negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue, and this issue--
this question--is precisely what the text declares our fathers
understood 'better than we.'

"I defy any one to show that any living man in the whole world ever
did, prior to the beginning of the present century (and I might almost
say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century),
declare that in his understanding any proper division of local from
Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal
government to control as to slavery in the Federal territories. To
those who now so declare, I give, not only 'our fathers who framed the
government under which we live,' but with them all other living men
within the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and
they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing
with them."

One paragraph is quoted for the aptness of its illustration: "But you
will not abide the election of a republican President! In that supposed
event, you say you will destroy the Union; and then you say, the great
crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A
highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth,
'Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a
murderer!' To be sure, what the robber demanded of me--my money--was my
own, and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than
my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me to extort my money,
and the threat of destruction to the Union to extort my vote, can
scarcely be distinguished in principle."

The speech reached its climax in its closing paragraph: "Wrong as we
think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is,