The Freeport Question: Sourcing Douglas's Answer

Roads to Division, 1846–1860

1In 1846, early in the war with Mexico, Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania proposed that slavery be banned in any land the United States won from Mexico. The Wilmot Proviso passed the House of Representatives, where the more populous free states held most of the seats. It failed in the Senate, where the slave states had enough votes to block it. Members of Congress voted mostly as Northerners or Southerners, not as Whigs or Democrats.

2Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois offered a different answer: popular sovereignty, letting the settlers of each territory vote on slavery. His Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 put the idea into law, and fighting broke out in Kansas. In 1856 the anger reached the Senate itself. After Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts gave a speech attacking slavery in Kansas, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Sumner with a cane at his desk. Many Northerners were outraged. Many Southerners praised Brooks and sent him new canes.

3In 1857 the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision ruled that Black Americans could not be citizens and that Congress had no power to ban slavery in a territory. People asked whether settlers could still keep slavery out. The question came up in 1858, when Douglas ran for re-election to the Senate against Abraham Lincoln, a Republican. In those years state legislatures chose U.S. senators, so the two men were really competing for the voters who would elect the Illinois legislature. They held seven debates across the state. At the second, in Freeport on August 27, Lincoln asked Douglas whether the people of a territory could lawfully keep slavery out before it became a state.

4Democrats won the legislature, and it returned Douglas to the Senate, but the debates made Lincoln known across the country. In October 1859 the abolitionist John Brown led a small band in a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to arm enslaved people for a revolt. U.S. Marines captured him within two days, and Virginia hanged him that December. Lincoln and most Republican leaders called the raid wrong, but some Northern writers praised Brown as a hero.

5In April 1860 Democrats met in Charleston, South Carolina, to choose a candidate for President. Many Southern delegates demanded a promise that the national government would protect slavery in all the territories. When Douglas's supporters refused, those delegates walked out. The party split: Northern Democrats chose Douglas, and Southern Democrats chose John Breckinridge. Lincoln won the election in November, and in December South Carolina became the first state to secede.

Adapted from Stephen A. Douglas's reply at Freeport, Illinois, August 27, 1858

Mr. Lincoln asks whether the people of a territory can, in any lawful way, keep slavery out before it becomes a state. I answer emphatically that in my opinion they can. No matter how the Supreme Court may decide the question of whether slavery may go into a territory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to bring it in or keep it out as they please. Slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local police laws. Those laws can be made only by the local legislature. If the people are opposed to slavery, they will elect representatives who will refuse to pass such laws, and slavery will be kept out. This is the great principle of popular sovereignty: let the people decide.