"Most of them [Southern Democrats] would probably say to us, 'Let us alone; do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery.' But we do let them alone—have never disturbed them—so that, after all, it is what we say which dissatisfies them. ...

I am also aware they have not as yet in terms demanded the overthrow of our free-State constitutions. Yet those constitutions declare the wrong of slavery with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the demand ... Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it as a legal right and a social blessing."

Abraham Lincoln's Speech at the Cooper Institute
New York, February 27, 1860

Lincoln's speech most directly challenged the idea that the Republican platform in the 1860s was determined to (1 point)

a
allow expansion of slavery into several key Northern states

b
create additional slave states in the territories to the west

c
directly interfere with the institution of slavery in the Southern states

d
support the rights of the slave states regardless of the outcomes