Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/183

Rh will elect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation, prevent the introduction of it into their midst.”

This, then, is the great principle of popular sovereignty. [Laughter.]   It contemplates, not the general exercise and enjoyment of equal rights; not that slavery cannot go into a Territory unless the people introduce it by law; not that the people have the sovereign right to exclude it by a direct act of Territorial legislation; but that they may annoy and embarrass the slaveholder in the enjoyment of his slave property, so as to tease slavery out of the Territory, if they can. If, ten years ago, a man had undertaken to call this popular sovereignty, the people would have suspected him of serious mental derangement. Is not really this kind of popular sovereignty, according to Mr. Lincoln's striking illustration, “as thin as the homœopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death?” [Renewed laughter.] It would seem impossible to make it thinner, and yet Mr. Douglas undertakes this incredible task. After having tried to delude the voters of Illinois into the belief that, consistently with this position, the people of the Territory may, in some roundabout way, remove slavery, this “true champion of freedom” goes South, and proves there that slavery has a legal existence in the Territories. We find him at New Orleans; and the same man who at Freeport had told the people of Illinois, that it mattered not what the Supreme Court might decide, as to the abstract question, whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory—the same man speaks to the people of the south as follows:—

“I, in common with the Democracy of Illinois, accept the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Dred Scott, as an authoritative interpretation of the Constitution. In accordance with that