the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and
overthrow the power of that dynasty is the work now before all those
who would prevent that consummation. That is what we have to do. How
can we best do it?

There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet
whisper us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there
is with which to effect that object. They wish us to _infer_ all from
the fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the
dynasty; and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point,
upon which he and we have never differed. They remind us that he is a
great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be
granted. But "a living dog is better than a dead lion." Judge
Douglas, if not a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and
toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't
care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the "public
heart" _to care nothing about it_. A leading Douglas Democratic
newspaper thinks Douglas's superior talent will be needed to resist the
revival of the African slave-trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to
revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really
think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has
labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves
into the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a
sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And
unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia.
He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to
one of a mere right of property; and, as such, how can he oppose the
foreign slave-trade--how can he refuse that trade in that "property"
shall be "perfectly free"--unless he does it as a protection to the
home production? And as the home producers will probably not ask the