"Suppose one of your merchants should move to Kansas and open a liquor store; he has a right to take groceries or liquor there; but the circumstances under which they shall be sold and all the remedies must be prescribed by local legislation; and if that is unfriendly it will drive him out just as effectually as if there was a constitutional provision against the sale of liquor. Hence, I assert, that under the Dred Scott decision you cannot maintain slavery a day in a Territory where there is an unwilling people and unfriendly legislation. If the people want slavery they will have it, and if they do not want it you cannot force it upon them." Neither Lincoln nor Douglas could as yet fairly and fearlessly grapple with the great problem. Lincoln's virtual rejection and defiance of the decision of the Supreme Court suggests not reform but revolution. These dark hints that the decisions of the highest tribunal should not be accepted or obeyed, that they were binding only on those who believed in them, portended nothing less than war. Slavery being an established institution, recognized by the Constitution and regulated by law, had the right to exist. Lincoln and his party abhorred it and resented the injustice of the law. Obeying the dominant instinct of the race, the scrupulously observed the form of the law while waging war upon it. On the other hand it is impossible to find either legal or philosophical foundation for Douglas' arguments. Slavery had been adjudged lawful in all the Territories. The proposition gravely argued by him, that the people could lawfully exclude a thing from a place where it had a lawful right to be, was monstrous. He sternly rebuked Lincoln for his irreverence in refusing to cordially accept the Dred Scott decision and in the next breath, with shocking inconsistency, dissolved its entire force in the menstruum of unfriendly legislation. The decision was utterly repugnant to the people of the State. The both viewed it as a political rather than a philosophic problem. Both rejected it and the consequences flowing from it. Lincoln quibbled when asked to accept it as a rule governing his political conduct. Douglas, by a cunning device, sought to destroy its force as a rule of private right. Lincoln insisted on the essential dishonesty of the juggling trick by which Douglas got rid of the adjudicated law. Douglas insisted on the anarchic spirit with which Lincoln bade defiance to it.