I would
not endanger the perpetuity of this Constitution, I would not blot out
the great inalienable rights of the white men for all the negroes that
ever existed."
What would Lincoln do about the fugitive-slave law? Douglas had
denounced attempts to evade it and actual violations of it. Even the
Whigs frowned on its nullification. What would Lincoln do? He was not in
favor of its repeal. He had said at Freeport: "I think under the
Constitution of the United States, the people of the Southern States are
entitled to a Congressional fugitive-slave law.... As we are now in no
agitation in regard to an alteration or modification of that law, I
would not be the man to introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon
the general question of slavery."
For the rest, what did it all come to? Like two pugilists Lincoln and
Douglas blocked each other's blows, drove each other into corners.
Lincoln twitted Douglas about being on both sides of the matter of
extending the Missouri Compromise. Then Douglas tripped Lincoln, who had
asserted that only slavery had ever disturbed the peace of the Union.
"How about the War of 1812, and the Hartford convention?" asked Douglas.
How about the tariff and South Carolina in 1832? He might have asked,
how about the Alien and Sedition laws and the Kentucky resolutions of
1798.
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