Lincoln–Douglas debates

The Lincoln–Douglas debates were a series of seven debates in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. Until the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provides that senators shall be elected by the people of their states, was ratified in 1913, senators were elected by their respective state legislatures. Therefore, Lincoln and Douglas were trying to win the people's votes for legislators in the Illinois General Assembly, aligned with their respective political parties.

The debates were designed to generate publicity—some of the first examples of what in modern parlance would be characterized as "media events". For Lincoln, they were an opportunity to raise both his state and national profile and that of the burgeoning Republican Party, newly organized four years before in Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1854. For Senator Douglas, they were an opportunity to defend his record—especially his role in promoting the doctrine of popular sovereignty in regard to the issue of American black slavery and its role in the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. The candidates spoke in each of Illinois's nine congressional districts. They had already spoken in the state capital of Springfield and in the state's largest city of Chicago within a day of each other, so they decided that their future joint appearances would be held in the remaining seven congressional districts. Since Douglas was the incumbent, he had very little to gain from these debates. However, Lincoln, only a one-term U.S. Representative (congressman) a decade before, was gaining support, having spoken the day after Douglas spoke in Chicago, and thus presenting a rejoinder Douglas could not answer back with a rebuttal. Each debate lasted about three hours, with each candidate speaking for sixty minutes, followed by a ninety-minute response and a final thirty-minute rejoinder by the first candidate. As the incumbent, Douglas spoke first in four of the debates, and Douglas and Lincoln alternated who spoke first at the remaining debates. They were held outdoors, weather permitting, from about 2 to 5 p.m.

The debates focused on slavery, specifically on whether it should be allowed in the new states to be formed from the western federal territories acquired through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Mexican Cession of 1849. Douglas, as the Democratic candidate, held that the decision should be made by the white residents of the new states rather than by the federal government ("popular sovereignty"). Lincoln argued against the expansion of slavery, yet stressed that he was not advocating its abolition where it already existed.

Never in American history had there been widespread newspaper coverage of political debates. Both candidates felt they were speaking to the whole nation. New technology had become available in recent years: railroad networks, the electric telegraph with its Morse code, and Pitman shorthand writing, at that time called "phonography". The state's largest newspapers, based in Chicago, sent phonographers—now known as stenographers—to copy and report complete texts of each debate; thanks to the new railroads, the debates were not hard to reach from Chicago. Halfway through each debate and series of speeches, runners were handed the stenographers' notes. They raced to meet the next train to Chicago, handing the notes to railway riding stenographers who during the journey converted the shorthand symbols and abbreviations back into their original words, producing a transcript ready for the Chicago typesetters printing presses, and for the telegrapher, who sent the texts to the rest of the country east of the Rocky Mountains, which was as far as the telegraph wires reached. The next train would deliver the conclusion of the debate. The papers published the speeches in full, sometimes within hours of their delivery. Some newspapers helped their preferred candidate with minor corrections, reports on the audience's positive reaction, or tendentious headlines ("New and Powerful Argument by Mr. Lincoln–Douglas Tells the Same Old Story"). The newswire of the Associated Press, then only a decade old, sent messages simultaneously to multiple points, enabling newspapers and magazines east of the Rockies to print the debates soon after they occurred, which led to the debates rapidly becoming nationally followed events. They were later republished as pamphlets.

The debates took place between August and October of 1858. Newspapers reported 12,000 in attendance in Ottawa (Illinois), 16,000 to 18,000 in Galesburg, 15,000 in Freeport, 12,000 in Quincy, and at the last debate in Alton, 5,000 to 10,000. The debates near Illinois's borders (Freeport, Quincy, and Alton) drew large numbers of people from neighboring states. A number travelled within Illinois to follow the debates.

Douglas was re-elected by the Illinois General Assembly, 54–46. But Lincoln's party had won the popular vote in what historian Allen Guelzo labels "an upset, not just in terms of those voting statistics", but in making Lincoln a national figure and laying the groundwork for his 1860 presidential campaign.

As part of that endeavor, Lincoln edited the texts of all the debates and had them published in a book. It sold well and helped him receive the Republican Party's nomination for president at the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago.