The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Stephen Douglas  (1813 - 1861) "The Little Giant"

June 16, 1858 - Lincoln's House Divided speech in Springfield, Ill on accepting the Republican Party nomination for the 1858 Senate race.  Lincoln would face Stephen Douglas, who was running for his third term as Illinois senator, in the fall election.

"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 become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South."



The Lincoln-Douglas Debates  (autumn 1858)
     Full text of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Republican Abraham Lincoln debates Illinois senator Stephen Douglas, a democrat, for the 1858 Senate election.  

The 7 debates:
Ottawa on August 21  - extracts on Lincoln's position
Freeport on August 27
Jonesboro on September 15
Charleston on September 18
Galesburg on October 7
Quincy on October 13
Alton on October 15


From McPherson 181 - 189:

Douglas "cared not" whether Kansas was slave or free."  Lincoln responds that "caring not" aids and abets immoral actions.  Good men must care to stop the spread of slavery. 

Douglas brands Lincoln a "Black Republican" who is for full racial equality.  Lincoln denies this but states that blacks are human and all humans deserve the right to pursue their own economic interests as they choose.  Slavery denies blacks this right.  

 Lincoln makes a case that the founders intended for slavery to die.  He points at how the word slavery was not used in the Constitution, how the founders created the slave-free Northwest Ordinance, made the international slave trade illegal, and started gradual abolitionist in the north.  Lincoln claims to be following in their tradition.

Lincoln asks the "Freeport question" intending to show the contradiction between the Dred Scott decision and "popular sovereignty."  Douglas' response, the "Freeport doctrine," is that people in the territories would have to give slavery protective legislation.  Without this, slavery would not be feasible.   

Against Lincoln's House Divided metaphor, Douglas asks why a country cannot be half-slave and half free.  He claims that Lincoln's idea is revolutionary and will lead to a devastating Civil War.

 Douglas plays upon the racial fears of interracial marriages asking if the people believed that Negros are equal to "their wives and daughters."  Again Lincoln responds that the negro is equal to all men in their right to "eat his own bread, without the leave of anyone else, that he acquired by his own hands."

 Douglas challenges Lincoln's meaning that slavery should be put on a path to its ultimate extinction.  Lincoln replies that by ultimate extinction he means pretty far in the future.  He is not out to start a war to end slavery now.