Excerpt from The Republican Party Vindicated; The Demands of the South Explained: Speech of Hon. Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, at the Cooper Institute, N. Y. City, February 27, 1860

For the purpose of ad hering rigidiy to the text, I have purposely omitted whatever um derstanding may have been manifested by any person, however distinguished, other than the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution and, for the same reason, I have also omitted whatever under standing may 'have been manifested by any of the thirty-nine, even, on any other phase of the general question of slavery. If we should look into their acts and declara tions on those other phases, as the foreign slave trade, 'and the morality and policy of slavery generally, it would appear to us that on the direct question of Federal control of slavery in Federal Territories, the sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably have acted just as the twenty-thre'e did. Among that sixteen were several of the most noted anti-slavery men of those timesnas Dr. Franklin, [cheers] Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morri's - while there was not one now known to have been otherwise, unless it may be John Rutledge, of South Carolina. [applause] The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-n1nefathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one - 'la clear majority of the wh'ole - certainly understood that no proper division of local from' Federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the. Federal Territories, while all the rest probably had the same understand ing. Such, unquestionably, was the under standing of our fathers who framed the orig inal Constitution and the text affirms that they understood the question better than we. [laughter and cheers.

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