But while they expected the slave-trade would be abolished at
that time, they expected that the spread of slavery into the new
Territories should also be restricted. It is as easy to prove
that the framers of the Constitution of the United States
expected that slavery should be prohibited from extending into
the new Territories, as it is to prove that it was expected that
the slave-trade should be abolished. Both these things were
expected. One was no more expected than the other, and one was
no more a compromise of the Constitution than the other. There
was nothing said in the Constitution in regard to the spread of
slavery into the Territory. I grant that; but there was
something very important said about it by the same generation of
men in the adoption of the old Ordinance of 87, through the
influence of which you here in Ohio, our neighbors in Indiana,
we in Illinois, our neighbors in Michigan and Wisconsin, are
happy, prosperous, teeming millions of free men. That generation
of men, though not to the ful