nstitution amongst you; that you made it a free State not with the
embarrassment upon you of already having among you many slaves, which if
they had been here, and you had sought to make a free State, you would
not know what to do with. If they had been among you, embarrassing
difficulties, most probably, would have induced you to tolerate a slave
constitution instead of a free one, as indeed these very difficulties have
constrained every people on this continent who have adopted slavery.

Pray what was it that made you free? What kept you free? Did you not
find your country free when you came to decide that Ohio should be a free
State? It is important to inquire by what reason you found it so. Let us
take an illustration between the States of Ohio and Kentucky. Kentucky is
separated by this River Ohio, not a mile wide. A portion of Kentucky, by
reason of the course of the Ohio, is farther north than this portion of
Ohio, in which we now stand. Kentucky is entirely covered with slavery;
Ohio is entirely free from it: What made that difference? Was it climate?
No. A portion of Kentucky was farther north than this portion of Ohio.
Was it soil? No. There is nothing in the soil of the one more favorable
to slave than the other. It was not climate or soil that mused one side of
the line to be entirely covered with slavery, and the other side free of
it. What was it? Study over it. Tell us, if you can, in all the range
of conjecture, if there be anything you can conceive of that made that
difference, other than that there was no law of any sort keeping it out of
Kentucky, while the Ordinance of '87 kept it out of Ohio. If there is any
other reason than this, I confess that it is wholly beyond my power to
conceive of it. This, then, I offer to combat the idea that that Ordinance
has never made any State free.

I don't stop at this illustration. I come to the State of Indiana; and
what I have said as between Kentucky and Ohio, I repeat as between
Indiana and Kentucky: it is equally applicable. One additional argument
is applicable also to Indiana. In her Territorial condition she more than
once petitioned Congress to abrogate the Ordinance entirely, or at least
so far as to suspend its operation for a time, in order that they should
exercise the "popular sovereignty" of having slaves if they wanted them.
The men then controlling the General Government, imitating the men of the
Revolution, refused Indiana that privilege. And so w