The Meaning of the Gettysburg Address

[Thomas Thorne]

Dear Bill
Yr always stimulating post has produced the intellectual equivalent of a 14 course Edwardian dinner which required its eaters to repair to a spa to sweat off the extra pounds.

I will confine myself at present to one aspect of one of yr assertions which absolutely astonishes me.

How can you say the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a victory for the South as it violated the principle of extraterritorial power- pp 115-118 of SST ? What is the constitutional distinction between Douglas-the people of each territory have the right to vote slavery up or down and who cares what they do-and Lincoln-Congress has the power to prevent slavery in the territories and should do so.

We know Southern Democrats refused to accept Douglas as their party's presidential candidate in 1860 and ran Breckinridge as their general election candidate. I have never seen a Southern threat to secede if Douglas was elected President. Perhaps his rather ostentatious racism made him an unlikely John Brown even to future Confederates.
Tom