The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Summary

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. They met at Ottawa (August 21), Freeport (August 27), Jonesboro (September 15), Charleston (September 18), Galesburg (October 7), Quincy (October 13), and Alton (October 15). Each debate ran three hours: the opening speaker had an hour, the other replied for an hour and a half, and the first closed with a half-hour rejoinder. Douglas opened four times and Lincoln three. The single great subject was slavery in the federal territories. Douglas defended popular sovereignty, the principle of his Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, that the people of each territory and state should decide for themselves whether to allow slavery, and he asked why the Union could not continue half slave and half free as the founders had left it. He charged that Lincoln's House Divided speech of June 1858 invited sectional war and that Lincoln's party meant to make the races politically equal. Lincoln answered that the founders had placed slavery in the course of ultimate extinction by restricting its spread, that the Dred Scott decision of 1857 and the Nebraska policy had moved it toward permanence and nationalization, and that the real difference between the parties was whether slavery was treated as a wrong. Both men disclaimed political and social equality between the races, as Illinois voters of the time expected. At Freeport Lincoln asked whether the people of a territory could lawfully exclude slavery before statehood; Douglas replied that, whatever the Supreme Court held, slavery could not survive without local police regulations, an answer that kept him favor in Illinois but cost him support among Southern Democrats. Later debates returned to the Dred Scott case, the Lecompton Constitution, charges of a conspiracy to spread slavery, and the meaning of the Declaration of Independence. At Alton Lincoln called the issue the eternal struggle between right and wrong, and Douglas closed by insisting on self-government and the Constitution as the fathers made it. Republican legislative candidates won more votes statewide, but the Democrats kept the legislature, which returned Douglas to the Senate in January 1859. Lincoln collected the newspaper reports, and the debates were published at Columbus, Ohio, in 1860, the year both men ran for President. The library text gives all seven debates in that edition.

Plot or Argument

• Ottawa: the House Divided speech on trial

  Douglas opens by reading Republican resolutions and Lincoln's Springfield words about a house divided, and asks why the Union cannot endure as the fathers made it. Lincoln reads at length from his 1854 Peoria speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, defends his view that the founders placed slavery on the road to extinction, and argues that public sentiment, shaped by men like Douglas, matters more than statutes and decisions.

• Freeport: the four questions

  Lincoln answers seven questions Douglas had put at Ottawa and asks four of his own, the second being whether a territory may lawfully exclude slavery before forming a state constitution. Douglas replies that slavery cannot exist without local police regulations, so a territorial legislature may keep it out by unfriendly legislation whatever the Supreme Court decides, and he presses Lincoln on the Republican platforms of northern Illinois.

• Jonesboro: southern Illinois

  In the far south of the state Douglas argues that the government was made by white men for white men and that each state may settle its own institutions. Lincoln reviews the Republican and Democratic records and adds a fifth question: whether Douglas, as a member of Congress, would vote for legislation protecting slave property in a territory if its slaveholding settlers demanded it.

• Charleston: equality and the Trumbull charge

  Lincoln opens by stating that he does not favor political and social equality of the races, then devotes his time to Senator Lyman Trumbull's charge that Douglas had once helped strip a clause for a popular vote from the Toombs bill for Kansas. Douglas answers the charge at length and accuses Lincoln of tailoring his views to each region of the state.

• Galesburg: the Declaration of Independence

  Before a crowd at Knox College, Douglas says the signers of the Declaration did not mean to include African Americans, and Lincoln replies that the Declaration's principle of equal natural rights was meant for all men and that Douglas's indifference to slavery would blow out the moral lights around us. Douglas restates his support for the Constitution, the laws, and the decisions of the courts.

• Quincy: right and wrong as the dividing line

  Lincoln states that Republicans regard slavery as a moral, social, and political wrong and would treat it as such while respecting its constitutional protection in the states. Douglas charges Lincoln with seeking war between the sections, and Lincoln's rejoinder turns Douglas's question back on him: why could the fathers' policy of restriction not be left where they placed it?

• Alton: the last debate

  Douglas reviews the campaign, defends his break with the Buchanan administration over Lecompton, and asserts that the Union can endure forever divided into free and slave states. Lincoln invokes Henry Clay, explains the Republican policy of restriction, and calls the issue the struggle between the common right of humanity and the divine right of kings; Douglas closes on popular self-government.

Lessons

• Popular sovereignty and the question of a moral limit

  Douglas held that the people of each territory should settle slavery for themselves, a principle he presented as the heart of self-government and the surest way to keep national politics from tearing the country apart. Lincoln answered that a people may decide indifferent questions as they please but cannot be said to have a right to do a wrong. The debates show how a dispute about procedure, who decides, rested on a prior dispute about substance, what is being decided.

  • Why does Douglas think that letting each territory decide is the best way to preserve the Union?
  • How does Lincoln argue that the claim not to care whether slavery is voted up or down already contains a moral judgment?
  • Are there questions a self-governing majority should never be allowed to settle by vote, and how would one decide which they are?

• Asking the question that divides an opponent's coalition

  Lincoln's second question at Freeport forced Douglas to reconcile the Dred Scott decision, which denied Congress power to exclude slavery from a territory, with popular sovereignty. Douglas's answer satisfied many Illinois Democrats but alarmed Southern Democrats. The exchange shows how a carefully framed question can expose a strain between two commitments an opponent holds at once.

  • What two principles was Douglas trying to hold together when he answered the Freeport question?
  • Why might Lincoln have been willing to let Douglas win the Senate seat in 1858 if the answer weakened Douglas nationally?
  • Is it fair debating to ask a question chiefly to divide an opponent's supporters?

• The founders as authorities on both sides

  Both candidates appealed constantly to the fathers. Douglas pointed to a Union that had existed for seventy years half slave and half free; Lincoln pointed to the Northwest Ordinance, the closing of the African slave trade, and the founders' expectation that slavery would end. The debates show that an appeal to tradition requires an account of what the tradition actually intended.

  • Which actions of the founding generation does Lincoln cite, and which does Douglas cite?
  • How does Lincoln's rejoinder at Quincy turn Douglas's phrase about the fathers back on him?
  • When two sides claim the same founders, what kind of evidence should settle the dispute?

• Public sentiment and the office of the speaker

  At Ottawa Lincoln argued that in a self-governing community the person who shapes public opinion does more than the legislator or the judge, because opinion makes statutes and decisions possible to enforce. The debates themselves, attended by thousands and printed in full in the newspapers, were an attempt by both men to form that opinion.

  • Why does Lincoln say that Douglas's influence on public sentiment is more dangerous than any law he might pass?
  • How did the three-hour format and the newspaper reports shape what each man could say?
  • What responsibilities does a public speaker bear if public sentiment is as powerful as Lincoln claims?

Context

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise line and left slavery in the new territories to the settlers, a policy that led to violence in Kansas and to the founding of the Republican Party. In March 1857 the Supreme Court, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, held through Chief Justice Roger B. Taney that Congress could not exclude slavery from a territory and that people of African descent were not citizens of the United States. Later that year Douglas broke with President James Buchanan over the proslavery Lecompton Constitution for Kansas, arguing that it had not been fairly submitted to the voters, and some Eastern Republicans briefly favored him. Illinois Republicans instead named Lincoln, who opened his campaign on June 16, 1858, with the House Divided speech.

Composition

Lincoln proposed a series of joint debates in July 1858, and Douglas agreed to seven, one in each congressional district where they had not already spoken. Shorthand reporters for the Chicago Press and Tribune (Republican) and the Chicago Times (Democratic) took down the speeches, and each party accused the other's paper of mangling its opponent. Lincoln kept a scrapbook of the reports, using the Press and Tribune for his own speeches and the Times for Douglas's, and this became the basis of the 1860 edition published by Follett, Foster and Company at Columbus, Ohio. The library text is an OCR transcription of that edition, with page numbers and running heads removed; the book's preliminary speeches and appendix are not included.

Reception

Crowds of up to fifteen or twenty thousand attended, and the speeches were reprinted across the country. Douglas kept his seat when the new legislature voted in January 1859, but his Freeport answer deepened the division among Democrats that split the party in 1860. The 1860 book circulated widely during the presidential campaign and helped make Lincoln known beyond Illinois. The debates have since become the standard American example of sustained public argument, and a format of competitive values debate in schools bears their name.

Comparisons

• house-divided-speech

  Douglas opened the first debate by reading the House Divided speech's central paragraph, and much of the campaign turned on whether its prediction that the Union would become all one thing or all the other was a forecast or a program.

• webster-second-reply-to-hayne

  Webster in 1830 answered a theory of state sovereignty by appeal to the people's Union; in 1858 Douglas made self-government by states and territories the guarantee of the Union, and Lincoln asked what the Union was for.

• compromise-of-1850-speeches

  Douglas presented the measures of 1850, which he had steered through the Senate, as the first enactment of popular sovereignty; Lincoln claimed Henry Clay, author of the compromise resolutions, as his own model of a statesman.

• gettysburg-address

  Lincoln's argument at Galesburg and Alton that the Declaration's equality was meant as a standard for all men becomes, five years later, the proposition to which he says the nation was dedicated.

• uncle-toms-cabin

  Stowe's novel of 1852 had shaped Northern public sentiment about the Fugitive Slave Act and slavery itself, the very force Lincoln said at Ottawa mattered more than statutes or decisions.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The opening of the Ottawa debate, where Douglas reads the House Divided paragraph aloud and makes it the charge against Lincoln for the rest of the campaign.
• Lincoln's four questions at Freeport and Douglas's answer about local police regulations.
• How often each man appeals to the fathers, to Henry Clay, and to the Declaration of Independence, and what he claims each authority meant.
• The interruptions from the crowd printed in brackets, which show the debates as outdoor events before partisan audiences.
• Lincoln's turn at Alton from the details of policy to the struggle between the common right of humanity and the divine right of kings.

Key terms and names

Popular sovereignty

Douglas's principle, written into the Kansas-Nebraska Act, that the settlers of a territory should decide for themselves whether to permit slavery.

Freeport Doctrine

Douglas's answer at Freeport that a territorial legislature could keep slavery out by refusing to pass the local laws needed to protect it, whatever the Supreme Court held.

Dred Scott decision

The Supreme Court's 1857 ruling that Congress could not exclude slavery from a territory; Lincoln argued it pointed toward a further ruling that no state could exclude it.

Lecompton Constitution

A proslavery constitution for Kansas that Douglas opposed in 1857-1858 because it had not been fairly submitted to the voters, breaking with President Buchanan.

Ultimate extinction

Lincoln's phrase for where he believed the founders had placed slavery by restricting its spread, and where he wished to place it again.

Joint debate

The agreed format of an hour for the opener, an hour and a half for the reply, and a half-hour rejoinder, with the opening alternating between the candidates.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What office were Lincoln and Douglas seeking in 1858, and why were they really campaigning for members of the Illinois legislature?
2. Comprehension What was Lincoln's second question at Freeport, and how did Douglas answer it?
3. Interpretation Why does Douglas keep returning to the House Divided speech, and how does Lincoln defend it at Ottawa and later?
4. Interpretation How does each candidate use the Dred Scott decision: as settled law to be obeyed, as a step in a design, or as both?
5. Interpretation What does Lincoln mean at Ottawa by saying that the one who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than the one who enacts statutes?
6. Interpretation At Alton Lincoln says the issue will outlast both speakers. What does he think that issue is, and how does Douglas describe the issue instead?
7. Big Question Can a nation hold together if its citizens disagree not only about policy but about whether a practice is right or wrong?
8. Big Question Should a statesman obey a court decision he believes mistaken while working to reverse it, as both men claimed to do in different ways?

Faith Connections

• Mark 3:24-25 (Scripture)

  Jesus' saying that a house divided against itself cannot stand supplied Lincoln's Springfield text; at Jonesboro and Charleston Douglas objected to applying the language of our Lord to the Union of free and slave states, and the debates turn partly on what the saying implies about a political community.

• Genesis 3:19 (Scripture)

  God's word to Adam, that he shall eat bread in the sweat of his face, lies behind Lincoln's repeated claim that every man has a right to eat the bread his own hand earns, and his Alton description of the opposing spirit as one that eats bread another has earned.

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 95, a. 2 (Great Conversation)

  Aquinas teaches that human law has the nature of law only insofar as it is derived from the natural law. Douglas located legitimacy in the people's decision; Lincoln insisted that a people cannot have a right to do wrong, a position close to the older tradition Aquinas states.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Douglas: self-government means that each people decides its own domestic institutions; the founders made a Union of free and slave states on that basis; therefore Congress should leave slavery to the territories and states, and agitation against it endangers the Union. Lincoln: the founders treated slavery as a wrong to be restricted and expected it to end; recent policy and the Dred Scott decision treat it as a matter of indifference and push it toward permanence; therefore the nation must return slavery to the course of ultimate extinction by forbidding its spread.

Rhetorical device: erotema (pointed question). At Freeport Lincoln puts the second interrogatory, asking whether the people of a territory can lawfully exclude slavery before forming a state constitution, a question built so that either answer would cost Douglas support with one wing of his party.

Debate: Resolved: that popular sovereignty in the territories, as Douglas defined it, was the course most consistent with self-government and the preservation of the Union in 1858.

Memory Work

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.

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.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Lincoln said the real issue between the parties was whether slavery was treated as a wrong; Douglas said it was whether the people of each state and territory would govern themselves. Using at least three of the seven debates, explain each man's account of the issue and assess which description better fits the questions actually argued.

Comparison with House Divided Speech: Compare the House Divided speech with Lincoln's defense of it at Ottawa and Alton. What did Lincoln clarify, qualify, or repeat once Douglas had made the speech the center of the campaign?

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Reenact the Freeport exchange with the original time limits scaled down: one student gives Lincoln's four questions, another gives Douglas's answers, and a third gives Lincoln's rejoinder; the class then decides which answer an Illinois Democrat and a Georgia Democrat would each have preferred.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between two farm families riding home in a wagon from the Ottawa debate on August 21, 1858, one leaning Republican and one Democratic, each repeating the arguments that struck them most.

• Essay

  Follow the phrase as our fathers made it through the seven debates and explain how each candidate used the founders to support his own policy.

• Adaptation

  Draft the front page of a small-town Illinois newspaper reporting the Alton debate, with one column written by a Republican editor and one by a Democratic editor, both describing the same afternoon.

Further Reading

• Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Harry V. Jaffa

• Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America, Allen C. Guelzo

• Stephen A. Douglas, Robert W. Johannsen

• The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics, Don E. Fehrenbacher

• The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861, David M. Potter