hersheysmom111Lv1

22 Nov 2022

Write an objective summary of the Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln)-Douglas (Frederick Douglas) Debates. This should at least have 3-6 sentences.

Directions: Read the passage below and answer the question(s) that follow.

 

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

 

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, a known abolitionist, ran as the Republican party candidate for the United States Senate seat against the incumbent Democratic senator, Judge Stephen Douglas. Lincoln and Douglas held a series of seven debates throughout Illinois, focusing overwhelmingly on what was the most contentious issue of the day: slavery, and whether it should be permitted in the new territories and states that were being rapidly acquired at the time.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates were so heated, in part because of a controversial address Lincoln had previously given at the Illinois State Capitol on June 16, 1858, now known as the "House Divided" speech, in which Lincoln said:

 

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.

 

During the third debate in Jonesboro, Illinois on September 15,1858 , Douglas responded to Lincoln's "house divided" contention by iterating the Democratic position on slavery, emphasizing the rights of states (and, by extension, new territories) to legislate their own policies on slavery.

 

Douglas: I now come back to the question, why cannot this Union exist forever divided into free and slave States, as our fathers made it? It can thus exist if each State will carry out the principles upon which our institutions were founded, to wit: the right of each State to do as it pleases, without meddling with its neighbors. Just act upon that great principle, and this Union will not only live forever, but it will extend and expand until it covers the whole continent, and makes this confederacy one grand, ocean-bound Republic. We must bear in mind that we are yet a young nation, growing with a rapidity unequaled in the history of the world, that our national increase is great, and that the emigration from the old world is increasing, requiring us to expand and acquire new territory from time to time, in order to give our people land to live upon. If we live upon the principle of State rights and State sovereignty, each State regulating its own affairs and minding its own business, we can go on and extend indefinitely, just as fast and as far as we need the territory.

 

In the 7th debate in Alton, Illinois on October 15,1858 , Lincoln retreated slightly from his "House Divided" stance, agreeing that state sovereignty should generally be constitutionally protected, but slavery is a moral wrong for which expansion must not be allowed, and which should eventually be quashed completely.

 

Lincoln: The Judge [Douglas] alludes very often in the course of his remarks to the exclusive right which the States have to decide the whole thing for themselves. I agree with him very readily that the different States have that right. He is but fighting a man of straw when he assumes that I am contending against the right of the States to do as they please about it. Our controversy with him is in regard to the new Territories... He says that upon the score of equality, slaves should be allowed to go in a new Territory, like other property. This is strictly logical if there is no difference between it and other property. If it and other property are equal, his argument is entirely logical. But if you insist that one is wrong and the other right, there is no use to institute a comparison between right and wrong. You may turn over every thing in the Democratic policy from beginning to end, whether in the shape it takes on the statute book, in the shape it takes in the Dred Scott decision, in the shape it takes in conversation, or the shape it takes in short maxim-like arguments-it every where carefully excludes the idea that there is any thing wrong in it.

 

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.