people of a territory to admit or exclude, to establish or abolish, slavery, as to them might seem best. The doctrine of Breckenridge was that slaveholders were entitled to carry their slaves into any territory of the United States and to hold them there, with or without the consent of the people of the territory; that the Constitution of its own force carried slavery into any territory open for settlement in the United States, and protected it there. To both these parties, factions, and doctrines, Abraham Lincoln and the republican party stood opposed. They held that the Federal Government had the right and the power to exclude slavery from the territories of the United States, and that that right and power ought to be exercised to the extent of confining slavery inside the slave States, with a view to its ultimate extinction. The position of Mr. Douglas gave him a splendid pretext for the display of a species of oratory of which he was a distinguished master. He alone of the three candidates took the stump as the preacher of popular sovereignty, called in derision at the time, "Squatter" Sovereignty. This doctrine, if not the times, gave him a chance to play fast and loose, blow hot and cold, as occasion might require. In the South and among slaveholders he could say, "My great principle of popular sovereignty does not and was not intended by me to prevent the extension of slavery; on the contrary, it gives you the right to take your slaves into the territories and secure legislation legalizing slavery; it denies to the Federal Government all right of interference against you, and hence is eminently favorable to your interests." When among people known to be indifferent he could say, "I do not care whether slavery is voted up or down in the territory," but when addressing the known opponents of the extension of slavery, he could say that the people of the territories were in no danger of having slavery forced upon them, since they
