say at one place what I uttered at another. 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.

I now proceed to propound to the Judge the interrogatories, so far as I
have framed them. I will bring forward a new installment when I get them
ready. I will bring them forward now only reaching to number four. The
first one is:

Question 1.--If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely
unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State constitution, and ask
admission into the Union under it, before they have the requisite
number of inhabitants according to the English bill,--some ninety-three
thousand,--will you vote to admit them?

Q. 2.--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?

Q. 3. If the Supreme Court of the United States 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?

Q. 4. Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard of
how such acquisition may affect the nation on the slavery question?

As introductory to these interrogatories which Judge Douglas propounded
to me at Ottawa, he read a set of resolutions which he said Judge Trumbull
and myself had participated in adopting, in the first Republican State
Convention, held at Springfield in October, 1854. He insisted that I and
Judge Trumbull, and perhaps the entire Republican party, were responsible
for the doctrines contained in the set of resolutions which he read, and
I understand that it was from that set of resolutions that he deduced the
interrogatories which he propounded to me, using these resolutions as a
sort of authority for propounding those questions to me. Now, I say here
to-day that I do not answer his interrogatories because of their springing
at all from that set of resolutions which he read. I answered them
because Judge Douglas thought fit to ask them. I do not now, nor ever did,
recognize any responsibility upon myself in that set of resolutions. When
I replied to him on that occasion, I assured him that