g that promise that I have in good faith made.

It may appear a little episodical for me to mention the topic of which
I will speak now. It is a favorite position of Douglas's that the
interference of the General Government, through the Ordinance of '87, or
through any other act of the General Government never has made or ever can
make a free State; the Ordinance of '87 did not make free States of
Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois; that these States are free upon his "great
principle" of popular sovereignty, because the people of those several
States have chosen to make them so. At Columbus, and probably here, he
undertook to compliment the people that they themselves have made the
State of Ohio free, and that the Ordinance of '87 was not entitled in any
degree to divide the honor with them. I have no doubt that the people
of the State of Ohio did make her free according to their own will and
judgment, but let the facts be remembered.

In 1802, I believe, it was you who made your first constitution, with
the clause prohibiting slavery, and you did it, I suppose, very nearly
unanimously; but you should bear in mind that you--speaking of you as
one people--that you did so unembarrassed by the actual presence of
the institution 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 th