"
"But if the Southern States secede upon the inauguration of Lincoln,
before he commits an overt act against their rights, would you advise or
vindicate resistance by force to their secession?" If Douglas had ever
prostituted his mind to the South, now was the time to do it again. But
this was his answer:
"I answer that it is the duty of the President of the United States and
all others in authority under him to enforce the laws of the United
States as passed by Congress and as the court expounds them. And I, as
in duty bound by my oath of fidelity to the Constitution, would do all
in my power to aid the government of the United States in maintaining
the supremacy of the laws against all resistance to them, come from what
quarter it might. The President should meet all attempts to break up the
Union as Old Hickory treated the nullifiers in 1832."
What of the right of revolution? Douglas conceded that, but insisted
that the election of Lincoln would not be "such a grievance as would
justify revolution, or secession."
I believed this too. Upon large ground if the South had the right to
hold the negroes in slavery, the North would have the right to hold the
South in the Union. If the South wanted to stuff fate into a small
pocket of logic and allow their narrow bigotry to get the better of
their reason, I was in favor of licking them in the name of sport and in
justification of Darwin's law of the survival of the fittest.
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