The premise for this piece is from the Sixth Lincoln - Douglas debate in Quincy, Illinois on October 13, 1858. Abraham Lincoln was ridiculing Sen. Stephen Douglas's "Freeport doctrine" promise (aka "popular sovereignty") that, despite pro-slavery Federal judges and laws favored by Douglas's party, legislatures in new pre-Statehood "territories" could successfully ignore Federal demands to support slavery. Lincoln said “He has at last invented this sort of do nothing Sovereignty—that the people may exclude slavery by a sort of ‘Sovereignty’ that is exercised by doing nothing at all. Is that not running his Popular Sovereignty down awfully? Has it not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?”Has it not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?"
The premise for this piece is from the Sixth Lincoln - Douglas debate in Quincy, Illinois on October 13, 1858.
Abraham Lincoln was ridiculing Sen. Stephen Douglas's "Freeport doctrine" promise (aka "popular sovereignty") that, despite pro-slavery Federal judges and laws favored by Douglas's party, legislatures in new pre-Statehood "territories" could successfully ignore Federal demands to support slavery.
Lincoln said “He has at last invented this sort of do nothing Sovereignty—that the people may exclude slavery by a sort of ‘Sovereignty’ that is exercised by doing nothing at all. Is that not running his Popular Sovereignty down awfully? Has it not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?”Has it not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?"