Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Jordan, 1991)

Douglas immediately retorted with an answer that became known as the Freeport Doctrine. He acknowledged that slavery could not exist without laws to support it - laws dealing with runaways, the sale of slaves, and the like. If the people of a territory refused to pass such laws, Douglas said, slavery could not exist in practice, not matter what the Supreme Court said about the theory of the matter. Douglas convinced many Illinois voters who simply wanted to keep slavery out of the territories. As a result, he won the senatorial election.