546 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



tions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a 

 piece too many or too few — not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a single piece be 

 lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring 

 such piece in — in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and 

 Franklin and Eoger and James all understood one another from the beginning, 

 and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was 

 struck.8 



To this Judge Douglas replied: 



It would be perfectly legitimate and proper for Mr, Lincoln, myself, or any 

 other lawyer, to go before the Supreme Court and argue any question that might 

 arise there, taking either side of it, and enforcing it with all our ability, zeal and 

 energy, but when the decision is pronounced, that decision becomes the law of 

 the land, and he, and you, and myself, and every other good citizen, must bow to 

 it, and yield obedience to it. Unless we respect and bow in deference to the final 

 decisions of the highest judicial tribunal in our country, we are driven at once to 

 anarchy, to violence, to mob law, and there is no security left for our property, or 

 our own civil rights. What protects your property but the law, and who ex- 

 pounds the law but the judicial tribunals; and if an appeal is to be taken from 

 the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, in all cases where a 

 person does not like the adjudication, to whom is that appeal to be taken! Are 

 we to appeal from the Supreme Court to a county meeting like this?9 



Douglas also denied the conspiracy charge. Not content with Doug- 

 las' denial, Lincoln renewed the charge, and while admitting that he did 

 not "know" submitted the evidence upon which he "'believed" it to be 

 true.^° Likewise, he objected to "the sacredness that Judge Douglas 

 throws around this decision," ^^and said : 



If I were in Congress, and a vote should come up on a question whether 

 slavery should be prohibited in a new territory, in spite of the Dred Scott deci- 

 sion, I would vote that it should. 12 



He also asked Douglas whether he would acquiesce in a second Dred 

 Scott decision forbidding the free states from excluding slavery from 

 their limits,^^ and stated that Douglas himself had approved of Jack- 

 son's refusal to be bound by a Supreme Court decision touching the con- 

 stitutionality of the United States Bank. He went even farther and as- 

 serted that Douglas was once in favor of " adding five new Judges " to 

 the Supreme Court of Illinois in order to reverse a decision of that 

 court, and that " it ended in the judge's sitting down on that very bench 

 as one of the five new judges to break down the four old ones." ^* In 

 short, "Judge Douglas is for Supreme Court decisions when he likes 

 and against them when he does not like them." ^^ 



8 Debates of Lincoln and Douglas, op. cit., pp. 3-4. 



» Ibid., p. 32. 



io7&id., p. 79. 



11 Ihid., p. 20. 



^2 Ibid., p. 20. 



13 Ibid., p. 90. 



1* Ibid., pp. 82-83. 



IB Ibid., p. 62. 



