their constitution, do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a slave constitution, uninfluenced by the actual presence of the institution among them, I see no alternative, if we own the country, but to admit them into the Union.”  He should also, he said, be “exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished in the District of Columbia,” and he believed that Congress had “constitutional power to abolish it” there; but he would favor the measure only upon condition:  “First, that the abolition should be gradual; second, that it should be on a vote of the majority of qualified voters in the District; and, third, that compensation should be made to unwilling owners.”  As to the abolition of the slave trade between the different States, he acknowledged that he had not considered the matter sufficiently to have reached a conclusion concerning it.  But if he should think that Congress had power to effect such abolition, he should “not be in favor of the exercise of that power unless upon some conservative principle, akin to what I have said in relation to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.”  As to the territorial controversy, he said:  “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.”  Concerning the acquisition of new territory he said:  “I am not generally opposed to honest acquisition of territory; and in any given case I would or would not oppose such acquisition, according as I might think such acquisition would or would not aggravate the slavery question among ourselves.”  The statement derived its immediate importance from the well-known purpose of the administration and a considerable party in the South very soon to acquire Cuba.  All these utterances were certainly clear enough, and were far from constituting Abolitionist doctrine, though they were addressed to an audience “as strongly tending to Abolitionism as any audience in the State of Illinois,” and Mr. Lincoln believed that he was saying “that which, if it would be offensive to any person and render them enemies to himself, would be offensive to persons in this audience.”

At Quincy Lincoln gave his views concerning Republicanism with his usual unmistakable accuracy, and certainly he again differentiated it widely from Abolitionism.  The Republican party, he said, think slavery “a moral, a social, and a political wrong.”  Any man who does not hold this opinion “is misplaced and ought to leave us.  While, on the other hand, if there be any man in the Republican party who is impatient over the necessity springing from its actual presence, and is impatient of the constitutional guarantees thrown around it, and would act in disregard of these, he, too, is misplaced, standing with us.  He will find his place somewhere else; for we have a due regard ... for all these things.” ...  “I have always hated slavery as much as any Abolitionist,... but I have always been quiet about it until this new