niggers, at least, I profess no taste for that job at all.  Why then do I yield support to a Fugitive Slave law?  Because I do not understand that the Constitution, which guarantees that right, can be supported without it.  And if I believed that the right to hold a slave in a Territory was equally fixed in the Constitution with the right to reclaim fugitives, I should be bound to give it the legislation necessary to support it.  I say that no man can deny his obligation to give the necessary legislation to support slavery in a Territory, who believes it is a constitutional right to have it there.  No man can, who does not give the Abolitionists an argument to deny the obligation enjoined by the Constitution to enact a Fugitive State law.  Try it now.  It is the strongest Abolition argument ever made.  I say if that Dred Scott decision is correct, then the right to hold slaves in a Territory is equally a constitutional right with the right of a slaveholder to have his runaway returned.  No one can show the distinction between them.  The one is express, so that we cannot deny it.  The other is construed to be in the Constitution, so that he who believes the decision to be correct believes in the right.  And the man who argues that by unfriendly legislation, in spite of that constitutional right, slavery may be driven from the Territories, cannot avoid furnishing an argument by which Abolitionists may deny the obligation to return fugitives, and claim the power to pass laws unfriendly to the right of the slaveholder to reclaim his fugitive.  I do not know how such an arguement may strike a popular assembly like this, but I defy anybody to go before a body of men whose minds are educated to estimating evidence and reasoning, and show that there is an iota of difference between the constitutional right to reclaim a fugitive and the constitutional right to hold a slave, in a Territory, provided this Dred Scott decision is correct, I defy any man to make an argument that will justify unfriendly legislation to deprive a slaveholder of his right to hold his slave in a Territory, that will not equally, in all its length, breadth, and thickness, furnish an argument for nullifying the Fugitive Slave law.  Why, there is not such an Abolitionist in the nation as Douglas, after all! such an Abolitionist in the nation as Douglas, after all!

THE WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Volume Five

1858-1862

CONSTITUTIONAL EDITION

TO SYDNEY SPRING, GRAYVILLE, ILL.

Springfield, June 19, 1858.

Sydney spring, Esq.

My dear sir:—­Your letter introducing Mr. Faree was duly received.  There was no opening to nominate him for Superintendent of Public Instruction, but through him Egypt made a most valuable contribution to the convention.  I think it may be fairly said that he came off the lion of the day—­or rather of the night.  Can you not elect him to the Legislature?  It seems to me he would be hard to beat.  What objection could be made to him?  What is your Senator Martin saying and doing?  What is Webb about?