Recollection by Horace White, Jonesboro Debate, September 15, 1858

The next joint debate took place at Jonesboro, in "Lower Egypt." This was in a region where the Republican votes were so few that they were usually classified as "scattering." The audience was the smallest of the series, rather less than one thousand. Mr. Lincoln here took up Douglas' Freeport speech and demolished it completely. He showed that it was not true that slavery could not exist unless supported by local police regulations, for in fact slavery always began without legislation and so continued until it became so extensive as to require legislation to regulate and support it. It began in this way in our own country in 1619. Dred Scott himself was held as-a slave in Minnesota without any local police regulations. But if citizens had a constitutional right to take slaves into a territory and hold them there as property, the local legislature would be bound to afford them all needful protection, and failing to do so Congress would be bound to supply the deficiency. The logic of this position was unassailable. The only way that Douglas could reply was by likening slavery to liquor-selling, saying that if a man should take a stock of liquors to a territory, his right to sell it there would be subject to the local law and if that were unfriendly it would drive him out just as effectually as though there were a constitutional prohibition of liquor-selling. This was another example of his skill in juggling with words. If liquor-selling in territories were a constitutional right no territorial law could render that right nugatory.