He had framed his questions and submitted them to a consultation of shrewd party friends.

This one especially was the subject of anxious deliberation and serious disagreement.
Nearly a month before, Lincoln in a private letter accurately foreshadowed Douglas's course on this question.

"You shall have hard work to get him directly to the point whether a Territorial Legislature has or has not the power to exclude slavery.

But if you succeed in bringing him to it--though he will be compelled to say it possesses no such power--he will instantly take ground that slavery cannot actually exist in the Territories unless the people desire it, and so give it protection by Territorial legislation.

If this offends the South, he will let it offend them, as at all events he means to hold on to his chances in Illinois." There is a tradition that on the night preceding this Freeport debate Lincoln was catching a few hours' rest, at a railroad center named Mendota, to which place the converging trains brought after midnight a number of excited Republican leaders, on their way to attend the great meeting at the neighboring town of Freeport.