Freeport Doctrine

So you know, it was a, it was a big deal at the time.

Tell me about the Freeport Doctrine.

Freeport Doctrine.

[laughs] It's one of those things, it's, it's in history textbooks, and interestingly enough, you find, we get a lot of people who come through here from European countries who studied American history-

Uh-huh

... who know the Freeport Doctrine.

Yeah.

And Freeport, people here don't.

And his fellow Southern Democrats immediately started writing to him and wiring him and saying, wait a minute, Stephen.

Do we live in the land of the Dred Scott decision or not? It became known to Southern Democrats as the so-called Freeport Doctrine.

And Douglas kept trying to dance around it, avoid it.

In opposition to the so-called Freeport Doctrine and in opposition to Douglas, at the Southern Democrat, at the Democratic Party convention, and by the way, that Democratic Party is, by anyone with his eyes open, the only truly national political party left in America.

The hope of saving the Union, just in a political sense, by 1860, was with the Democrats.

This Republican Party, as we're soon to see, was a Northern party, almost exclusively.