And now there was some inconsistency in saying that the decision was right, and saying, too, that the people of the Territory could lawfully drive slavery out again.

When all the trash, the words, the collateral matter was cleared away from it, all the chaff was fanned out of it, it was a bare absurdity; no less than that a thing may be lawfully driven away from where it has a lawful right to be....
The Judge says the people of the Territories have the right, by his principle, to have slaves if they want them.

Then I say that the people in Georgia have the right to buy slaves in Africa if they want them, and I defy any man on earth to show any distinction between the two things--to show that the one is either more wicked or more unlawful; to show on original principles, that one is better or worse than the other; or to show by the Constitution, that one differs a whit from the other.

He will tell me, doubtless, that there is no constitutional provision against people taking slaves into the new Territories, and I tell him that there is equally no constitutional provision against buying slaves in Africa....
Then I say, if this principle is established, that there is no wrong in slavery, and whoever wants it has a right to have it; that it is a matter of dollars and cents; a sort of question how they shall deal with brutes; that between us and the negro here there is no sort of question, but that at the South the question is between the negro and the crocodile; that it is a mere matter of policy; that there is a perfect right according to interest to do just as you please--when this is done, where this doctrine prevails, the miners and sappers will have formed public opinion for the slave trade....
[Sidenote] Lincoln, Columbus Speech, Sept.

16, 1859.