question, instead of the whole Constitution, compelling every voter, however he might vote upon this schedule, to vote for their Constitution, which fixed slavery upon the State just as surely, whether the schedule was adopted or not, will be well remembered, as well as the feeling which so unjust a device excited throughout the North. Judge Douglas had sustained the Dred Scott decision, but he could not sustain this attempt to force upon the people of Kansas a Constitution against their will. He took ground openly and boldly against it-denouncing it in the Senate and elsewhere as an outrage upon the people of Kansas, and a violation of every just Democratic principle. He declared that he did not care whether the people voted the Slavery clause "up or down,” but he thought they ought to have the chance to vote for or against the Constitution itself.

The Administration had made the measure their own, and this opposition of Douglas at once excited against him the active hostility of the slaveholders and their friends, with whom he had hitherto acted in concert. The bill was finally passed through Congress on April 30th, 1858, under what is known as the English Bill, whereby the Constitution was to be submitted to the votes of the people of Kansas, with the offer of heavy bribes to them, in the way of donations of land, etc., if they would accept it; and the people, in spite of the bribes, voted it down by an immense majority.

Judge Douglas's term was on the eve of expiring, and he came home to Illinois after the adjournment of Congress, to attend in person to the political campaign, upon the result of which was to depend his re-election to the Senate.

His course on the Lecompton bill had made an open breach between him and the Administration, and he had rendered such good service to the Republicans, in their battle with that monstrous infamy, that there were not. wanting many among them who were inclined to think it would be wise not to oppose his re-election.

But the Republicans of Illinois thought otherwise.

They knew that he was not in any sense a Republican. They knew that on the cardinal principle of the Republican party, opposition to the spread of Slavery into the Territories, he was not with them; for he had declared in the most positive way that he did not care whether Slavery was voted down or up." And they therefore determined, in opposition to the views of some influential Republicans, at home as well as in other States, to fight the battle through against him, with all the energy that they could bring to the work. And to this end, on the 17th of June, 1858, at their State Convention at Springfield, they nominated Mr. Lincoln as their candidate for the Senate of the United States.

The circumstances we have briefly sketched invested the campaign about to open with national importance. The people of the whole Union saw that the struggle then initiated in Illinois must ultimately extend to other States, and they knew that they would soon be compelled themselves to pass upon the questions there to be decided. None doubted that the principle of "Popular Sovereignty" would be thoroughly examined, for the reputation of the two combatants as men of extraordinary ability was established. It was the universal expectation that each aspirant for senatorial honors would display peculiar caution in opening the struggle, in order to prevent the other from gaining any undue advantage; but Mr. Lincoln scorned every appearance of subterfuge or evasion. His opinions had become sharply defined and clearly crystallized during the contests through which he had passed in the years preceding, and in his speech to the Convention which nominated him, signifying his acceptance of the honor conferred upon him, he expressed himself so unreservedly and frankly that even his supporters were for the moment startled.

In a speech delivered at Chicago, July 9,-the first after Mr. Lincoln's nomination,-Senator Douglas alluded to this address as having been "well prepared and carefully written." In reply, Mr. Lincoln said, "Gentlemen. Judge Douglas informed you that this speech of mine

was probably carefully prepared. I admit that it was. I am not a master of language. I have not a fine education; I am not capable of entering into a disquisition upon dialectics, as I believe you call it." In the address thus alluded to, Mr. Lincoln struck the key-note of the campaign. Its exposition of his political creed, and his statement of the important points at issue, is so succinct and complete that we reproduce it here. It is as follows:

MR. PRESIDENT, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:- -If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.

Have we no tendency to the latter condition?

Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost com plete legal combination--piece of machinery, so to speak-compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace, the evidences of design and concert of action among its chief architects from the beginning.

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the national territory by Congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.

But so far Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point already gained and give chance for more.

This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty,"

otherwise called "sacred right of self-government;" which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska bill itself, in the language which follows: "It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "squatter sovereignty," and "sacred right of self-government." "But," said opposition members, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery." "Not we," said the friends of the measure; and down they voted the amendment.

While the Nebraska bill was passing through Congress, a law-case, involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State and then into a Territory covered by the Congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska bill and lawsuit were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was "Dred Scott," which name now designates the decision finally made in the case. Before the then next presidential election, the law-case came to, and was argued in, the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska bill to state his opinion whether the people of a Territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter answes: "That is a question for the Supreme Court."

The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing president, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the indorsement. The Supreme Court met again; did not announce their decision, but ordered a re-argument. The presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the decision.

The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an early occasion to make a speech at this capital, indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new president, too, seizes the early

occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained.

At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I do not understand his declaration that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind-the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle. If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision "squatter sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down, like temporary scaffolding-like the mould at the foundry served through one blast and fell back into loose sand-helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton Constitution, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point-the right of a people to make their own constitution-upon which he and the Republicans have never differed.

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator Douglas's "care not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working points of that machinery are:

First. That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution, which declares that "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States."

Secondly. That, "subject to the Constitution of the United States," neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can exclude slavery from any United States territory. This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories with slaves without danger of losing them as property, and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the insti tution through all the future.

Thirdly. That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for awhile, and apparently