there and making war upon them. Then what is necessary for the
nationalization of slavery? It is simply the next Dred Scott decision. It
is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the
Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided that under
the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial Legislature can do
it. When that is decided and acquiesced in, the whole thing is done. This
being true, and this being the way, as I think, that slavery is to be
made national, let us consider what Judge Douglas is doing every day to
that end. In the first place, let us see what influence he is exerting on
public sentiment. In this and like communities, public sentiment is
everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing
can succeed. Consequently, he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper
than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes
and decisions possible or impossible to be executed. This must be borne
in mind, as also the additional fact that Judge Douglas is a man of vast
influence, so great that it is enough for many men to profess to believe
anything when they once find out Judge Douglas professes to believe it.
Consider also the attitude he occupies at the head of a large party,--a
party which he claims has a majority of all the voters in the country.
This man sticks to a decision which forbids the people of a Territory
from excluding slavery, and he does so, not because he says it is right
in itself,--he does not give any opinion on that,--but because it has
been decided by the court; and being decided by the court, he is, and you
are, bound to take it in your political action as law, not that he judges
at all of its merits, but because a decision of the court is to him a
"Thus saith the Lord." He places it on that ground alone; and you will
bear in mind that thus committing himself unreservedly to this decision
commits him to the next one just as firmly as to this. He did not commit
himself on account of the merit or demerit of the decision, but it is a
"Thus saith the Lord." The next decision, as much as this, will be a