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 complete 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,