Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/244

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS Douglas is pursuing every day as bearing upon this question of making slavery national. Not going back to the records, but taking the speeches he makes — the speeches he made yesterday, and the day before, and makes constantly all over the country — I ask your attention to them. In the first place, what is necessary to make the institution national? Not war. There is no danger that the people of Kentucky will shoulder their muskets, and, with a young nigger stuck on every bayonet, march into Illinois and force them upon us. There is no danger of our going over there and making war upon them. Then what is necessary for the nationalization of slavery? It is simply the next Dred Scott decision. It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the Constitution can ex- clude it, just as they have already decided that under the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial Legislature can do it. When that is decided and acquiesced in, the whole thing is done. This being true, and this being the way, as I think, that slavery is to be made national, let us consider what Judge Douglas is doing every day to that end. In the first place, let us see what influence he is exerting on public sentiment. In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail ; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pro* 234