any lawful way exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of
a State constitution." Lincoln foresaw and predicted what Douglas would
answer: that slavery could not exist in a Territory unless the people
desired it and gave it protection by territorial legislation. In an
improvised caucus the policy of pressing the interrogatory on Douglas was
discussed. Lincoln's friends unanimously advised against it, because the
answer foreseen would sufficiently commend Douglas to the people of
Illinois to insure his re-election to the Senate. But Lincoln persisted.
"I am after larger game," said he. "If Douglas so answers, he can never
be President, and the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this." The
interrogatory was pressed upon Douglas, and Douglas did answer that, no
matter what the decision of the Supreme Court might be on the abstract
question, the people of a Territory had the lawful means to introduce or
exclude slavery by territorial legislation friendly or unfriendly to the
institution. Lincoln found it easy to show the absurdity of the
proposition that, if slavery were admitted to exist of right in the
Territories by virtue of the supreme law, the Federal Constitution, it
could be kept out or expelled by an inferior law, one made by a
territorial Legislature. Again the judgment of the politicians, having
only the nearest object in view, proved correct: Douglas was reelected to
the Senate. But Lincoln's judgment proved correct also: Douglas, by
resorting to the expedient of his "unfriendly legislation doctrine,"
forfeited his last chance of becoming President of the United States. He
might have hoped to win, by sufficient atonement, his pardon from the
South for his opposition to the Lecompton Constitution; but that he
taught the people of the Territories a trick by which they could defeat
what the proslavery men considered a constitutional right, and that he
called that trick lawful, this the slave power would never forgive. The
breach between the Southern and the Northern Democracy was thenceforth
irremediable and fatal.