As to the vaunted popular sovereignty principle, Lincoln declared it "the most arrant Quixotism that was ever enacted before a community.... Does he mean to say that he has been devoting his life to securing to the people of the Territories the right to exclude slavery from the Territories? If he means so to say, he means to deceive; because he and every one knows that the decision of the Supreme Court, which he approves and makes especial ground of attack upon me for disapproving, forbids the people of a Territory to exclude slavery. This covers the whole ground from the settlement of a Territory till it reaches the degree of maturity entitling it to form a State constitution. So far as all that ground is concerned, the Judge is not sustaining popular sovereignty, but absolutely opposing it. He sustains the decision which declares that the popular will of the Territories has no constitutional power to exclude slavery during their territorial existence." By no means the least interesting of the many points touched in these debates is Lincoln's own estimate of the probable duration of slavery, or rather of the least possible period in which "ultimate extinction" could be effected, even under the most favorable circumstances. [Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 157. Now, at this day in the history of the world [said he, in the Charleston debate], we can no more foretell where the end of this slavery agitation will be than we can see the end of the world itself. The Nebraska-Kansas bill was introduced four years and a half ago, and if the agitation is ever to come to an end, we may say we are four years and a half nearer the end. So too we can say we are four years and a half nearer the end of the world; and we can just as clearly see the end of the world as we can see the end of this agitation. The Kansas settlement did not conclude it. If Kansas should sink to-day, and leave a great vacant space in the earth's surface, this vexed question would still be among us. I say then there is no way of putting an end to the slavery agitation amongst us, but to put it back upon the basis where our fathers placed it, no way but to keep it out of our new Territories--to restrict it forever to the old States where it now exists. Then the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction. That is one way of putting an end to the slavery agitation.