of 1860 is worth a hundred of this.” The interrogatory was pressed upon Douglas, and Douglas did answer that, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court might be on the abstract question, the people of a Territory had the lawful means to introduce or exclude slavery by territorial legislation friendly or unfriendly to the institution. Lincoln found it easy to show the absurdity of the proposition that, if slavery were admitted to exist of right in the Territories by virtue of the supreme law, the Federal Constitution, it could not be kept out or expelled by an inferior law, one made by a territorial legislature. Again the judgment of the politicians, having only the nearest object in view, proved correct: Douglas was reëlected to the Senate. But Lincoln's judgment proved correct also: Douglas, by resorting to the expedient of his “unfriendly legislation doctrine,” forfeited his last chance of becoming President of the United States. He might have hoped to win, by sufficient
