now,

Did we brave all then to falter now? when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful.

We shall not fail. If we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it; but sooner or later the victory is sure to come.

FROM HIS SPEECH AT CHICAGO, IN REPLY TO THE SPEECH OF JUDGE DOUGLAS, ON THE EVENING OF JULY 9, 1858.

July 10, 1858.

NOTE. Twenty years after the delivery of this speech the following account of it was given to me by a conservative and distinguished Democrat. "I lived in Chicago at the time," he said, "and I was a Douglas Democrat. We loved the Little Giant' for his courage, and we had a sympathy for him, for he seemed to be fighting half his own party and all the Republicans.

"I listened to Douglas's speech on the ninth of July. He had a large audience, in full sympathy with him, and he himself was at his best. When he concluded there were many calls for Lincoln. He appeared, and quietly said that the hour was late, the audience weary, and to answer Judge Douglas one must begin earlier in the evening. He did not know that he should be able to answer him, but those who cared to hear him try, would come there the next evening.

"I heard Mr. Lincoln's speech the next evening, every word of it. When I assure you that it convinced and converted a Douglas Democrat like myself, I have expressed not only my own opinion, but that of ten thousand others comprising that audience. I was satisfied then that the Little Giant' had met his master."

This speech was generally considered by Republicans as second in importance only to the "Divided House" speech, the principles of which it firmly maintained. It was afterwards republished, with others, under the same cover as the Douglas and Lincoln Debate, and had a wide circulation. No apology is deemed necessary for the length of the selections from it, it would be published entire if the portions here omitted did not appear elsewhere in this volume.

The address commenced with a good-natured refutation of the charge that an alliance to defeat Douglas existed between the friends of Lincoln and the Buchanan Democrats. Then Mr. Lincoln went straight to the Douglas war-cry of Popular Sovereignty.

"... Popular sovereignty! everlasting popular sovereignty! Let us for a moment inquire into this vast matter of popular sovereignty. What is popular sovereignty? We recollect that at an early period in the history of this struggle, there was another name for the same thing, squatter sovereignty. It was not exactly popular

sovereignty, but squatter sovereignty. What do these terms mean? What do those terms mean when used now? And vast credit is taken by our friend, the Judge, in regard to his support of it, when he declares the last years of his life have been, and all the future years of his life shall be, devoted to this matter of popular sovereignty. What is it? Why, it is the sovereignty of the people! What was squatter sovereignty? I suppose, if it had any signification at all, it was the right of the people to govern themselves, to be sovereign in their own affairs, while they were squatted down in a country not their own, while they had squatted on a territory that did not belong to them, in the sense that a State belongs to the people who inhabit it, when it belonged to the nation; such right to govern themselves was called squatter sovereignty.'

"Now, I wish you to mark, What has become of that squatter sovereignty? What has become of it? Can you get anybody to tell you now that the people of a Territory have any authority to govern themselves, in regard to this mooted question of slavery, before they form a State constitution? No such thing at all, although there is a general running fire, and although there has been a hurrah made in every speech on that side, assuming that

policy had given to the people of a Territory the right to govern themselves upon this question; yet the point is dodged. To-day it has been decided- no more than a year ago it was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, and is insisted upon to-day — that the people of a Territory have no right to exclude slavery from a Territory; that if any one man chooses to take slaves into a Territory, all the rest of the people have no right to keep them out. This being so, and this decision being made, one of the points that the Judge approved, and one in the approval of which he says he means to keep me down,

put me down I should not say, for I have never been up! He says he is in favour of it, and sticks to it, and expects to win his battle on that decision, which says that there is no such thing as squatter sovereignty, but that any one man may take slaves into a Territory, and all the other men in the Territory may be opposed to it, and yet by reason of the Constitution they cannot prohibit it. When that is so, how much is left of this vast matter of squatter sovereignty, I should like to know?

"When we get back, we get to the point of the right of the people to make a constitution. Kansas was settled, for example, in 1854. It was a

Territory yet, without having formed a constitution, in a very regular way, for three years. All this time negro slavery could be taken in by any few individuals, and by that decision of the Supreme Court, which the Judge approves, all the rest of the people cannot keep it out; but when they come to make a constitution they may say they will not have slavery. But it is there; they are obliged to tolerate it in some way, and all experience shows it will be so, for they will not take the negro slaves and absolutely deprive the owners of them. All experience shows this to be so. All that space of time that runs from the beginning of the settlement of the Territory until there is a sufficiency of people to make a State constitution, all that portion of time popular sovereignty is given up. The seal is absolutely put down upon it by the court decision, and Judge Douglas puts his own upon the top of that; yet he is appealing to the people to give him vast credit for his devotion to popular sovereignty.

Again, when we get to the question of the right of the people to form a State constitution as they please, to form it with slavery or without slavery, if that is anything new I confess I don't know it. Has there ever been a time when anybody said that any other than the people of