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Chapter VIII - Douglas and Lincoln Debate
Douglas and Lincoln Debate 1858
Furor over the Dred Scott case and "Bleeding Kansas" dominated state elections in 1858. Abraham Lincoln, a "raw-boned" former Whig legislator and one-term congressman, decided to run for the Illinois Senate as a Republican. In his public remarks on the question of slavery, Lincoln did not plead the morality of the issue but dispassionately outlined the nation's alternatives in rather absolute and pragmatic terms. In accepting the Republican nomination for the Senate he declared:
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, but I do expect it to 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 . . . or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike in all the states.
Lincoln's calm logic appealed to a growing number of Americans who insisted that slavery must not be allowed to expand into the new territories.
Stephen A. Douglas, the architect of the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act, challenged Lincoln for the Illinois Senate seat. Lincoln, described by a fellow attorney as the "ungodliest figure 1 ever saw," pointedly asked Douglas during their debate at Freeport, Illinois, while thousands listened, how he could reconcile popular sovereignty with the Dred Scott ruling that citizens had the right to carry slaves through any territory. Douglas evasively responded that no matter what the supreme Court said about slavery, it could not exist anywhere unless plainly supported by local regulations. Therefore, if the settlers refused slavery, they should also refuse to adopt any codes protecting it. Douglas continued by trying to pin Lincoln down on his supposed advocacy of racial equality. Cautiously Lincoln asserted that a physical difference between the black and white races existed which would "forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality." He favored containment of slavery where it existed rather than its complete abolition. Lincoln lost both the debate and the election. However, two short years later his viewpoints would catapult him into the White House.
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