now, the chief danger to our purpose. These will press us in due time, but they are not quite ready yet---they know that, as yet, we are too strong for them. The insidious Douglas popular sovereignty, which prepares the way for this ultimate danger, it is, which just now constitutes our chief danger.
Popular Sovereignty.
I say Douglas popular sovereignty; for there is a broad distinction between real popular Sovereignty and Douglas popular sovereignty. That the nation shall control what concerns it; that a state, or any minor political community, shall control what exclusively concerns it; and that an individual shall control what exclusively concerns him, is a real popular sovereignty, which no republican opposes.
But this is not Douglas popular sovereignty. Douglas popular sovereignty, as a matter of principle, simply is ``If one man would enslave another, neither that other, nor any third man, has a right to object.''
Douglas popular sovereignty, as he practically applies it, is ``If any organized political community, however new and small, would enslave men, or forbid their being enslaved within its own teritorial limits; however the doing the one or the other, may affect the men sought to be enslaved, or the vastly superior number of men who are afterwards to come within those limits; or the family of communities of which it is but a member, or the head of that family, as the parent, and common guardian of the whole---however any, or all, these are to be effected, neither any nor all may interfere''
This is Douglas popular sovereignty.
He has great difficulty with it. His speeches and letters, and essays, and explanations, explanatory of explanations explained, upon it, are legion. The most lengthy, and, as I suppose, the most maturely considered, is that recently published in Harper's Magazine. It has too [sic] leading objects---the first, to appropriate the authority and reverence, due the great and good men of the revolution, to his popular sovereignty; and secondly, to show that the Dred Scott decision has not entirely squelched his popular sovereignty.
Before considering these main objects, I wish to consider a few minor points of the copy-right essay.
Last year Gov. Seward and myself, at different times and occasions, expressed the opinion that slavery is a durable element of discord, and that we shall not have peace with it, until it either masters, or is mastered by, the free principle. This gave great offence