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Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Lincoln-Douglas Debates
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Series of seven debates between Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln and Democratic Sen. Stephen A. Douglas in the 1858 Illinois senatorial campaign. They focused on slavery and its extension into the western territories. Lincoln criticized Douglas for his support of popular sovereignty and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, while Douglas accused Lincoln of advocating racial equality and disruption of the Union. Douglas won reelection, but Lincoln's antislavery position and oratorical brilliance made him a national figure in the young Republican Party.

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US History Encyclopedia: Lincoln-Douglas Debates
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Lincoln-Douglas Debates, seven joint debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas during the 1858 senatorial election campaign in Illinois. The debates marked the culmination of a political rivalry that had its origin twenty-five years before, when both were aspiring politicians in the Illinois legislature. Their careers had followed divergent tracks in the political culture of nineteenth-century America—Lincoln, the Henry Clay Whig espousing a broad program of national centralization and authority and distrustful of the new mass democracy, and Douglas, the Andrew Jackson Democrat standing for local self-government and states' rights, with an abiding faith in the popular will. By 1858, both had become deeply involved in the sectional conflict between the slave and free states over the status of slavery in the creation of western territories and the admission of new states. Douglas, seeking reelection to a third term in the U.S. Senate, had fifteen years of national experience and notoriety behind him and was widely known for his role in the passage of the Compromise of 1850 and his authorship of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Lincoln, a spokesman for the new antislavery Republican Party, whose experience save for one term in the House of Representatives had been limited to several terms in the Illinois legislature, was virtually unknown outside the boundaries of the state.

From the beginning, the campaign assumed national significance. Douglas, with Republican support, was at that moment leading the opposition in Congress to the southern effort to admit Kansas as a slave state under the fraudulent Lecompton Constitution. To the southern slave power and its ally in the White House, President James Buchanan, Douglas's defeat for reelection was essential to the extension of slavery, a cause recently given constitutional sanction by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision. At the same time, influential Republican leaders in the eastern states regarded Douglas's reelection as necessary to the success of their effort to keep slavery from expanding into new territories. Because the stakes were high, the contest between Douglas and Lincoln attracted widespread attention.

Lincoln opened the campaign in Springfield, the state capital, on 16 June 1858, when he delivered what has been hailed as the most important statement of his career, the "House Divided" speech. It was a strident call for Republican unity against what he described as a slave power conspiracy, of which Douglas was the principal conspirator, to extend slavery throughout the territories and free states of the Union. Moving away from his earlier conservative position, opposing the extension of slavery while tolerating it in the states where it already existed, Lincoln assumed a more radical stance. The conflict between freedom and slavery, he argued, was irrepressible and incapable of compromise, and would not cease until slavery should be placed in the course of "ultimate extinction," an abolitionist argument in everything but name. "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

Douglas returned to Illinois from his Senate seat in Washington, where he had been leading the fight against the Lecompton Constitution, and on 9 July, in Chicago, he opened his campaign for reelection. In defense of his role in the struggle to keep slavery out of Kansas, Douglas cited the "great principle of self-government" upon which he had based his political beliefs, "the right of the people in each State and Territory to decide for themselves their domestic institutions" (including slavery), or what he called popular sovereignty.

Lincoln's House Divided speech and Douglas's Chicago speech provided the themes and arguments for the debates that followed. Seven joint debates were agreed upon, one in each of the state's congressional districts except the two in which the candidates had already spoken. Beginning in late August and extending to the middle of October, debates were scheduled in Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, and Alton. Thousands of spectators flocked to the debate sites to hear the candidates, railroads offered special excursion tickets, and the pageantry of election campaigns was provided by parades, brass bands, and glee clubs. On the platforms, Lincoln and Douglas offered a striking contrast, Lincoln standing six feet four inches tall, with patient humility, serious and persuasive, and Douglas a foot shorter at five feet four inches, animated, bold, and defiant. Rarely, if ever, had two candidates for the position of U.S. senator taken their arguments directly to the people, for senators were elected by the state legislatures until 1913.

The debates elicited little that was new and unexpected. Each spent considerable time in accusations and denials, typical of nineteenth-century stump speaking, their arguments often ambiguous and inconsistent. Lincoln repeated his conspiracy charge against Douglas, while at the same time dramatizing the split between Douglas and the South on the Lecompton issue. When he pointed out the inconsistency of Douglas's popular sovereignty with the Dred Scott decision, Douglas responded with what became known as the Freeport Doctrine, the right of a territory to exclude slavery by "unfriendly legislation" regardless of what the Supreme Court might decide. When Douglas charged Lincoln with harboring views of racial equality, Lincoln replied with emphatic denials. For Lincoln, slavery was a moral, social, and political evil, a position he reinforced with an appeal to the equality clause of the Declaration of Independence. The contest was but part of the eternal struggle between right and wrong that would not cease until the evil—slavery—was restricted and placed on the path toward extinction. Douglas found a dangerous radicalism in Lincoln's stand that would lead to disunion and a disastrous sectional war. Only by treating slavery as a matter of public policy, to be decided by the right of every community to decide the question for itself, could the Union be saved.

On 2 November 1858, Illinois voters gave the Democrats a legislative majority, which in turn elected Douglas to a third term in the Senate. Lincoln, although defeated, won recognition throughout the North that by 1860 placed him on the path to the presidency. Douglas, in winning reelection, alienated the South and weakened his power in the Senate. The debates—the specter of Lincoln's "ultimate extinction" of slavery and Douglas's threat to slavery's expansion in the territories—intensified the conflict between the slaveholding states and the free states of the North, placing the cherished Union itself in jeopardy. Douglas's worst fears were about to be realized.

Bibliography

Angle, Paul M., ed. Created Equal: The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.

Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

Johannsen, Robert W. Stephen A. Douglas. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

History Dictionary: Lincoln-Douglas debates
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A series of debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1858, when both were campaigning for election to the United States Senate from Illinois. Much of the debating concerned slavery and its extension into territories such as Kansas. The debates transformed Lincoln into a national figure and led to his election to the presidency in 1860.

Wikipedia: Lincoln–Douglas debates of 1858
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Lincoln in New York City the day of his famous Cooper Union speech, February 27, 1860 by Mathew Brady
Stephen A. Douglas

The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858 were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, and the incumbent Stephen A. Douglas, a Democrat, for an Illinois seat in the United States Senate. At the time, U.S. Senators were elected by state legislatures; thus Lincoln and Douglas were campaigning for their respective parties to win control of the Illinois legislature. The debates previewed the issues that Lincoln would face in the 1860 presidential election. The main issue discussed in all seven debates was slavery.

In agreeing to the debates, Lincoln and Douglas wanted to hold one debate in each of the nine congressional districts in Illinois. Because both had already spoken in two — Springfield and Chicago — within a day of each other, they decided that their "joint appearances" would be held only in the remaining seven districts.

The debates were held in seven towns in the state of Illinois: Ottawa on August 21, Freeport on August 27, Jonesboro on September 15, Charleston on September 18, Galesburg on October 7, Quincy on October 13, and Alton on October 15.

The debates in Freeport, Quincy and Alton drew especially large numbers of people from neighboring states, as the issue of slavery was of monumental importance to citizens across the nation.[1][2] Newspaper coverage of the debates was intense. Major papers from Chicago sent stenographers to create complete texts of each debate, which newspapers across the United States reprinted in full, with some partisan edits. Newspapers that supported Douglas edited his speeches to remove any errors made by the stenographers and to correct grammatical errors, while they left Lincoln's speeches in the rough form in which they had been transcribed. In the same way, Republican papers edited Lincoln's speeches, but left the Douglas texts as reported.

After losing the election for Senator in Illinois, Lincoln edited the texts of all the debates and had them published in a book. The widespread coverage of the original debates and the subsequent popularity of the book led eventually to Lincoln's nomination for President of the United States by the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago.

The format for each debate was: one candidate spoke for 60 minutes, then the other candidate spoke for 90 minutes, and then the first candidate was allowed a 30-minute "rejoinder." The candidates alternated speaking first. As the incumbent, Douglas spoke first in four of the debates.

Contents

Background

Events leading to
the US Civil War
Northwest Ordinance
Missouri Compromise
Tariff of 1828
Nullification Crisis
Nat Turner's slave rebellion
The Amistad
Mexican–American War
Wilmot Proviso
Manifest Destiny
Compromise of 1850
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Bleeding Kansas
Dred Scott v. Sandford
Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry
Election of 1860
Secession of Southern States
Battle of Fort Sumter
Underground railroad
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Before the debates, Lincoln said that Douglas was encouraging fears of amalgamation of the races with enough success to drive thousands of people away from the Republican Party.[3] Douglas tried to convince, especially the Democrats, that Lincoln was an abolitionist for saying that the American Declaration of Independence applied to blacks as well as whites. Lincoln called a self-evident truth "the electric cord ... that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together."

Lincoln argued in his House Divided Speech that Douglas was part of a conspiracy to nationalize slavery. Lincoln said that ending the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery in Kansas and Nebraska was the first step in this direction, and that the Dred Scott decision was another step in the direction of spreading slavery into Northern territories. Lincoln expressed the fear that the next Dred Scott decision would make Illinois a slave state.[4]

Both Lincoln and Douglas had opposition. Although Lincoln was a former Whig, the prominent former Whig Judge Theophilus Lyle Dickey said that Lincoln was too closely tied to the abolitionists, and supported Douglas. But Democratic President James Buchanan opposed Douglas for defeating the Lecompton Constitution, and set up a rival National Democratic party that drew votes away from him.[5]

Lincoln and Douglas each exaggerated the extremism of the other. Lincoln was more moderate than the abolitionists, and Douglas defeated a southern attempt to use vote fraud to have Kansas admitted as a slave state.

The debates

The main theme of the debates was slavery, especially the issue of slavery's expansion into the territories. It was Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act that repealed the Missouri Compromise's ban on slavery in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and replaced it with the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which meant that the people of a territory could decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. Lincoln said that popular sovereignty would nationalize and perpetuate slavery.[6] Douglas argued that both Whigs and Democrats believed in popular sovereignty and that the Compromise of 1850 was an example of this.[7] Lincoln said that the national policy was to limit the spread of slavery, and mentioned (both at Jonesboro[8] and later in his Cooper Union Address) the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which banned slavery from a large part of the modern-day Midwest, as an example of this policy.[9] The Compromise of 1850 allowed the territories of Utah and New Mexico to decide for or against slavery, but it also allowed the admission of California as a free state, reduced the size of the slave state of Texas by adjusting the boundary, and ended the slave trade (but not slavery itself) in the District of Columbia. In return, the South got a stronger fugitive slave law than the version mentioned in the Constitution.[10] Whereas Douglas said that the Compromise of 1850 replaced the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territory north and west of the state of Missouri, Lincoln said that this was false,[11] and that Popular Sovereignty and the Dred Scott decision were a departure from the policies of the past that would nationalize slavery.[12][13]

There were partisan remarks, such as Douglas' accusations that members of the "Black Republican" party[14], such as Lincoln, were abolitionists.[15] Douglas cited as proof Lincoln's House Divided Speech[16] in which he said, " I believe this government cannot endure permanently half Slave and half Free." As Douglas said, (audience response in parentheses)

“ [U]niformity in the local laws and institutions of the different States is neither possible or desirable. If uniformity had been adopted when the Government was established, it must inevitably have been the uniformity of slavery everywhere, or else the uniformity of negro citizenship and negro equality everywhere. ...

I ask you, are you in favor of conferring upon the negro the rights and privileges of citizenship? ("No, no.") Do you desire to strike out of our State Constitution that clause which keeps slaves and free negroes out of the State, and allow the free negroes to flow in, ("never,") and cover your prairies with black settlements? Do you desire to turn this beautiful State into a free negro colony, ("no, no,") in order that when Missouri abolishes slavery she can send one hundred thousand emancipated slaves into Illinois, to become citizens and voters, on an equality with yourselves? ("Never," "no.") If you desire negro citizenship, if you desire to allow them to come into the State and settle with the white man, if you desire them to vote on an equality with yourselves, and to make them eligible to office, to serve on juries, and to adjudge your rights, then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican party, who are in favor of the citizenship of the negro. ("Never, never.") For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form. (Cheers.) I believe this Government was made on the white basis. ("Good.") I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men, men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians, and other inferior races. ("Good for you." "Douglas forever.")[17]

Mr. Lincoln, following the example and lead of all the little Abolition orators, who go around and lecture in the basements of schools and churches, reads from the Declaration of Independence, that all men were created equal, and then asks, how can you deprive a negro of that equality which God and the Declaration of Independence awards to him? ... Now, I hold that Illinois had a right to abolish and prohibit slavery as she did, and I hold that Kentucky has the same right to continue and protect slavery that Illinois had to abolish it. I hold that New York had as much right to abolish slavery as Virginia has to continue it, and that each and every State of this Union is a sovereign power, with the right to do as it pleases upon this question of slavery, and upon all its domestic institutions. ... And why can we not adhere to the great principle of self-government, upon which our institutions were originally based. ("We can.") I believe that this new doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln and his party will dissolve the Union if it succeeds. They are trying to array all the Northern States in one body against the South, to excite a sectional war between the free States and the slave States, in order that the one or the other may be driven to the wall.[17]

 ”

Douglas also charged Lincoln with opposing the Dred Scott decision because "it deprives the negro of the rights and privileges of citizenship." Lincoln responded that "the next Dred Scott decision" could allow slavery to spread into free states.[18] Douglas accused Lincoln of wanting to overthrow state laws that excluded blacks from states such as Illinois, which were popular with the northern Democrats. Lincoln did not argue for complete social equality. However, he did say Douglas ignored the basic humanity of blacks, and that slaves did have an equal right to liberty. As Lincoln said,

“ I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.[19] ”

As Lincoln said,

“ This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty-criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.[19] ”

Lincoln said he himself didn't know how emancipation should happen. He believed in colonization, but admitted that this was impractical. Without colonization he said that it would be wrong for emancipated slaves to be treated as "underlings," but that there was a large opposition to social and political equality, and that "a universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded."[19] Lincoln said that Douglas' public indifference to slavery would result in slavery expansion because it would mold public sentiment to accept slavery. As Lincoln said,

“ Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.[19] ”

Lincoln said Douglas "cares not whether slavery is voted down or voted up,"[19] and that, in the words of Henry Clay, he would "blow out the moral lights around us" and eradicate the love of liberty.

At the debate at Freeport[20] Lincoln forced Douglas to choose between two options, either of which would damage Douglas' popularity and chances of getting reelected. Lincoln asked Douglas to reconcile popular sovereignty with the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision. Douglas responded that the people of a territory could keep slavery out even though the Supreme Court said that the federal government had no authority to exclude slavery, simply by refusing to pass a slave code and other legislation needed to protect slavery.[21] Douglas alienated Southerners with this Freeport Doctrine, which damaged his chances of winning the Presidency in 1860. As a result, Southern politicians would use their demand for a slave code for territories such as Kansas to drive a wedge between the Northern and Southern wings of the Democratic Party.[22] In splitting what was the majority political party in 1858 (the Democratic Party), Southerners guaranteed the election of Lincoln, the nominee of the newly formed Republican Party, in 1860.

Douglas' efforts to gain support in all sections of the country through popular sovereignty failed. By allowing slavery where the majority wanted it, he lost the support of Republicans led by Lincoln who thought Douglas was unprincipled. By defeating a pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution and advocating a Freeport Doctrine to stop slavery in Kansas where the majority were anti-slavery, he lost the support of the South.

Before the debate at Charleston, Democrats held up a banner that read "Negro equality" with a picture of a white man, a negro woman and a mulatto child.[23] At this debate Lincoln went further than before in denying the charge that he was an abolitionist, saying that:

“ I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone.[24] ”

While denying abolitionist tendencies was effective politics, the African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass remarked on Lincoln's "entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race."[25] In spite of Lincoln's denial of abolitionist tendencies, Stephen Douglas charged Lincoln with having an ally in Frederick Douglass in preaching "abolition doctrines." Stephen Douglas said that "the negro" Frederick Douglass told "all the friends of negro equality and negro citizenship to rally as one man around Abraham Lincoln." Stephen Douglas also charged Lincoln with a lack of consistency when speaking on the issue of racial equality,[26] and cited Lincoln's previous statements that the declaration that all men are created equal applies to blacks as well as whites.

Lincoln said that slavery expansion endangered the Union, and mentioned the controversies caused by it in Missouri in 1820, in the territories conquered from Mexico that led to the Compromise of 1850, and again with the Bleeding Kansas controversy over slavery.[27] Lincoln said that the crisis would be reached and passed when slavery was put "in the course of ultimate extinction."

At Galesburg[28] Douglas sought again to prove that Lincoln was an abolitionist with the following quotes from Lincoln:

“ I should like to know, if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why may not another man say it does not mean another man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get this statute book in which we find it and tear it out. ”
“ Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man-this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position, discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal. ”

At Alton Lincoln tried to reconcile his statements on equality. He said that the authors of the Declaration of Independence:

“ intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal — equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ... They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all: constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, every where.[29] ”

Lincoln contrasted his support for the Declaration with opposing statements made by the Southern politician John C. Calhoun and Senator John Pettit of Indiana, who called the Declaration "a self-evident lie." Lincoln said that Chief Justice Roger Taney (in his Dred Scott decision) and Stephen Douglas were opposing Thomas Jefferson's self-evident truth, dehumanizing blacks and preparing the public mind to think of them as only property. Lincoln thought slavery had to be treated as a wrong, and kept from growing. As Lincoln said:

“ That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles-right and wrong-throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings.[29] ”

Lincoln used a number of colorful phrases in the debates, such as when he said that one argument by Douglas made a horse chestnut into a chestnut horse, and compared an evasion by Douglas to the sepia cloud from a cuttlefish. Lincoln said that Douglas' Freeport Doctrine was a do-nothing sovereignty that was "as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death."[30]

Results

In the state election, the Democrats won a narrow majority of seats in the Illinois General Assembly, despite getting slightly less than half the votes. The legislature then re-elected Douglas. However, the widespread media coverage of the debates greatly raised Lincoln's national profile, making him a viable candidate for nomination as the Republican candidate in the upcoming 1860 presidential election. He would go on to secure both the nomination and the presidency, besting Douglas (as the Northern Democratic candidate), among others, in the process.

The Lincoln–Douglas debate format that is used in high school and college competition today is named after this series of debates. Modern presidential debates trace their roots to the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, though the format today is remarkably different from the original.

Notes

  1. ^ Nevins, Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847–1852, page 163 — "As the fifties wore on, an exhaustive, exacerbating and essentially futile conflict over slavery raged to the exclusion of nearly all other topics."
  2. ^ Abraham Lincoln, Speech at New Haven, Conn., March 6, 1860 — "This question of Slavery was more important than any other; indeed, so much more important has it become that no other national question can even get a hearing just at present."
  3. ^ Abraham Lincoln, Notes for Speech at Chicago, February 28, 1857
  4. ^ David Herbert Donald, Lincoln, pages 206–210
  5. ^ David Herbert Donald, Lincoln, pages 212–213
  6. ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 - Abraham Lincoln said, "when the Judge reminds me that I have often said to him that the institution of slavery has existed for eighty years in some States, and yet it does not exist in some others, I agree to the fact, and I account for it by looking at the position in which our fathers originally placed it-restricting it from the new Territories where it had not gone, and legislating to cut off its source by the abrogation of the slave-trade thus putting the seal of legislation against its spread. The public mind did rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. [Cries of "Yes, yes,"] But lately, I think-and in this I charge nothing on the Judge's motives-lately, I think, that he, and those acting with him, have placed that institution on a new basis, which looks to the perpetuity and nationalization of slavery. [Loud cheers.] And while it is placed upon this new basis, I say, and I have said, that I believe we shall not have peace upon the question until the opponents of slavery arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or, on the other hand, that its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South."
  7. ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 - Stephen Douglas said, "During the session of Congress of 1853-'54, I introduced into the Senate of the United States a bill to organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska on that principle which had been adopted in the compromise measures of 1850, approved by the Whig party and the Democratic party in Illinois in 1851, and endorsed by the Whig party and the Democratic party in national convention in 1852. In order that there might be no misunderstanding in relation to the principle involved in the Kansas and Nebraska bill, I put forth the true intent and meaning of the act in these words: "It is the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the federal constitution."
  8. ^ Third Debate: Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858 - Lincoln mentioned that Douglas' fellow Democrats had said that the policy of the framers of the Constitution was to prevent the expansion of slavery beginning with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Lincoln used the following to prove the point: "So again, in that same race of 1850, there was a Congressional Convention assembled at Joliet, and it nominated R. S. Molony for Congress, and unanimously adopted the following resolution: 'Resolved, That we are uncompromisingly opposed to the extension of slavery; and while we would not make such opposition a ground of interference with the interests of the States where it exists, yet we moderately but firmly insist that it is the duty of Congress to oppose its extension into Territory now free, by all means compatible with the obligations of the Constitution, and drrrrrrrrr with good faith to our sister States; that these principles were recognized by the Ordinance of 1787, which received the sanction of Thomas Jefferson, who is acknowledged by all to be the great oracle and expounder of our faith.'"
  9. ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 - Abraham Lincoln advocated returning to the policy of preventing the expansion of slavery, putting it in "the position in which our fathers originally placed it-restricting it from the new Territories where it had not gone." Lincoln expanded on this point especially in hisCooper Union Address, in which he argued that most of the framers of the Constitution voted to prevent slavery expansion by means of the Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise.
  10. ^ Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: Fruits of Manifest Destiny 1847-1852, pages 219-345
  11. ^ Third Debate: Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858 - Lincoln said, "When that Compromise was made it did not repeal the old Missouri Compromise. It left a region of United States territory half as large as the present territory of the United States, north of the line of 36 degrees 30 minutes, in which slavery was prohibited by act of Congress. This compromise did not repeal that one. It did not affect or propose to repeal it. But at last it became Judge Douglas's duty, as he thought (and I find no fault with him), as Chairman of the Committee on Territories, to bring in a bill for the organization of a Territorial Government-first of one, then of two Territories north of that line. When he did so it ended in his inserting a provision substantially repealing the Missouri Compromise. That was because the Compromise of 1850 had not repealed it. And now I ask why he could not have let that compromise alone? "
  12. ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 - Lincoln said, "Then what is necessary for the nationalization of slavery? It is simply the next Dred Scott decision. It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided that under the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial Legislature can do it."
  13. ^ Third Debate: Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858 - Lincoln said, "I say when this Government was first established, it was the policy of its founders to prohibit the spread of slavery into the new Territories of the United States, where it had not existed. But Judge Douglas and his friends have broken up that policy, and placed it upon a new basis by which it is to become national and perpetual. All I have asked or desired any where is that it should be placed back again upon the basis that the fathers of our Government originally placed it upon. I have no doubt that it would become extinct, for all time to come, if we but readopted the policy of the fathers by restricting it to the limits it has already covered-restricting it from the new Territories." Lincoln added that Douglas "has himself been chiefly instrumental in changing the policy of the fathers."
  14. ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 - Stephen Douglas read articles from one Republican Party group that opposed slavery expansion and the fugitive slave law and said, "Now, gentlemen, your Black Republicans have cheered every one of those propositions, ("good and cheers") and yet I venture to say that you cannot get Mr. Lincoln to come out and say that he is now in favor of each one of them. (Laughter and applause. "Hit him again.)"
  15. ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 - Stephen Douglas said, "Lincoln went to work to abolitionize the Old Whig party all over the State, pretending that he was then as good a Whig as ever; (laughter) and Trumbull went to work in his part of the State preaching Abolitionism in its milder and lighter form, and trying to abolitionize the Democratic party, and bring old Democrats handcuffed and bound hand and foot into the Abolition camp. ("Good," "hurrah for Douglas," and cheers.) In pursuance of the arrangement, the parties met at Springfield in October, 1854, and proclaimed their new platform. Lincoln was to bring into the Abolition camp the old line Whigs, and transfer them over to Giddings, Chase, Fred Douglass, and Parson Lovejoy, who were ready to receive them and christen them in their new faith. (Laughter and cheers.) They laid down on that occasion a platform for their new Republican party, which was to be thus constructed."
  16. ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 - Stephen Douglas said the following about Lincoln's House Divided Speech - Lincoln now takes his stand and proclaims his Abolition doctrines. Let me read a part of them. In his speech at Springfield to the Convention, which nominated him for the Senate, he said: "In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently half Slave and half Free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved-I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction: or its advocates will push it forward till it shall became alike lawful in all the States-old as well as new, North as well as South."
  17. ^ a b First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, Douglas quote, August 21, 1858
  18. ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 - Abraham Lincoln said, "Then what is necessary for the nationalization of slavery? It is simply the next Dred Scott decision. It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided that under the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial Legislature can do it. When that is decided and acquiesced in, the whole thing is done."
  19. ^ a b c d e Debate at Ottawa, Illinois, Lincoln quote, August 21, 1858
  20. ^ Debate at Freeport, Illinois, August 27, 1858
  21. ^ Second Debate: Freeport, Illinois, August 27, 1858 - Douglas' stated his Freeport Doctrine as follows - "It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations. (Right, right.) Those police regulations can only be established by the local legislature, and if the people are opposed to slavery they will elect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slave Territory or a free Territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska bill."
  22. ^ James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, page 195
  23. ^ David Herbert Donald, Lincoln, pages 220
  24. ^ Debate at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858
  25. ^ David Herbert Donald, Lincoln, page 221
  26. ^ Charleston debate — Douglas said, "Their principles in the north are jet-black, in the center they are in color a decent mulatto, and in lower Egypt they are almost white. Why, I admired many of the white sentiments contained in Lincoln's speech at Jonesboro, and could not help but contrast them with the speeches of the same distinguished orator made in the northern part of the State."
  27. ^ Third Debate: Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858 - Lincoln said, "It is worth while to observe that we have generally had comparative peace upon the slavery question, and that there has been no cause for alarm until it was excited by the effort to spread it into new territory. Whenever it has been limited to its present bounds, and there has been no effort to spread it, there has been peace. All the trouble and convulsion has proceeded from efforts to spread it over more territory. It was thus at the date of the Missouri Compromise. It was so again with the annexation of Texas; so with the territory acquired by the Mexican war, and it is so now. Whenever there has been an effort to spread it there has been agitation and resistance. Now, I appeal to this audience (very few of whom are my political friends), as national men, whether we have reason to expect that the agitation in regard to this subject will cease while the causes that tend to reproduce agitation are actively at work? Will not the same cause that produced agitation in 1820, when the Missouri Compromise was formed-that which produced the agitation upon the annexation of Texas, and at other times-work out the same results always?"
  28. ^ Debate at Galesburg, Illinois, October 7, 1858 — These quotes were originally from a speech made by Lincoln at Chicago, July 10, 1858
  29. ^ a b Debate at Alton, Illinois, October 15, 1858
  30. ^ Debate at Quincy, Illinois, October 13, 1858

Other resources

  • On January 6, 2009, BBC Audiobooks America, published the first complete recording of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, starring actors David Strathairn as Abraham Lincoln and Richard Dreyfuss as Stephen Douglas[1] with an introduction by Allen C. Guelzo, Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College. The text of the recording was provided courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Association as presented in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.
  • Jaffa, Harry V. (2009). Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 50th Anniversary Edition. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226391182. 

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