At the time the Constitution was adopted, Lincoln pointed out, "the plain...

At the time the Constitution was adopted, Lincoln pointed out, "the plain unmistakable spirit of that age, towards slavery, was hostility to the principle, and toleration, only by necessity," since slavery was already woven into the fabric of American society. Noting that neither the word "slave" nor "slavery" was ever mentioned in the Constitution, Lincoln claimed that the framers concealed it, "just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or a cancer, which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death; with the promise, nevertheless, that the cutting may begin at the end of a given time." As additional evidence of the framers' intent, Lincoln brought his audience even further back, to the moment when Virginia ceded its vast northwestern territory to the United States with the understanding that slavery would be forever prohibited from the new territory, thus creating a "happy home" for "teeming millions" of free people, with "no slave amongst them." In recent years, he said, slavery had seemed to be gradually on the wane until the fateful Nebraska law transformed it into "a sacred right," putting it "on the high road to extension and perpetuity"; giving it "a pat on its back," saying, " 'Go, and God speed you.' " Douglas

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