Lincoln‐Douglas Debates

Lincoln‐Douglas Debates (1858).A fabled series of political duels, the Lincoln‐Douglas debates comprised seven joint appearances during the 1858 U.S. Senate contest in Illinois between the Democratic incumbent, Stephen A. Douglas, and his Republican challenger, Abraham Lincoln. The debates began at Ottawa on 21 August and concluded at Alton on 15 October. They aroused intense state and national interest because they involved the political future of Douglas, probably the nation's most influential Democrat, and because they concentrated on the intensifying sectional conflict over slavery. They are remembered in history for elevating Abraham Lincoln to national prominence.

Both candidates elaborated long‐held positions on the issues of slavery in the South, the extension of the institution westward, and race. Lincoln insisted that slavery was a moral wrong that should be placed on a course toward extinction. Although the Constitution obliged Americans to give each state plenary control over slavery within its jurisdiction, he said, citizens were equally obliged by moral principle to prevent slavery from extending its geographical reach. Douglas, refusing to take a position on the morality of slavery, declared that the Union and slavery were compatible institutions; whether a territory adopted slavery was a matter for its settlers to decide—the doctrine known as “popular sovereignty.” Lincoln retorted that Douglas's hidden object was to inculcate popular indifference to the injustice of slavery as part of a conspiracy to spread bondage not only throughout the territories but ultimately into the free states as well.

Douglas, in turn, asserted that his policy on slavery arose from his belief that the republic was a white man's government in which blacks were entitled only to those privileges that whites chose to extend to them. Lincoln, he alleged, was not only an abolitionist and a reckless inciter of sectional warfare, but also a proponent of racial equality. The power of this last charge was registered in Lincoln's tortured response that the equality he claimed for blacks was compatible with white supremacy and did not extend to the rights to vote, serve on juries, or marry whites.

In the election, the Democrats narrowly prevailed where it mattered: they held control of the Illinois legislature, which proceeded to return Douglas to the Senate. Although Lincoln lost the contest, his respectable showing against Douglas in the debates proved a major step toward a grander prize, the Republican party nomination for president in the fateful election of 1860.
See also Antislavery; Civil War: Causes; Kansas‐Nebraska Act.

Bibliography

Harry V. Jaffa , Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln‐Douglas Debates, 1959.
Don E. Fehrenbacher , Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850’s, 1962.

George B. Forgie