdity,--no less than that a thing may be lawfully driven away from
where it has a lawful right to be. Clear it of all the verbiage, and
that is the naked truth of his proposition,--that a thing may be lawfully
driven from the place where it has a lawful right to stay. Well, it was
because the judge could n't help seeing this that he has had so much
trouble with it; and what I want to ask your especial attention to, just
now, is to remind you, if you have not noticed the fact, that the judge
does not any longer say that the people can exclude slavery. He does not
say so in the copyright essay; he did not say so in the speech that he
made here; and, so far as I know, since his re-election to the Senate he
has never said, as he did at Freeport, that the people of the Territories
can exclude slavery. He desires that you, who wish the Territories to
remain free, should believe that he stands by that position; but he does
not say it himself. He escapes to some extent the absurd position I have
stated, by changing his language entirely. What he says now is something
different in language, and we will consider whether it is not different
in sense too. It is now that the Dred Scott decision, or rather the
Constitution under that decision, does not carry slavery into the
Territories beyond the power of the people of the Territories to control
it as other property. He does not say the people can drive it out, but
they can control it as other property. The language is different; we
should consider whether the sense is different. Driving a horse out of
this lot is too plain a proposition to be mistaken about; it is putting
him on the other side of the fence. Or it might be a sort of exclusion of
him from the lot if you