the interstate slave trade. It soon transpired that
Lincoln was not present at the Springfield convention, and that the
resolutions were not adopted there, but somewhere else, and Douglas had
to defend himself against a charge of misrepresentation. Nevertheless,
when they met the second time, at Freeport, Lincoln answered the
questions. He admitted the right of the South to a fugitive slave law.
He would favor abolition in the District only if it were gradual,
compensated, and accomplished with the consent of the inhabitants. He
was not sure of the right of Congress to prohibit the interstate slave
trade. He would oppose the annexation of fresh territory if there were
reason to believe it would tend to aggravate the slavery controversy. He
could see no way to deny the people of a Territory if slavery were
prohibited among them during their territorial life and they
nevertheless asked to come into the Union as a slave State. These
cautious and hesitating answers displeased the stalwart anti-slavery
men. Lincoln would go their lengths in but one particular: he was for
prohibiting slavery outright in all the Territories.

Then he brought forward some questions for Douglas to answer. Would
Douglas vote to admit Kansas with less than 93,000 inhabitants if she
presented a free state constitution? Would he vote to acquire fresh
territory without regard to its effect on the slavery dispute? If the
Supreme Court should decide against the right of a State to prohibit
slavery, would he acquiesce? "Can the people of a United States
Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the
United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of
a state constitution?"

Douglas had no great difficulty with the first three questions, and the
fourth--the second, as Lincoln read them--he had in fact answered
several times already, and in a way to please the Democrats of Illinois.
But Lincoln, contrary to the advice of his friends, pressed it on him
again with a view to the "all hail hereafter," for it was meant to
bring out the inconsistency of the principle of popular sovereignty with
the Dred Scott decision, and the difference between the Northern and the
Southern Democrats. Douglas answered it as he had before. The people of
a Territory, through their legislature, could by unfriendly laws, or
merely by denying legislative protection, make it impossible for a
slave-owner to hold his slaves among them, no m