Now it was, that the meaning of the words, "subject only to the
Constitution," as used in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, began to be
discerned. For if the people of a Territory were to be "perfectly
free," to deal with Slavery as they chose, "subject only to the
Constitution" they were by this Judicial interpretation of that
instrument "perfectly free" to deal with Slavery in any way so long as
they did not attempt "to exclude" it! The thing was all one-sided.
Mr. Douglas's attitude in inventing the peculiar phraseology in the
Kansas-Nebraska Act--which to some seemed as if expressly "made to
order" for the Dred Scott decision--was criticized with asperity; the
popularity, however, of his courageous stand against President Buchanan
on the Lecompton fraud, seemed to make it certain that, his term in the
United States Senate being about to expire, he would be overwhelmingly
re-elected to that body.
But at this juncture occurred something, which for a long time held the
result in doubt, and drew the excited attention of the whole Nation to
Illinois as the great battle-ground. In 1858 a Republican State
Convention was held at Springfield, Ill., which nominated Abraham
Lincoln as the Republican candidate for United States Senator to succeed
Senator Douglas in the National Legislature.
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