"I do not hesitate to say that * * * under the Constitution of the United States the people of the Southern States are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave Law. * * * The existing Fugitive Slave Law should have been so framed as to be free from some of the objections that pertain to it without lessening its efficiency. * * * * In regard to the admission of any more slave States into the Union, I state to you 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 be kept out of the Territories during their territorial existence, * * * * and then the people shall * * * adopt a slave Constitution, * * * I see no alternative but to admit them into the Union. * * * I should not be in favor of abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, unless upon the condition that abolition should be gradual; that it should be on the vote of a majority of the qualified voters of the District; and that compensation be made to unwilling owners. * * * What I am saying here I suppose I say to a vast audience as strongly tending to Abolitionism as any audience in the State of Illinois, and I believe I am saying that which, if it would be offensive to any persons and render them enemies to myself, would be offensive to persons in this audience." He then asked Douglas four questions: 1st. "If the people of Kansas shall * * * adopt a State Constitution and ask admission * * * * before they have the requisite number of inhabitants under the English bill, * * * will you vote to admit them? 2nd. "Can the people of a * * * Territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen, * * * exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution? 3rd. "If the Supreme Court * * * * shall decide that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing in, adopting and following such decision as a rule of political action? 4th. "Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory in disregard of how such action may affect the Nation on the slavery question? When the Nebraska bill was introduced, he continued, it was declared the intent and meaning of the act not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people perfectly free to regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way. Chase of Ohio introduced an amendment expressly declaring that the people of a Territory should have the power to exclude slavery if they saw fit. Douglas and those who agreed with him, voted it down. A little later the Supreme Court decided that a territorial legislature had no right to exclude slavery.