Debates, pp.
253-54 Public opinion in this country is everything.

In a nation like ours this popular sovereignty and squatter sovereignty have already wrought a change in the public mind to the extent I have stated.

There is no man in this crowd who can contradict it.

Now, if you are opposed to slavery honestly, as much as anybody, I ask you to note that fact, and the like of which is to follow, to be plastered on layer after layer, until very soon you are prepared to deal with the negro everywhere as with the brute.

If public sentiment has not been debauched already to this point, a new turn of the screw in that direction is all that is wanting; and this is constantly being done by the teachers of this insidious popular sovereignty.