In fine, the Republicans declared in plain terms that slavery should by positive law of the nation be excluded from the Territories.

The Democrats flatly opposed the doctrine of Congressional prohibition, but left a margin for doubt as to the true construction of the Constitution, and of the Act repealing the Missouri Compromise, thus enabling their partisans to present one issue in the North, and another in the South.
The Democratic candidate in his letter of acceptance did not seek to resolve the mystery of the platform, but left the question just as he found it in the resolutions of the convention.

The result was that Northern people supported Mr.Buchanan in the belief, so energetically urged by Mr.Douglas, that the people of the Territories had the right to determine the slavery question for themselves at any time.

The Southern people supported Mr.Buchanan in the full faith that slavery was to be protected in the Territories until a State government should be formed and admission to the Union secured.
The Democratic doctrine of the North and the Democratic doctrine of the South were, therefore, in logic and in fact, irreconcilably hostile.

By the one, slavery could never enter a Territory unless the inhabitants thereof desired and approved it.