Why did those old men about the time of the adoption of the Constitution
decree that Slavery should not go into the new territory, where it had
not already gone? Why declare that within twenty years the African
Slave Trade, by which Slaves are supplied, might be cut off by Congress?
Why were all these acts? I might enumerate more of these acts--but
enough. What were they but a clear indication that the framers of the
Constitution intended and expected the ultimate extinction of that
institution?
"And now, when I say, as I said in my speech that Judge Douglas has
quoted from, when I say that I think the opponents of Slavery will
resist the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind
shall rest with the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction,
I only mean to say, that they will place it where the founders of this
Government originally placed it. I have said a hundred times, and I
have now no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no
right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the Free States,
to enter into the Slave States, and interfere with the question of
Slavery at all. I have said that always; Judge Douglas has heard me say
it--if not quite a hundred times, at least as good as a hundred times;
and when it is said that I am in favor of interfering with Slavery where
it exists, I know that it is unwarranted by anything I have ever
intended, and as I believe, by anything I have ever said.
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