Stephen A. Douglas had been selected by the Illinois State Legislature to serve as senator in the same year that Abraham Lincoln was elected by the people to serve in the House of Representatives. Lincoln would serve only a single term, heading back home to a more pedestrian life as a circuit lawyer. Roused to get back into politics following the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which his old rival Douglas had pushed through Congress, Lincoln found himself in 1858 trying to block Douglas’s reelection and become a senator himself. Perhaps if Douglas would agree to a series of debates?
On July 24, Lincoln wrote to Douglas:
“Will it be agreeable to you to make an arrangement for you and myself to divide time, and address the same audiences during the present canvass?”
Douglas had little to gain. He was the incumbent senator, highly influential, and the state legislature that made the final senate selection was overwhelmingly gerrymandered to reelect him. He had known Lincoln for two decades and debated him many times. Douglas acknowledged to friends that Lincoln was a formidable debater. Why should he take the risk of debating?
After some hesitation, Douglas responded with a certain amount of indignance and some accusations that Lincoln wanted to include third-party candidates–which Lincoln just as indignantly denied–and some rather whining complaints about the tardiness of asking for joint debates. After more discussion, Douglas offered the following to Lincoln:
“I will, in order to accommodate you as far as it is in my power to do so, take the responsibility of making an arrangement with you for a discussion between us at one prominent point in each Congressional district in the state, excepting the second and sixth districts, where we have both spoken and in each of the cases you had the concluding speech. If agreeable to you I will indicate the following places as those most suitable in the several Congressional districts at which we should speak, to wit, Freeport, Ottawa, Galesburg, Quincy, Alton, Jonesboro & Charleston.”
In his response, Lincoln pointed out that Douglas was not correct that Lincoln “had the concluding speech” in Chicago and Springfield, but notwithstanding this misrepresentation, he accepted the proposed seven joint debates. Douglas followed up on July 30 by stipulating the times and places:
- Ottawa – August 21
- Freeport – August 27
- Jonesboro – September 15
- Charleston – September 18
- Galesburg – October 7
- Quincy – October 13
- Alton – October 15
Douglas also in that letter agreed to Lincoln’s suggestion that the two of them alternate the opening and closing of the debates, stipulating that:
“I will speak at Ottawa one hour; you can reply occupying an hour and a half and I will then follow for half an hour. At Freeport you shall open the discussion and speak one hour, I will follow for an hour and a half, and you can then reply for half an hour. We will alternate in like manner at each successive place.”
The following day, Lincoln responded in a bit of a whiney tone that “although, by the terms, as you propose, you take four openings and closes to my three, I accede, and thus close the arrangement.”
The debates were on!
[Photo of Lincoln-Douglas statues in Freeport, IL by David J. Kent. This post was originally published at Lincolnian.org]
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David J. Kent is Immediate Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity andEdison: 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.
