Galesburg – Chasing Lincoln’s 5th Lincoln-Douglas Debate

One of the stops on my Chasing Abraham Lincoln tour was the campus of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, site of the 5th Lincoln-Douglas Debate. Drawing the largest crowd of any of the seven debates, Galesburg seems the natural place to host the Lincoln Studies Center led by Co-Directors Rodney O. Davis and Douglas L. Wilson.

Due to fierce winds and foreboding weather, the debate platform had to be moved into the shadow of “Old Main,” the largest building on the Knox College campus. To reach the platform Lincoln, Douglas, and other dignitaries needed to enter the building and crawl out a window. The self-taught Lincoln, according to tradition, noted that “At last I have gone through…college.”

The day of my visit mimicked the day of the debates. Overcast and windy, I dodged puddles and raindrops (and a few modern day students) to record the following report:

As with all of the debates, the primary issue debated was slavery. Douglas denied there was any wrong in slavery, and in fact, vociferously argued that the government was by and for white people. Lincoln strenuously disagreed:

I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social, and political evil [and] desire a policy that looks to the prevention of this wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may come to an end.

Two more debates would occur over the following week or so and due to the vagaries of the law at that time Lincoln would lose the election to Douglas despite Republicans gaining more votes [state legislatures still chose Senators; the 17th Amendment giving direct vote to the people wasn’t until 1913]. But these debates would firmly place Lincoln in the public’s eye for the forthcoming presidential election in 1860.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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