So much, then, as to my disposition, my wish, to have all the State
legislatures blotted out and to have one consolidated government and a
uniformity of domestic regulations in all the States; by which I suppose
it is meant, if we raise corn here we must make sugar-cane grow here
too, and we must make those things which grow North grow in the South.
All this I suppose he understands I am in favour of doing. Now, so much
for all this nonsense--for I must call it so. The Judge can have no
issue with me on a question of establishing uniformity in the domestic
regulations of the States.
A little now on the other point,--the Dred Scott decision. Another of
the issues, he says, that is to be made with me is upon his devotion to
the Dred Scott decision and my opposition to it.
I have expressed heretofore, and I now repeat, my opposition to the Dred
Scott decision; but I should be allowed to state the nature of that
opposition, and I ask your indulgence while I do so. What is fairly
implied by the term Judge Douglas has used, "resistance to the
decision"? I do not resist it. If I wanted to take Dred Scott from his
master I would be interfering with property, and that terrible
difficulty that Judge Douglas speaks of, of interfering with property,
would arise.
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