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Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the — Volume 3: the Lincoln-Douglas debates by Abraham Lincoln
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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:

Firstly, 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,"
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