plea for support. He gratefully acknowledged the aid of the
Republicans in the recent anti-Lecompton fight, and of that worthy
successor of the immortal Clay, John J. Crittenden of Kentucky. After
all, was it not a common principle for which they had been contending?
"My friends," said Douglas with engaging ingenuousness, "when I am
battling for a great principle, I want aid and support from whatever
quarter I can get it." Pity, then, that Republican politicians, in
order to defeat him, should form an alliance with Lecompton men and
thus betray the cause![694]

Douglas called attention to Lincoln's explanation of his
house-divided-against-itself argument. It still seemed to him to
invite a war of sections. Mr. Lincoln had said that he had no wish to
see the people _enter into_ the Southern States and interfere with
slavery: for his part, he was equally opposed to a sectional agitation
to control the institutions of other States.[695] Again, Mr. Lincoln
had said that he proposed, so far as in him lay, to secure a reversal
of the Dred Scott decision. How, asked Douglas, will he accomplish
this? There can be but one way: elect a Republican President who will
pack the bench with Republican justices. Would a court so constituted
command respect?[696]

As to the effect of the Dred Scott decision upon slavery in the
Territories, Douglas had only this to say: "With or without that
decision, slavery will go just where the people want it, and not one
inch further." "Hence, if the people of a Territory want slavery, they
will encourage it by passing affirmatory laws, and the necessary
police regulations, patrol laws, and slave code; if they do not want
it they will withhold that legislation, and by withholding it slavery
is as dead as if it was prohibited by a constitutional prohibition,