The Lincoln–Douglas debates (1858)
were a series of seven debates between Abraham
Lincoln,the Republican candidate
for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen
Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate.
At the time, U.S.
senators were elected by state legislatures; thus Lincoln and Douglas were trying for their respective parties to win control of the Illinois General Assembly. The debates previewed the issues that Lincoln would face in the aftermath
of his victory in the 1860
presidential election.
Although Illinois was
a free state, the
main issue discussed in all seven debates was slavery in the United States.
In agreeing to the
official debates, Lincoln and Douglas decided 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 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
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. Newspaper coverages of the debates were 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, pro-Lincoln papers
edited Lincoln's speeches, but left the Douglas texts as reported.
After winning a
plurality of the voters but losing in the legislature, 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.
Stephen Douglas was first elected to the United States Senate in
1846. In 1858, he was seeking re-election for a third term. During his time in
the Senate, the issue of slavery was raised several times, particularly with
respect to the Compromise of 1850. As chairman of the committee on territories, Douglas argued
for an approach to slavery termed popular sovereignty; electorates at a local level would vote whether to adopt or
reject a state constitution which prohibited slavery. Decisions about whether
slavery was permitted or prohibited within certain states and territories had
been made previously at a federal level.
Douglas was successful with passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854. Abraham Lincoln, like Douglas, had also been
elected to Congress in 1846. He served one two-year term in the House of Representatives. During his time in the House, Lincoln
disagreed with Douglas and supported the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to ban
slavery in new territory. Lincoln returned to politics in the 1850s to oppose
the Kansas–Nebraska Act, and help develop the new Republican Party.
Before the debates, Lincoln said that Douglas was encouraging
his fears of amalgamation of the races with enough success to drive thousands of
people away from the Republican Party. Douglas tried to convince,
especially the Democrats, that Lincoln was an abolitionist for saying that
the American Declaration of Independence did apply 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" of
different ethnic backgrounds.
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.
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, which would have made Kansas a slave state, and set up a rival
National Democratic party that drew votes away from him.
The main theme of the Lincoln–Douglas debates was slavery,
particularly 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. Douglas argued that both Whigs
and Democrats believed in popular sovereignty and that the Compromise of 1850 was an example of this. Lincoln said that the
national policy was to limit the spread of slavery, and mentioned (both at
Jonesboro 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.
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. 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, and that Popular Sovereignty and the Dred Scott decision were a
departure from the policies of the past that would nationalize slavery.
There were partisan remarks, such as Douglas' accusations that
members of the "Black Republican" party, such as Lincoln, were
abolitionists. Douglas cited as proof Lincoln's House Divided Speech in which he said, "I believe this
government cannot endure permanently half Slave and half Free." As Douglas
said, (audience response in parentheses)
Uniformity 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 for ever, 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.")
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.
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. 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.
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.
Lincoln said he himself did not 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." Lincoln said that
Douglas' public indifference to slavery would result in the expansion of
slavery 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.
Lincoln said Douglas "cares not whether slavery is voted
down or voted up," 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 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. 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. 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.
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 in as much 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.
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." 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, 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. Lincoln said that the crisis would be reached and passed
when slavery was put "in the course of ultimate extinction."
At Galesburg Douglas sought again to prove that Lincoln was
an abolitionist with the following quotations 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, everywhere.
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. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself.
It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and
I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of
a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit
of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another
race, it is the same tyrannical principle.
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."
The October surprise of the election was
the endorsement of the Democrat Douglas by former Whig John J. Crittenden. Non-Republican former Whigs comprised the biggest block of
swing voters, and Crittenden's endorsement of Douglas rather than Lincoln, also
a former Whig, reduced Lincoln's chances of winning.
On election day, as the districts were drawn to favor Douglas'
party, the Democrats won 40 seats in the state house of Representatives, and
the Republicans won 35. In the state senate, Republicans held 11 seats, and
Democrats held 14. Stephen A. Douglas was reelected by the legislature, 54-46, even though
Lincoln's Republicans won the popular vote with a percentage of 50.6%, or by
3,402 votes. 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, beating Douglas (as the Northern Democratic candidate), among others, in the process.
Lincoln also went on to be in contact with editors looking to
publish the debate texts. George Parsons, the Ohio Republican committee
chairman, got Lincoln in touch with Ohio's main political publisher, Follett
and Foster, of Columbus. They published copies of the text, and titled the book, Political Debates Between Hon. Abraham
Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas in the Celebrated Campaign of 1858, in
Illinois. Four printings were made, and the fourth sold
16,000 copies.
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.
Comments
Lincoln based his position on the words in the Declaration
of Independence. “All men are created equal”. He correctly interpreted the
words to include all men, not just white men. The other hint that the Founders
knew there was a problem with slavery was the change they made in the “life,
liberty and property” clause, changing “property” to “pursuit of happiness”.
This was a vague, unfortunate choice. The US was founded primarily on personal
property rights and even limited the amount of land the federal government
could own and only property owners were allowed to vote.
Douglas based his position on another truth that citizens
should have control of the laws they have to live with. If states controlled
the laws that impacted citizens the most, then if some of their citizens didn’t
like these laws, they could move to a state that had laws they liked. States
should be able to compete with one another and voters should be able to make
their own mistakes.
Lincoln’s assertion that a ‘divided house couldn’t stand’
was a weak argument. Limiting slavery in new states when other states had
slavery put the new states at a disadvantage. He was correct that new states
would have chosen to be slave states. Slaves should have been allowed to escape
to Free states and even other countries without being extradited back to their
slave states. This recognition of their freedom to escape would have eventually
made slavery unsustainable.
The secession of the southern states was caused by the fact
that the large slave owners controlled the state legislatures of these states
and they were facing an existential threat. If secession had been put to the
voters in these states, they would have voted NO. The Civil War was caused by
the Confederate attack on Ft. Sumter. If the south hadn’t attacked the north,
there would have been no civil war.
In the end, it would have been less expensive for the
federal government to compensate slave owners for the value of their slaves and
freed them. States kept records of their value. They then could have offered
jobs to these slaves to work for room and board. There were lots of immigrants arriving in the
US and they were also available to join these plantations.
There were 388,000 slaves in the south and the average
price of a slave was $800. Buying freedom for slaves would have cost $310,400,000.
The cost of the civil war is estimated at $6 billion.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Foreign Relations
Nation-States expect their neighbors to respect their borders and not
invade their countries. This was not always the case, but in 1914, the invasion
of Serbia by Austro-Hungary resulted in World War I and in 1939 the invasion of
Poland by Nazi Germany resulted in World War II. In 1945, the refusal of the
Soviet Union to remove their troops from Eastern Europe resulted in the Cold War.
Foreign control of sovereign countries morphed into a struggle between
Communism and Capitalism during the Cold War and Communist China and the Soviet
Union sponsored invasions of South Korea and South Vietnam. Later they
sponsored civil wars in South America and Africa.
Israel has been attacked by Arabs since its founding in 1948 and the US
became its sponsor. In 1967, Israel was attacked by several Arab countries but
Israel won that war in 6 days.
By the end of the Cold War, Europe was embracing Socialism and China and
Russia were embracing government owned Capitalism. Islamic terrorists were
blowing up airplanes and buildings and were funded by Iran and supported by
other Islamic groups. Israel continued to be a target with separate Islamic
groups on all sides.
In 1992, the UN published UN Agenda 21 based on the global warming scam.
Most of the European countries voted away their sovereignty to form the EU. The
US government began to implement Agenda 21 in 1993. The movement toward global
governance was supported by corporations, politicians and communists but began
to fizzle out around 2004. Global warming didn’t happen, global trade stalled,
governments had high debt and economies were weakened. Europe suspended their
alternate energy schemes when their electric bills doubled. Citizens’ instincts
told them to concentrate on rebuilding their own local economies.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq doubled the US debt from $5 trillion to
$10 trillion and the Agenda 21 implementation doubled the US debt again from
$10 trillion to $20 trillion.
In 2011, The Arab Spring, the Syrian civil war and Islamic terror attacks
resulted in the Muslim refugee invasion of Europe through migration as Middle
Eastern countries economies collapsed and Europe’s borders remained open.
We now need to send refugees back to their home countries.
In 2016, the US elected Trump to restore the US economy, end unnecessary
regulations, cut corporate taxes, lower our trade deficit, increase US oil and
gas production and exports, restore manufacturing jobs, uninstall UN Agenda 21,
restore our sovereignty, stop excessive immigration, rebuild our military,
repeal Obamacare, end Common Core, build the Wall, end the Deep State and drain
the Swamp.
The economies of all nation-states are determined by their governments,
who pass their laws governing commerce, property rights and economic freedom.
Politicians are tasked with governing while observing the local customs,
culture and well-being of their citizens, while expanding their economies.
Governments are expected to be vigilant in protecting their citizens and
preserving trade and are tasked with managing relations with other countries.
When neighboring countries act aggressively, governments are expected to
intervene to convince them to cease.
Nation-states are sovereign and civil wars within those countries is
viewed as “their problem” unless it is caused by outside interference by an
aggressor country.
Today we don’t need to go to war immediately, because we can cut off
trade, seize bank accounts and issue sanctions against rogue aggressor
countries to remove their ability to fund their aggression.
We expect the citizens of rogue aggressor countries and failing countries
to vote out or otherwise overthrow bad government and replace it. We remind
them that it is a lot easier to elect the right people than it is to overthrow
them.
In the US, we view Iran, Syria, North Korea, China and Russia as rogue
aggressor countries. We view failed
countries to include Haiti and Venezuela.
We would like to see Iran and North Korea cease their nuclear weapons
programs and stop threatening their neighbors. We would also like to see Iran
stop funding terrorist activities around the globe.
We would like Russia and China to stop threatening their neighbors.
Russia needs to leave the Ukraine alone and China needs to back off from
occupying Japanese islands.
We would like Muslims to get a grip and help us end Islamic terrorism. In
the meantime, we wand responsible Arab leaders to join us in eradicating
Islamic terror activities across the globe.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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