to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the
different States.

Q. 6.--"I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit slavery in
all the Territories of the United States, north as well as south of the
Missouri Compromise line?" Answer:--I am impliedly, if not expressly,
pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery
in all the United States 'Territories.

Q. 7.--"I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the acquisition of
any new territory unless slavery is first prohibited therein?" Answer:--I
am not generally opposed to honest acquisition of territory; and, in any
given case, I would or would not oppose such acquisition, accordingly as
I might think such acquisition would or would not aggravate the slavery
question among ourselves.

Now, my friends, it will be perceived, upon an examination of these
questions and answers, that so far I have only answered that I was
not pledged to this, that, or the other. The Judge has not framed his
interrogatories to ask me anything more than this, and I have answered in
strict accordance with the interrogatories, and have answered truly, that
I am not pledged at all upon any of the points to which I have answered.
But I am not disposed to hang upon the exact form of his interrogatory. I
am rather disposed to take up at least some of these questions, and state
what I really think upon them.

As to the first one, in regard to the Fugitive Slave law, I have never
hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate to say, that I think, under
the Constitution of the United States, the people of the Southern States
are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave law. Having said that,
I have had nothing to say in regard to the existing Fugitive Slave law,
further than that I think it should have been framed so as to be free
from some of the objections that pertain to it, without lessening its
efficiency. And inasmuch as we are not now in an agitation in regard to
an alteration or modification of that law, I would not be the man to
introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon the general question of
slavery.

In regard to the other question, of whether I am pledged to the admission
of any more slave States into the Union, I state to you very frankly that
I would be exceedingly sorry ever to be put in a position of having to
pass upon that question. I should be exceedingly glad to know that there
would never be another slave State admitted in