legislation. If I rightly understand
him, I wish to ask your attention for a while to his position.

In the first place, the Supreme Court of the United States has decided
that any Congressional prohibition of slavery in the Territories is
unconstitutional; that they have reached this proposition as a conclusion
from their former proposition, that the Constitution of the United
States expressly recognizes property in slaves, and from that other
Constitutional provision, that no person shall be deprived of property
without due process of law. Hence they reach the conclusion that as the
Constitution of the United States expressly recognizes property in slaves,
and prohibits any person from being deprived of property without due
process of law, to pass an Act of Congress by which a man who owned a
slave on one side of a line would be deprived of him if he took him on the
other side, is depriving him of that property without due process of law.
That I understand to be the decision of the Supreme Court. I understand
also that Judge Douglas adheres most firmly to that decision; and the
difficulty is, how is it possible for any power to exclude slavery
from the Territory, unless in violation of that decision? That is the
difficulty.

In the Senate of the United States, in 1850, Judge Trumbull, in a speech
substantially, if not directly, put the same interrogatory to Judge
Douglas, as to whether the people of a Territory had the lawful power to
exclude slavery prior to the formation of a constitution. Judge Douglas
then answered at considerable length, and his answer will be found in the
Congressional Globe, under date of June 9th, 1856. The Judge said that
whether the people could exclude slavery prior to the formation of a
constitution or not was a question to be decided by the Supreme Court.
He put that proposition, as will be seen by the Congressional Globe, in a
variety of forms, all running to the same thing in substance,--that it was
a question for the Supreme Court. I maintain that when he says, after the
Supreme Court have decided the question, that the people may yet exclude
slavery by any means whatever, he does virtually say that it is not a
question for the Supreme Court. He shifts his ground. I appeal to you
whether he did not say it was a question for the Supreme Court? Has not
the Supreme Court decided that question? when he now says the people may
exclude slavery, does he not make it a question for the people?