The Freeport Doctrine was Stephen Douglas's answer to Lincoln's question, in which he explained that slavery could only exist where there was a slave code. If a state did not pass the necessary laws to protect slavery, then they could not have slavery exist there. He argued that a territory had the right to exclude slavery, despite the Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case.
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The Freeport Doctrine refers to the speech that was made by Stephen A. Douglas on the 27th of August 1858 in Freeport. The significance is that this was one of the reasons that he lost the 1860 presidential elections.
Stephen Douglas' Freeport Doctrine referred to the proposal that territories had the right to refuse slavery if they chose. This was against a Supreme Court decision. The doctrine was espoused in his debates with Abraham Lincoln in 1858.
Over 1500 people attended the original debate in Freeport, then a town of 5000. Freeport doctrine, which was the result of the debate, states people had the right to choose wether or not to exclude slavery from their limits. GA
representatives from the North who supported continued trading with Great Britain and war with France
a doctrine of containment :p
This was a doctrine believed by John Winthrop and many of Puritans instructing them to do God's work.