Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was born in Kentucky, grew up in Indiana, and settled in Illinois, where he became a lawyer, a Whig legislator, and a one-term Congressman (1847-1849); he joined the new Republican Party in 1856 and was elected the sixteenth President in 1860. Stephen A. Douglas (1813-1861) was born in Vermont, moved to Illinois as a young man, and rose quickly as a Democrat to the state supreme court, the House of Representatives, and in 1847 the Senate, where he chaired the Committee on Territories. Douglas wrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and broke with President Buchanan over the Lecompton Constitution in 1857-1858. He was the Northern Democratic candidate for President in 1860 and, after Lincoln's victory, rallied his followers to the Union before his death in June 1861.
“I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.”
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, First Joint Debate, Ottawa, Lincoln's reply (reading from his Peoria speech of 1854)
“In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail ; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.”
“Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution ?”
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Second Joint Debate, Freeport (August 27, 1858), Lincoln's opening speech, Question 2
“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.”
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates are the seven joint debates held between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, and Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the Democratic incumbent, during the 1858 contest for a United States Senate seat from Illinois. Senators were then chosen by the state legislature, so the two men were campaigning for legislative candidates of their parties.
