They Came in Like a Wrecking Ball
- Finally, President Buchanan and Stephen Douglas get into a tussle about whether the Lecompton Constitution actually reflected what people in Kansas wanted.
- Douglas said, basically, "I don't care what they decide about slavery, I just want them to get a fair vote."
- Lincoln thinks that Douglas' declaration is the ultimate definition of his idea of popular sovereignty, and the only thing that's left from Douglas' original idea when he introduced the Kansas-Nebraska bill.
- The Dred Scott decision made popular sovereignty impossible.
- Douglas' fight with Republicans over the Lecompton Constitution is pointless, because the fight isn't about his popular sovereignty idea—it's about people's rights to make their own constitution, which everyone has always agreed about.
- The Dred Scott decision has built a piece of machinery that's helping the pro-slavery cause advance, through three main points.
- Point one: no Black person has ever been or ever will be a citizen, which was said to prevent them from benefiting from the rights given by the U.S. Constitution.
- Point two: Congress cannot exclude slavery from any part of the country, because slaves are considered property. This makes it more likely the institution will be spread.
- Point three: the Supreme Court won't decide about what happens to slaves when they go into free states—that's a question for the states.
- So that's where we are now—a mixture of the "who cares" approach of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the machinery set up by the Dred Scott decision.