The mere declaration, “No person held to service or labour in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due,” is powerless without specific legislation to enforce it.  Now, on what ground would a member of Congress who is opposed to slavery in the abstract, vote for a fugitive law, as I would deem it my duty to do?  Because there is a constitutional right which needs legislation to enforce it.  And, although it is distasteful to me, I have sworn to support the Constitution; and, having so sworn, I cannot conceive that I do support it if I withhold from that right any necessary legislation to make it practical.  And if that is true in regard to a fugitive-slave law, is the right to have fugitive slaves reclaimed any better fixed in the Constitution than the right to hold slaves in the Territories?  For this decision is a just exposition of the Constitution, as Judge Douglas thinks.  Is the one right any better than the other?  If I wished to refuse to give legislative support to slave property in the Territories, if a member of Congress, I could not do it, holding the view that the Constitution establishes that right.  If I did it at all, it would be because I deny that this decision properly construes the Constitution.  But if I acknowledge with Judge Douglas that this decision properly construes the Constitution, I cannot conceive that I would be less than a perjured man if I should refuse in Congress to give such protection to that property as in its nature it needed....

From Lincoln’s Reply to Judge Douglas at Charleston, Illinois.  September 18, 1858

Judge Douglas has said to you that he has not been able to get from me an answer to the question whether I am in favour of negro citizenship.  So far as I know, the Judge never asked me the question before.  He shall have no occasion ever to ask it again, for I tell him very frankly that I am not in favour of negro citizenship....  Now my opinion is, that the different States have the power to make a negro a citizen under the Constitution of the United States, if they choose.  The Dred Scott decision decides that they have not that power.  If the State of Illinois had that power, I should be opposed to the exercise of it.  That is all I have to say about it.

Judge Douglas has told me that he heard my speeches north and my speeches south, ... and there was a very different cast of sentiment in the speeches made at the different points.  I will not charge upon Judge Douglas that he wilfully misrepresents me, but I call upon every fair-minded man to take these speeches and read them, and I dare him to point out any difference between my speeches north and south.  While I am here, perhaps I ought to say a word, if I have the time, in regard to the latter portion of the Judge’s