Quincy, Illinois,Oct. 13

The Lincoln Douglas debate moves to downtown Quincy. It could be assumed that this city is a fan of Lincoln. Quincy is a city of Whigs, Mr. Lincoln’s former political party. Today is a clear sky and without any of the cold and bracing wind of Galesburg. The Quincy Whig published a programme for the speech.

Judge Douglas arrived the prior night in a parade or torches and tapestry. He was escorted to the Quincy house by a group of 3,000 Democrats. Mr. Lincoln arrived at half-past nine and he was met by a large crowd of Republicans and the Steig’s brass band.

There are 12,000 people in attendance, and many of them are part of the former Whig party. The debate begins early afternoon. Mr. Lincoln begins his speech by explaining he never attended a Republican Party meeting that passed abolitionist positions that Douglas has blamed on him. 

As in previous debates, Lincoln counters Douglas’ claim that he says one thing in Egypt in southern Illinois and another when he comes north. He points out he had said four years earlier exactly what he said at recent debate at Charleston – that his “own feelings would not admit a social and political equality between the white and black races, and that even if my own feelings would admit of it, I still knew that the public sentiment of the country would not, and that such a thing was an utter impossibility…”

Lincoln adds:

“Now, gentlemen, I don’t want to read at any great length, but this is the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the institution of slavery or the black race, and this is the whole of it; any thing that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastical arrangement of words by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution in the States where it exists. I believe I have no right to do so. I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together on the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.” [Cheers, “That’s the doctrine.”] “I have never said any thing to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence-the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas that he is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in color-perhaps not in intellectual and moral endowments; but in the right to eat the bread without the leave of any body else which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every other man.” [Loud cheers.]

Lincoln  pushes the question of the Dred Scott decision again and whether or not Judge Douglas would stand by such a choice.

From the beginning of the debates, Lincoln has said that applying the Dred Scott decision to the whole nation would mean free states could not ban slavery because the court said the Constitution protects the slaveholder’s property right in slave ownership. Lincoln says Douglas has dodged the question:

At Galesburg, I tried to show that by the Dred Scott decision, pushed to its legitimate consequences, slavery would be established in all the States as well as in the Territories. I did this because, upon a former occasion, I had asked Judge Douglas whether, if the Supreme Court should make a decision declaring that the States had not the power to exclude slavery from their limits, he would adopt and follow that decision as a rule of political action; and because he had not directly answered that question, but had merely contented himself with sneering at it, I again introduced it, and tried to show that the conclusion that I stated followed inevitably and logically from the proposition already decided by the court…. I give him this third chance to say yes or no. He is not obliged to do either-probably he will not do either- [laughter] but I give him the third chance. 

Mr. Lincoln concludes his speech by arguing the difference with Judge Douglas is a matter of right or wrong. 

I suggest that the difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than the difference between the men who think slavery a wrong and those who do not think it wrong. The Republican party think it wrong-we think it is a moral, a social and a political wrong. We think it as a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons or the States where it exists, but that it is a wrong in its tendency, to say the least, that extends itself to the existence of the whole nation. Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as a wrong. We deal with it as with any other wrong, in so far as we can prevent its growing any larger, and so deal with it that in the run of time there may be some promise of an end to it. We have a due regard to the actual presence of it amongst us and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and all the Constitutional obligations thrown about it. I suppose that in reference both to its actual existence in the nation, and to our Constitutional obligations, we have no right at all to disturb it in the States where it exists, and we profess that we have no more inclination to disturb it than we have the right to do it.

Judge Douglas then takes his stand to a roar of applause. Again he calls for silence for his presentation. He begins established what he calls the facts of the Republican party:

That platform declared that the Republican party was pledged never to admit another slave State into the Union, and also that it pledged to prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the United States, not only all that we then had, but all that we should thereafter acquire, and to repeal unconditionally the Fugitive Slave law, abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and prohibit the slave-trade between the different States. These and other articles against slavery were contained in this platform and unanimously adopted by the Republican Congressional Convention in that District. 

He continues to follow up on Mr. Lincoln’s rhetoric hitting hard upon the question that he asked in Freeport and again in Ottawa about adding more slave states into the union.

In answer to my question whether he indorsed the Black Republican principle of “no more slave States,” he answered that he was not pledged against the admission of any more slave States, but that he would be very sorry if he should ever be placed in a position where he would have to vote on the question; that he would rejoice to know that no more slave States would be admitted into the Union…”

Judge Douglas doubles down that Mr. Lincoln will not answer about admitting slave states “as the people of the people of the territory wish.”

He would not answer my question directly, because up North, the abolition creed declares that there shall be no more slave States, while down south, in Adams county, in Coles, and in Sangamon, he and his friends are afraid to advance that doctrine. Therefore, he gives an evasive and equivocal answer, to be construed one way in the south and another way in the north, which, when analyzed, it is apparent is not an answer at all with reference to any territory now in existence…

Then Judge Douglas explains why he won’t say whether he thinks slavery is right or wrong.

“He (Lincoln) tells you that I will not argue the question whether slavery is right or wrong. I tell you why I will not do it. I hold that under the Constitution of the United States, each State of this Union has a right to do as it pleases on the subject of slavery. In Illinois we have exercised that sovereign right by prohibiting slavery within our own limits. I approve of that line of policy. … It is none of our business whether slavery exists in Missouri or not. Missouri is a sovereign State of this Union, and has the same right to decide the slavery question for herself that Illinois has to decide it for herself…. He is going to discuss the rightfulness of slavery when Congress cannot act upon it either way. 

He begins to discuss the Dred Scott decision bringing attention to how Mr. Lincoln would reverse the decision. Judge Douglas makes the statement that the territories should protect the slave owner’s “property.” 

I ask him whether the decision of the Supreme Court is not binding upon him as well as on me? If so, and he holds that he would be perjured if he did not vote for a slave code under it, I ask him whether, if elected to Congress, he will so vote? I have a right to his answer, and I will tell you why. He put that question to me down in Egypt, and did it with an air of triumph. This was about the form of it: “In the event of a slaveholding citizen of one of the Territories should need and demand a slave code to protect his slaves, will you vote for it? 

He (Lincoln) wishes to discuss the merits of the Dred Scott decision when, under  the Constitution, a Senator has no right to interfere with the decision of judicial tribunals.I have never yet learned how or where an appeal could be taken from the Supreme Court of the United States! The Dred Scott decision was pronounced by the highest tribunal on earth. From that decision there is no appeal this side of Heaven. Yet, Mr. Lincoln says he is going to reverse that decision. By what tribunal will he reverse it? Will he appeal to a mob? Does he intend to appeal to violence, to Lynch law? Will he stir up strife and rebellion in the land and overthrow the court by violence? …But, I will not be drawn off into an argument upon the merits of the Dred Scott decision. It is enough for me to know that the Constitution of the United States created the Supreme Court for the purpose of deciding all disputed questions touching the true construction of that instrument, and when such decisions are pronounced, they are the law of the land, binding on every good citizen.

Shortly before closing, Douglas foresees slavery existing forever.

Let each State stand firmly by that great Constitutional right, let each State mind its own business and let its neighbors alone, and there will be no trouble on this question. If we will stand by that principle, then Mr. Lincoln will find that this Republic can exist forever divided into free and slave States, as our fathers made it and the people of each State have decided. Stand by that great principle, and we can go on as we have done, increasing in wealth, in population, in power, and in all the elements of greatness, until we shall be the admiration and terror of the world.

Lincoln in his answer immediately jumps on Douglas’ remark.

I wish to return to Judge Douglas my profound thanks for his public annunciation here to-day, to be put on record, that his system of policy in regard to the institution of slavery contemplates that it shall last forever. [Great cheers, and cries of “Hit him again.”]We are getting a little nearer the true issue of this controversy, and I am profoundly grateful for this one sentence. Judge Douglas asks you, “Why cannot the institution of slavery, or rather, why cannot the nation, part slave and part free, continue as our fathers made it forever?” In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time. When Judge Douglas undertakes to say that, as a matter of choice, the fathers of the Government made this nation part slave and part free, he assumes what is historically a falsehood. More than that: when the fathers of the Government cut off the source of slavery by the abolition of the slave-trade, and adopted a system of restricting it from the new Territories where it had not existed, I maintain that they placed it where they understood, and all sensible men understood, it was in the course of ultimate extinction. As Mr. Lincoln closes out the rest of his time, the crowds melt away hurrahing for their chosen candidates until their voice cracked and went hoarse. 

Ottawa, Illinois, Aug. 21

The stage for the first debate has been erected on the edge of the canal. It is constructed in a manner that allows for impermanence due to the nature of these debates. To stir people up for the election and then to be torn away at the end of it all. I suppose there is a charm to it, to live in the moment of history. Ottawa itself, in the far north of the state, boasts only a population of 3,000. From the early hours of the morning, people have been gathering to attend these festivities, this meeting of the minds. Or maybe the separating of the minds. Perhaps there will be 10,000 people, maybe more.

It was an honor to see both Judge Douglas and Mr. Lincoln. It stirs one’s soul. They could not be as different as men as cats and dogs. Where Judge Douglas is a stout man, nearer to round than any other shape, Mr. Lincoln has grown in length. He is a very tall man.

They could not be further apart in ideology as well.

Mr. Lincoln is escorted by his supporters from the railway. Many sing his praises and while some may remain skeptical of this new Republican party one cannot argue the fact that this county and region favor Mr. Lincoln over Judge Douglas.

That is not to say that Judge Douglas arrived to a cold shoulder. He and his people arrive in a massive collation of folks on horseback. A cannon rings out to announce his arrival and his crowd only grows as he travels from Peru. People hang out of their window to catch a view of the rising star judge.

Their arrival stirs up the dirt in the air, which hangs heavy in the late summer heat. People gather to watch this speech, which isn’t to take place until late afternoon and will continue until early evening – and as I said they were arriving with the first rays of sunlight.

Wm. H.H. Cushman is the man who delivers the opening remarks with some favorability to the sitting senator, Douglas:

“For the honor you have impressed upon your constituents the people of the State of Illinois by your firm, consistent, and patriotic insisting in the councils of this nation for Democratic principles (applause) asserting the ability, and the right of the people to be the sole judges of the acts of the legislative bodies themselves what institutions they will found and under what laws they can best sustain the great principles of self-government.” 

  Douglas is the leading national advocate of “popular sovereignty” – the idea that people in the territories should decide whether to enter the union slave or free. Mr. Lincoln has already given a famous speech on what he thinks about that. “A House divided against itself cannot stand.”

             Judge Douglas begins the first hour of speech as impassioned as the bulldog many describe him as resembling. His face is red as he hurls through his oratory shouting and hollering at his opponent, cutting with harsh wit. It is nearly impossible to hear the words far from the stage through the din of the crowd and perhaps a few spooked horses and the speculation of fistfights at the fringe of the crowd.

There’s a whispered rumor that part of the stage had collapsed on the head of the Douglas delegation, but from my position I can not tell if this is true.  

Mr. Lincoln seems to lose some of his famed composure, holding his shoulders close together as Judge Douglas rips into the goals of the “black Republican” party. Douglas shouts about abolition and great violations of states’ rights and paints the picture of hundreds of thousands of freed Missouri slaves turning the prairie land of Illinois into a “Negro colony.” The crowd jeers and cheers at the appropriate moments, and perhaps the debate has already been won without the return speech and rebuttal. Says Douglas:

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 forever, 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.”)

When Mr. Lincoln stands to speak, despite the disheartened spirit that seems to have taken over his supporters, they cheer with such vigor and length that for many minutes Mr. Lincoln cannot speak if he hopes to be heard. He speaks completely differently from Judge Douglas. Not only about issues, but his tone is even and measured. His passion is no less than Douglas, but it is restrained and expresses himself in his movements, measured but emboldened. His cadence carries each response with grace.

Mr. Lincoln says that the Kansas-Nebraska Act and popular sovereignty is the end of the Missouri Compromise.

This is the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The foregoing history may not be precisely accurate in every particular; but I am sure it is sufficiently so for all the uses I shall attempt to make of it, and in it we have before us, the chief materials enabling us to correctly judge whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong. I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong; wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska-and wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world, where men can be found inclined to take it.

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.

Still, Mr. Lincoln says of freed slaves, “We can’t….make equals of them.”

In the end, the cheers again prevent anyone from speaking. There’s a tumultuous yell that if the horses were not spooked from before, they would be now. Judge Douglas seems to lose himself into his vigor, and his rebuttal of half an hour is pure anger.

Once both have concluded, I catch a glimpse of Mr. Lincoln being carried off on the shoulders of his supporters, long enough that his feet drag behind him as he is celebrated. From the reaction, one might guess that Mr. Lincoln has won the debate and even in the morning, it seems that many newspapers from the Chicago Times to the Chicago Daily Journal are in agreement, that at least on this stage Judge Douglas has no hope of winning. 

When Abraham Lincoln and Sen. Stephen A. Douglas arrived in dry and dusty Ottawa, Illinois, on Aug. 21, 1858, for the first of their seven great debates, their campaigns for the Senate were consumed by the great national struggle over slavery. 

A large press corps covered the debates, which were big news across the nation and established Lincoln’s national reputation. The new technology of the telegraph sent verbatim transcripts of the long debates to newspapers everywhere.

This recreation of the Lincoln-Douglas debates is part of GJR’s 1857 Project. The project retells the history of slavery, segregation and race in St. Louis, Missouri, and Illinois. Its name comes from the watershed moment when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Dred Scott decision denying the humanity of African Americans. The following year Abraham Lincoln and Sen. Stephen Douglas debated the freedom and equality of black Americans in a prelude to the Civil War.  The project was inspired by Nikole Hannah-Jones’ Pulitzer prize winning 1619 Project in the New York Times Magazine and is supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

When the debates began, Douglas, “the little Giant,” was a leading national figure who had engineered the great compromises of the 1850s designed to keep the nation from a war over slavery. Lincoln was a lesser known politician who emerged from the debates as a rising figure in the Republican Party. Two years later he was president and the Civil War had begun.

Douglas championed “popular sovereignty,” the idea that territories wanting to become states should be able to decide whether to enter the Union slave or free. He led passage of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which adopted popular sovereignty. That brought with it the possibility that slavery would be extended to states north of the southern border of Missouri – negating the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that had barred slavery north of Missouri’s southern border – 36-30 north. 

The Compromise of 1850 included the Fugitive Slave law that required federal officers to turn over black people to any white person claiming ownership, without allowing the black people to testify they were free. Hatred of the Fugitive Slave law in the North was fueled by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Douglas also supported the 1857 Dred Scott ruling that two Missouri enslaved people, Dred and Harriet Scott, did not become free when taken into free states such as Illinois. Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote that the Scotts could not sue for their freedom because black people “are not included and were not intended to be included under the word citizens in the Constitution.”

The decision also held that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because Congress couldn’t bar slavery in the territories. Any law taking away a slaveowner’s property right was an unconstitutional violation of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause, Taney wrote.

Six topics came up again and again during the debates:

– Whether the Declaration of Independence’s promise that all men are created equal included Negroes. Douglas said no, Lincoln yes.

– Whether Negroes should have equal legal rights to whites. Douglas said no; Lincoln said no but Douglas didn’t believe him.

– Whether the Founding Fathers meant the nation to remain half slave and half free forever. Douglas said yes, Lincoln said they expected it to eventually disappear.

– Whether the Dred Scott decision had to be obeyed in stating that Negroes were not people under the Constitution. Douglas said yes; Lincoln said no.

– Whether the territories should be able to decide whether to have slavery. Douglas said yes, Lincoln said no.

– Whether Lincoln’s House Divided prediction inevitably meant war or not. Douglas said it did; Lincoln said slavery could gradually disappear.

A ‘Negro colony’ with 100,000 freed Missouri slaves

As the Ottawa debate began around 2 p.m., Douglas whipped up his audience’s fears of being overrun by hundreds of thousands of free blacks from Missouri and being turned into a “Negro colony.” Here are Douglas’ words, complete with the crowd reaction. 

We are told by Lincoln that he is utterly opposed to the Dred Scott decision, and will not submit to it, for the reason that he says it deprives the negro of the rights and privileges of citizenship. (Laughter and applause.) …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.”) 

Back to Africa – ‘We cannot…make them equals’

Lincoln in his homespun way acknowledged Douglas’ national stature.“I know the Judge is a great man, while I am only a small man,’ he said to laughter.

Lincoln, as a congressman, had fought against the popular sovereignty compromises Douglas had passed through Congress. And he opposed the Dred Scott decision as contrary to the Declaration of Independence’s promise that All Men are Created equal. 

On the June day the Republican Party nominated him as its candidate against Douglas, Lincoln gave his famous House Divided speech in Springfield.

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.

During the debates later that summer and fall, Douglas attacked the speech again and again, saying Lincoln was setting the country on the course toward civil war. Lincoln denied it but was on the defensive when explaining what he would do if enslaved people were freed.

In language hard to read today, Lincoln denied that blacks were equals and spoke of sending them back to Africa, a scheme he later pursued in the White House. Lincoln said this at Ottawa:

My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia-to their own native land. But a moment’s reflection would convince me, that whatever of high hope, (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition?…Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if, indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot, then, make them equals.

But Lincoln saw the Dred Scott decision and Douglas’ popular sovereignty as part of a “conspiracy” to perpetuate slavery throughout the country. He warned that just as the Dred Scott decision had ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and said slavery could not be banned in the territories, a second Dred Scott decision could say slavery could not be banned in the already established states.

There was much discussion during the debates of an editorial in the Washington Union newspaper that had concluded the emancipation of slaves in the North had been an outrage on the property rights of slave owners and that the Dred Scott decision supported the property rights of slaveholders everywhere.

Lincoln said the late Sen. Henry Clay, the great compromiser from Kentucky who had sought to avoid a civil war, had favored eventual emancipation as the inevitable result of Revolutionary War principles. Lincoln said:

Henry Clay once said of a class of men who would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate emancipation, that they must, if they would do this, go back to the era of our Independence, and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return; they must blow out the moral lights around us; they must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate there the love of liberty; and then, and not till then, could they perpetuate slavery in this country! [Loud cheers.] To my thinking, Judge Douglas is, by his example and vast influence, doing that very thing in this community, [cheers,] when he says that the negro has nothing in the Declaration of Independence.

Freeport Doctrine

The second debate in Freeport at the end of August was a turning point after Lincoln backed Douglas into a corner. How could popular sovereignty exist if the Dred Scott decision said territories could not bar slavery, Lincoln asked. Douglas said even if new state constitutions could not ban slavery, new states could refuse to pass police laws enforcing slavery? Douglas’ answer became known as the Freeport Doctrine.

But even though Douglas’ Freeport Doctrine pleased enough Illinois and northern Democrats to win the Senate race, it angered southern Democrats and split the Democratic Party in the 1860 election because the southerners thought it weakened slavery. Northern Democrats backed Douglas and southern Democrats John C. Breckinridge. 

The Lincoln-Douglas Senate race preceded the popular election of senators. Lincoln won the popular vote by 7 %, but lost the legislative vote by the same margin – 54-36. Douglas went back to Washington.

Two years later Lincoln won an electoral college landslide with just 40 percent of the popular vote. Missouri was the only state Douglas won outright. Before Lincoln’s inauguration the South had seceded. Lincoln’s prediction about a House Divided and Douglas’ of a civil war were both coming to pass.

Editor’s note: Below is a recreation of the atmosphere surrounding the debates by Southern Illinois University Carbondale student Kayla Chamness, based on research at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.

Ottawa

Freeport

Jonesboro

Charleston 

Galesburg

Quincy

Alton

Alton, Illinois, Oct. 15

The final debate has a small crowd of perhaps 5,000 people, a small number considering that many trains lowered their fare by nearly half from Chicago and Springfield to come to this debate. As it was, many of the crowd arrived from St. Louis on a steamboat. The day was cloudy but otherwise the weather was fair for the riverfront debate.

Both candidates also arrive by the riverfront. 

Judge Douglas is the first to speak, his voice finally showing the strain of the campaign as it rasps and cracks. He is once more greeted by applause; the difference in volume from the large ground in Galesburg is apparent. The speech begins with a brief summary of the debates that they have had until that point. With a focus on Mr. Lincoln’s debate points.

The principal points in that speech of Mr. Lincoln’s were: First, that this Government could not endure permanently divided into free and slave States, as our fathers made it; that they must all become free or all become slave; all become one thing or all become the other, otherwise this Union could not continue to exist. I give you his opinions almost in the identical language he used. His second proposition was a crusade against the Supreme Court of the United States because of the Dred Scott decision; urging as an especial reason for his opposition to that decision that it deprived the negroes of the rights and benefits of that clause in the Constitution of the United States which guaranties to the citizens of each State all the rights, privileges, and immunities of the citizens of the several States…”

He then points out that he discussed what he saw to be the flaws in Mr. Lincoln’s arguments.

 I took up Mr. Lincoln’s three propositions in my several speeches, analyzed them, and pointed out what I believed to be the radical errors contained in them. First, in regard to his doctrine that this Government was in violation of the law of God, which says that a house divided against itself cannot stand, I repudiated it as a slander upon the immortal framers of our Constitution. I then said, I have often repeated, and now again assert, that in my opinion our Government can endure forever, (good) divided into free and slave States as our fathers made it,-each State having the right to prohibit, abolish or sustain slavery, just as it pleases…

If the original 13 states had applied the House Divided proposition, Judge Douglas says again, they would have voted for slavery throughout the country because there was only one completely free state. He puts it this way:

You see that if this abolition doctrine of Mr. Lincoln had prevailed when the Government was made, it would have established slavery as a permanent institution, in all the States, whether they wanted it or not, and the question for us to determine in Illinois now as one of the free States is, whether or not we are willing, having become the majority section, to enforce a doctrine on the minority, which we would have resisted with our heart’s blood had it been attempted on us when we were in a minority. (“We never will,” “good, good,” and cheers.)

 He also discusses that in regard to the amount of free states that have grown means that by numbers they have the opportunity to remove the ability for states to determine if they want to be a slave state. That the Northern states have the electoral college superiority.

He also makes clear that he represents Illinois within the Union, “you did not elect me, I represent Illinois and I am accountable to Illinois, as my constituency, and to God, but not to the president or to any other power on earth.”

Judge Douglas then moves on to rally against the Buchannan Democrats. It is President Buchanan who has abandoned the principle of popular sovereignty, not he. “They now tell me that I am not a Democrat, because I assert that the people of a Territory, as well as those of a State, have the right to decide for themselves whether slavery can or cannot exist in such Territory.” But that’s what Buchanan said to get elected president in 1856, he points out, reading Buchanan’s words.  

Douglas then speaks on how he believes the Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence to mean that only the white men are meant to be equal to each other.

But the Abolition party really think that under the Declaration of Independence the negro is equal to the white man, and that negro equality is an inalienable right conferred by the Almighty, and hence that all human laws in violation of it are null and void. With such men it is no use for me to argue. I hold that the signers of the Declaration of Independence had no reference to negroes at all when they declared all men to be created equal. They did not mean negro, nor the savage Indians, nor the Fejee Islanders, nor any other barbarous race. They were speaking of white men.  (“It’s so,” “it’s so,” and cheers.) They alluded to men of European birth and European descent-to white men, and to none others, when they declared that doctrine. (“That’s the truth.”) I hold that this Government was established on the white basis. It was established by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and should be administered by white men, and none others.

But it does not follow, by any means, that merely because the negro is not a citizen, and merely because he is not our equal, that, therefore, he should be a slave. On the contrary, it does follow that we ought to extend to the negro race, and to all other dependent races all the rights, all the privileges, and all the immunities which they can exercise consistently with the safety of society. Humanity requires that we should give them all these privileges; Christianity commands that we should extend those privileges to them. The question then arises what are those privileges, and what is the nature and extent of them. My answer is that that is a question which each State must answer for itself. We in Illinois have decided it for ourselves. We tried slavery, kept it up for twelve years, and finding that it was not profitable, we abolished it for that reason, and became a free State. We adopted in its stead the policy that a negro in this State shall not be a slave and shall not be a citizen. We have a right to adopt that policy. For my part I think it is a wise and sound policy for us.

Mr. Lincoln then takes the stage greeted by great applause. He does commend Judge Douglas on his attack on Buchanan, a fellow Democrat. Then he is able to turn an accusation of inconsistency to Judge Douglas himself pointing out that Douglas once favored the Missouri Compromise but then passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act to negate it.

Lincoln denies that his opposition to the Dred Scott decision is based on the decision’s refusal to allow Negroes to be citizens. He says he himself does not support their citizenship.

Out of this, Judge Douglas builds up his beautiful fabrication-of my purpose to introduce a perfect, social, and political equality between the white and black races. His assertion that I made an “especial objection” (that is his exact language) to the decision on this account, is untrue in point of fact.

 He then returns to his disagreement with Douglas on whether the Declaration of Independence’ “all men are created equal”  includes Negroes. Lincoln had said in the Galesburg debate that no one claimed prior to three years earlier that Negroes were not included among men. Now a letter to the Chicago Times cites a speech by the late Sen. Henry Clay – the great compromiser and friend of Lincoln’s – as proof to the contrary.

This is the entire quotation brought forward to prove that somebody previous to three years ago had said the negro was not included in the term “all men” in the Declaration. How does it do so?… Mr. Clay says it is true as an abstract principle that all men are created equal, but that we cannot practically apply it in all cases. He illustrates this by bringing forward the cases of females, minors, and insane persons, with whom it cannot be enforced…”

But Mr. Lincoln points out Clay attacked slavery in the same speech. Lincoln quotes Clay: 

I desire no concealment of my opinions in regard to the institution of slavery. I look upon it as a great evil, and deeply lament that we have derived it from the parental Government, and from our ancestors. But here they are, and the question is, how can they be best dealt with? If a state of nature existed, and we were about to lay the foundations of society, no man would be more strongly opposed than I should be, to incorporating the institution of slavery among its elements.

Lincoln says that settling new territories is laying the foundations of society so slavery should be banned but that he never proposed freeing slaves in the older states, such as Missouri where many in the audience live:

The principle upon which I have insisted in this canvass, is in relation to laying the foundations of new societies. I have never sought to apply these principles to the old States for the purpose of abolishing slavery in those States. It is nothing but a miserable perversion of what I have said, to assume that I have declared Missouri, or any other slave State, shall emancipate her slaves. I have proposed no such thing.

Lincoln clarifies his “house divided” speech, which Douglas has attacked throughout the debate as a prelude to war. Lincoln says Douglas “has warred upon” the House Divided speech “as Satan wars upon the Bible.” The crowd laughs. 

Lincoln points out that Douglas had predicted he Kansas-Nebraska Act would put an end to the “agitation” over slavery by allowing each new state to decide the slavery question. But Lincoln says the opposite has occurred.  “When was there ever a greater agitation in Congress than last winter? When was it as great in the country as to-day?” he asks. 

Mr. Lincoln then continues to argue that the question of slavery has been a constant throughout all of the great issues of the United States.

Is that the truth? How many times have we had danger from this question? Go back to the day of the Missouri Compromise. Go back to the Nullification question, at the bottom of which lay this same slavery question. Go back to the time of the Annexation of Texas. Go back to the troubles that led to the Compromise of 1850. You will find that every time, with the single exception of the Nullification question, they sprung from an endeavor to spread this institution. There never was a party in the history of this country, and there probably never will be, of sufficient strength to disturb the general peace of the country…

Mr. Lincoln says that by ending slavery in the new states, slavery will eventually disappear.

 “We might, by arresting the further spread of it, and placing it where the fathers originally placed it, put it where the public mind should rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. [Great applause.] 

He returns to the topic of where he stands on equality and affirms that it is his party that finds the institution as wrong. 

The sentiment that contemplates the institution of slavery in this country as a wrong is the sentiment of the Republican party. It is the sentiment around which all their actions-all their arguments circle-from which all their propositions radiate. They look upon it as being a moral, social and political wrong; and while they contemplate it as such, they nevertheless have due regard for its actual existence among us…

He finishes out his time by discussing the Dred Scott decision and how it relates to the Fugitive Slave Law.

I do not believe it is a Constitutional right to hold slaves in a Territory of the United States. I believe the decision was improperly made and I go for reversing it. Judge Douglas is furious against those who go for reversing a decision. But he is for legislating it out of all force while the law itself stands. I repeat that there has never been so monstrous a doctrine uttered from the mouth of a respectable man….

Mr. Lincoln points out that the Constitution never uses the word slavery but instead uses “covert” language, such as “three-fifths of all other persons.” He says this is because the Founders wanted the Constitution to last for all time and expected slavery to disappear. He put it this way:

that covert language was used with a purpose, and that purpose was that in our Constitution, which it was hoped and is still hoped will endure forever-when it should be read by intelligent and patriotic men, after the institution of slavery had passed from among us-there should be nothing on the face of the great charter of liberty suggesting that such a thing as negro slavery had ever existed among us. [Enthusiastic applause.] This is part of the evidence that the fathers of the Government expected and intended the institution of slavery to come to an end. They expected and intended that it should be in the course of ultimate extinction. And when I say that I desire to see the further spread of it arrested, I only say I desire to see that done which the fathers have first done.

Mr. Lincoln says Judge Douglas is trying to misrepresent him.  

On the point of my wanting to make war between the free and the slave States, there has been no issue between us. So, too, when he assumes that I am in favor of introducing a perfect social and political equality between the white and black races. These are false issues, upon which Judge Douglas has tried to force the controversy. There is no foundation in truth for the charge that I maintain either of these propositions. The real issue in this controversy-the one pressing upon every mind-is the sentiment on the part of one class that looks upon the institution of slavery as a wrong, and of another class that does not look upon it as a wrong. 

The issues, Mr. Lincoln says, is between right and wrong:

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 then finishes and is met with applause that is quite loud for a crowd of this size.

Judge Douglas begins his last rebuttal. He begins by returning Lincoln’s statement about his feud with the current administration.

His first criticism upon me is the expression of his hope that the war of the Administration will be prosecuted against me and the Democratic party of this State with vigor. He wants that war prosecuted with vigor; I have no doubt of it. His hopes of success, and the hopes of his party depend solely upon it.

He says this war is the first one Lincoln wanted to prosecute vigorously, noting Lincoln opposed the war with Mexico. 

 When the Mexican war [was] being waged, and the American army was surrounded by the enemy in Mexico, he thought that war was unconstitutional, unnecessary, and unjust. (“That’s so,” “you’ve got him,” “he voted against it,” &c.) He thought it was not commenced on the right spot. (Laughter.)

The crowd does find that tremendously funny. Even one crowd member calls Mr. Lincoln a traitor because of his support of the Mexican side. 

Judge Douglas concludes on the argument about what is a state’s right issue and what should be controlled by the federal government. He believes that the issues of slavery should be determined by the populace of the state.

My friends, if, as I have said before, we will only live up to this great fundamental principle, there will be peace between the North and the South. Mr. Lincoln admits that under the Constitution on all domestic questions, except slavery, we ought not to interfere with the people of each State. What right have we to interfere with slavery any more than we have to interfere with any other question? He says that this slavery question is now the bone of contention. Why? Simply because agitators have combined in all the free States to make war upon it…

And to great applause the circuit of the Lincoln-Douglas debate closes and what they have said will determine who will continue on to the senate in the coming months. It may be destined to determine who becomes president two years hence.

Galesburg, Illinois, Oct. 7

After the pleasant summer afternoons of late September comes the harsh bite of early fall. The campus of Knox College is filled with people in their Sunday best braving the grounds after a storm yesterday. The stage is close to the Old Main and despite the raging wind, a window remains open. A banner spreads across the stage declaring favor for Mr. Lincoln, “Knox college for Lincoln” it says.

20,000 people are milling about the speaking area. There have been rumors of people arriving at dawn. Mr. Lincoln stayed overnight in Knoxville and will be coming along the nine-mile road after a stop at Mayor Henry Sanderson’s home. 

As is typical of Judge Douglas, he arrives by train and with a cannon blast. He is arriving from Bancroft. The audience is rowdier today than the other crowds have been. Once it gets closer to the determined time of the speech, the reason for the open window becomes apparent as both candidates crawl through it onto the speaking platform. Mr. Lincoln, as always keeps up an affable presence quipping that “at last, I’ve gone through college!”

Judge Douglas is the first to speak. He begins discussing his leadership on the  Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allows new states to decide whether to be slave or free and puts an end to the Missouri Compromise that barred slavery in territories north of Missouri’s southern border.  

Douglas denies that this ensures new states will be slave states,  pointing out his opposition to the pro-slavery Lecompton constitution that would have brought Kansas into the Union as a slave state. He says he opposed that constitution because it had been voted down in an election.

Douglas says:

The Kansas and Nebraska bill declared…it was the true intent and meaning of the act not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States. For the last four years I have devoted all my energies, in private and public, to commend that principle to the American people. 

Douglas calls out, with quotes from Mr. Lincoln’s speech, the charges of the differences in Mr. Lincoln’s rhetoric throughout the debates, citing the speeches in Charleston and the one in Chicago. In the north Mr. Lincoln says the Declaration of Independence included blacks, saying,”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?

Yet Douglas points out that in Charleston Mr. Lincoln declared:

“I will say then, that I am not nor never 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 never have been in favor of making voters of the free negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office, or having them to marry with white people…

Douglas sums it up this way:

Fellow-citizens, here you find men hurraing for Lincoln and saying that he did right, when in one part of the State he stood up for negro equality, and in another part for political effect, discarded the doctrine and declared that there always must be a superior and inferior race. Abolitionists up north are expected and required to vote for Lincoln because he goes for the equality of the races, holding that by the Declaration of Independence the white man and the negro were created equal, and endowed by the Divine law with that equality, and down south he tells the old Whigs, the Kentuckians, Virginians, and Tennesseeans, that there is a physical difference in the races, making one superior and the other inferior, and that he is in favor of maintaining the superiority of the white race over the negro. Now, how can you reconcile those two positions of Mr. Lincoln? He is to be voted for in the south as a pro-slavery man, and he is to be voted for in the north as an abolitionist.

Douglas says that no political creed is sound unless it can be expressed throughout the country.

Is there a Republican residing in Galesburg who can travel into Kentucky and carry his principles with him across Ohio? What Republican from Massachusetts can visit the Old Dominion without leaving his principles behind him when he crosses Mason and Dixon’s line? Permit me to say to you in perfect good humor, but in all sincerity, that no political creed is sound which cannot be proclaimed fearlessly in every State of this Union where the Federal Constitution is not the supreme law of the land.

Then Mr. Lincoln begins his speech. He is greeted by cheers. Mr. Lincoln immediately takes on Douglas’ claim that the Declaration of Independence does not include Negroes:

The Judge has alluded to the Declaration of Independence, and insisted that negroes are not included in that Declaration; and that it is a slander upon the framers of that instrument, to suppose that negroes were meant therein….I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence;…And I will remind Judge Douglas and this audience, that while Mr. Jefferson was the owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this very subject, he used the strong language that he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just….

Lincoln says Douglas’ claims that he is saying different things in different parts of the state is intentional misunderstanding. Lincoln says his belief that Negroes are included in the Declaration does not mean they are equal. He says:

…in so far as it should be insisted that there was an equality between the white and black races that should produce a perfect social and political equality, it was an impossibility.  

Mr. Lincoln then returns to the Dred Scott decision and the power of the Supreme Court. Lincoln denies there is a political obligation to obey a wrongly decided Supreme Court decision and says Jefferson and Jackson agreed.  And he says Dred Scott was wrongly decided because the Constitution nowhere says that slave owning is a protected property right. He says:

The essence of the Dred Scott case is compressed into the sentence which I will now read: “Now, as we have already said in an earlier part of this opinion, upon a different point, the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.” I repeat it, “The right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution!”  I believe that the right of property in a slave is not distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution, and Judge Douglas thinks it is. I believe that the Supreme Court and the advocates of that decision may search in vain for the place in the Constitution where the right of a slave (owner) is distinctly and expressly affirmed. 

Judge Douglas, and whoever like him teaches that the negro has no share, humble though it may be, in the Declaration of Independence, is going back to the era of our liberty and independence, and, so far as in him lies, muzzling the cannon that thunders its annual joyous return; that he is blowing out the moral lights around us, when he contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them; that he is penetrating, so far as lies in his power, the human soul, and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty, when he is in every possible way preparing the public mind, by his vast influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual and national.

When Judge Douglas rises in rebuttal six cheers are called for from the crowd. Douglas again probes the tension between Mr. Lincoln’s claim that the Declaration of Independence includes Negroes and that Negroes are not equal to whites. He says:

Mr. Lincoln asserts to-day as he did at Chicago, that the negro was included in that clause of the Declaration of Independence which says that all men were created equal and endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (Ain’t that so?) If the negro was made his equal and mine, if that equality was established by Divine law, and was the negro’s inalienable right, how came he to say at Charleston to the Kentuckians residing in that section of our State, that the negro was physically inferior to the white man, belonged to an inferior race, and he was for keeping him always in that inferior condition. (Good.) I wish you to bear these things in mind. At Charleston he said that the negro belonged to an inferior race, and that he was for keeping him in that inferior condition. There he gave the people to understand that there was no moral question involved, because the inferiority being established, it was only a question of degree and not a question of right; here, to-day, instead of making it a question of degree, he makes it a moral question, says that it is a great crime to hold the negro in that inferior condition. (He’s right.) Is he right now or was he right in Charleston?   

The three hours of bracing the bracing wind end with a round of applause and the arrival of a southbound train with people who were likely coming to observe the speech.