ve no right to
interfere with it, because it is in the Constitution; and we are by both
duty and inclination to stick by that Constitution, in all its letter and
spirit, from beginning to end.

So much, then, as to my disposition--my wish to have all the State
legislatures blotted out, and to have one consolidated government, and a
uniformity of domestic regulations in all the States, by which I suppose
it is meant, if we raise corn here, we must make sugar-cane grow here
too, and we must make those which grow North grow in the South. All this
I suppose he understands I am in favor of doing. Now, so much for all this
nonsense; for I must call it so. The Judge can have no issue with me on
a question of establishing uniformity in the domestic regulations of the
States.

A little now on the other point,--the Dred Scott decision. Another of the
issues he says that is to be made with me is upon his devotion to the Dred
Scott decision, and my opposition to it.

I have expressed heretofore, and I now repeat, my opposition to the
Dred Scott decision; but I should be allowed to state the nature of
that opposition, and I ask your indulgence while I do so. What is fairly
implied by the term Judge Douglas has used, "resistance to the decision"?
I do not resist it. If I wanted to take Dred Scott from his master, I
would be interfering with property, and that terrible difficulty that
Judge Douglas speaks of, of interfering with property, would arise. But
I am doing no such thing as that, but all that I am doing is refusing to
obey it as a political rule. If I were in Congress, and a vote should come
up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new Territory,
in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it should.

That is what I should do. Judge Douglas said last night that before the
decision he might advance his opinion, and it might be contrary to the
decision when it was made; but after it was made he would abide by
it until it was reversed. Just so! We let this property abide by the
decision, but we will try to reverse that decision. We will try to put it
where Judge Douglas would not object, for he says he will obey it until it
is reversed. Somebody has to reverse that decision, since it is made, and
we mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably.

What are the uses of decisions of courts? They have two uses. As rules of
property they have two uses. First, they decide upon the question before