Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/121

Rh of policy or expediency can release him, to provide by law such adequate and complete protection as is essential to the enjoyment of that important right.”

And Mr. Douglas, after having emphatically admitted the right of property in a slave, where that right can spring from no other law but the Constitution, then dares to speak of unfriendly legislation? Where is his conscience? Where is his oath? Where is his honor?

But Mr. Douglas says more: “The Constitution being the supreme law of the land in the States as well as in the territories, then slavery exists in Pennsylvania just as well as in Kansas and in South Carolina, and the irrepressible conflict is there?” Aye, the irrepressible conflict is there, not only between the two antagonistic systems of labor, but between Mr. Douglas's own theories; not only in the States and territories, but in Mr. Douglas's own head. Whatever ambiguous expressions Mr. Douglas may invent, the dilemma stares him in the face (and here I put myself on his grounds): either slavery is excluded from the territories so long as it is not admitted by a special act of territorial legislation; or, if a slaveholder has the right to introduce his slave property there before such legislation is had, he can possess that right by virtue of no other but the only law existing there, the Constitution of the United States. Either slavery has no rights in the territories except those springing from positive law of a local or municipal character, or, according to Judge Douglas's own admission, the Southern construction of the Constitution and of the principle of popular sovereignty is the only legitimate one: that the Constitution by its own force carries slavery wherever it is the supreme law of the land, that Congress is obliged to enact a slave code for its protection, and that popular sovereignty means the power of the people to vote for slavery but by no means against it. There is no escape from this dilemma.