Abraham Lincoln said he had no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed, that he believed he had no lawful right to do so, and that he had no inclination to do so. Stephen Douglas answered that Lincoln had told his abolition friends the government could not endure permanently half slave and half free as their fathers made it, that it must become all free or all slave or else the Union could not exist, and he asked how Lincoln proposed to save the Union unless it was by compelling the states all to be free.