When the contestants met at Freeport, far in the solid Republican counties of the North, Lincoln was ready with his answers to the questions propounded by Douglas at Ottawa.  In most respects Lincoln was clear and explicit.  While not giving an unqualified approval of the Fugitive Slave Law, he was not in favor of its repeal; while believing that Congress possessed the power to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, he favored abolition only on condition that it should be gradual, acceptable to a majority of the voters of the District, and compensatory to unwilling owners; he would favor the abolition of the slave-trade between the States only upon similar conservative principles; he believed it, however, to be the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the Territories; he was not opposed to the honest acquisition of territory, provided that it would not aggravate the slavery question.  The really crucial questions, Lincoln did not face so unequivocally.  Was he opposed to the admission of more slave States?  Would he oppose the admission of a new State with such a constitution as the people of that State should see fit to make?

Lincoln answered hesitatingly:  “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 into the Union; but I must add, that if slavery shall be kept out of the Territories during the territorial existence of any one given Territory, and then the people shall, having a fair chance and a clear field, when they come to adopt the 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."[723]

It was now Lincoln’s turn to catechise his opponent.  He had prepared four questions, the second of which caused his friends some misgivings.[724] It read:  “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?”

Lincoln knew well enough that Douglas held to the power of the people practically to exclude slavery, regardless of the decision of the Supreme Court; Douglas had said as much in his hearing at Bloomington.  What he desired to extort from Douglas was his opinion of the legality of such action in view of the Dred Scott decision.  Should Douglas answer in the negative, popular sovereignty would become an empty phrase; should he answer in the affirmative, he would put himself, so Lincoln calculated, at variance with Southern Democrats, who claimed that the people of a Territory were now inhibited from any such power over slave property.  In the latter event, Lincoln proposed to give such publicity to Douglas’s reply as to make any future evasion or retraction impossible.[725]