In this speech at Chicago, Lincoln reiterated his hatred of slavery and also his belief that
it
should not be touched where it then existed.
Speech at Chicago, Illinois
July 10, 1858
I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig.
I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction
of the Nebraska Bill began. I always believed that everybody was against it, and that it was in
course of ultimate extinction.
I have said a hundred times, and I have now no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is
no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave
States, and interfere with the question of slavery at all.
(II, 492)
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