ne, Cook, Judd, and others,--he told them
he proposed to ask Douglas four questions, which he read. One and all
cried halt at the second question. Under no condition, they said, must
he put it. If it were put, Douglas would answer it in such a way as to
win the senatorship. The morning of the debate, while on the way to
Freeport, Lincoln read the same questions to Mr. Joseph Medill. "I do
not like this second question, Mr. Lincoln," said Mr. Medill. The two
men argued to their journey's end, but Lincoln was still unconvinced.
Even after he reached Freeport several Republican leaders came to him
pleading, "Do not ask that question." He was obdurate; and he went on
the platform with a higher head, a haughtier step than his friends had
noted in him before. Lincoln was going to ruin himself, the committee
said despondently; one would think he did not want the senatorship.

The mooted question ran in Lincoln's notes: "Can the people of a
United States territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any
citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to
the formation of a State Constitution?" Lincoln had seen the
irreconcilableness of Douglas's own measure of popular sovereignty,
which declared that the people of a territory should be left to
regulate their domestic concerns in their own way subject only to the
Constitution, and the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott
case that slaves, being property, could not under the Constitution be
excluded from a territory. He knew that if Douglas said no to this
question, his Illinois constituents would never return him to the
Senate. He believed that if he said yes, the people of the South would
never vote for him for President of the United States. He was willing
himself to lose the senatorship in order to defeat Douglas for the
Presidency in 1860. "I am after larger game; the battle of 1860 is
worth a hundred of this," he said confidently.

The question was put, and Douglas answered it with rare artfulness.
"It matters not," he cried, "what way the Supreme Court may hereafter
decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go
into a territory under the Constitution; the people have the lawful
means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason
that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is
supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can
only be established by the local legislatur