The Lincoln/Douglas Debates - Essay Example

The main issue talked over in all seven debates was slavery (Jaffa, 2009). In agreeing to debates both candidates agreed to hold debate in each of the nine congressional districts of state of Illinois. They had already spoken in the two of them, namely in Chicago and Springfield, within one day of one another. Therefore they agreed that their “joint appearances would be held on in the rest of her districts. The debates were held throughout the seven towns of Illinois. These were Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy and Alton.

The debates in Quincy, Freeport and Alton drew especially numbers of listeners from neighboring states, as the matter of slavery was of paramount importance to citizens throughout the nation. The debates enjoyed intense newspaper coverage. Major newspapers from Chicago sent their stenographers to create entire texts of each debate. Those texts were then reprinted by the newspapers throughout the whole country. Those newspapers which supported Douglas edited the speeches he delivered in order to remove the errors he made, whilst they left the speeches of Lincoln as they had been delivered.

Likewise republican papers edited their candidate’s speeches yet left Douglas’ texts not edited (Good, 2007) After Lincoln lost the election for Senator in Illinois he edited the texts of all the speeches he had given and then had all of them published in a book. The coverage of the original debates as well as the subsequent popularity of the book led ultimately to Abraham Lincoln’s nomination for US president by 1860 National Convention in Chicago. The format of the debates was: one candidate was supposed to speak for an hour, then another one was to speak for an hour and a half, and then the first candidate was permitted a half-an-hour “rejoinder” (Political Debates) Lincoln a d Douglas alternated to speak first.

As the incumbent Douglas was allowed to speak first in four of the seven debates. Before the debates began, Lincoln had asserted that Douglas had been encouraging public fears of amalgamation of white and black races. This resulted in thousands of republicans’ driving away from the Republican Party. Douglass did his best to persuade, especially Democrats, that Lincoln was an abolitionist because he had said that the Declaration of Independence in fact applied to both whites and blacks. Lincoln defined a self evident truth as “the electric cord .

that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together."(Good, 2007) Abraham Lincoln asserted in his House Divided Speech that his contender took part in a conspiracy to nationalize the slaves. He maintained that ending the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery in Nebraska and Kansas had been the first step in that direction, and that the decision of Dred Scott was the next step in the process of spreading slavery into the territory of the North. Lincoln said that termination of the Missouri Compromise, banning the slavery in Nebraska and Kansas was actually the first step in that direction.

Furthermore Lincoln maintained that the decision that Dred Scott had made before was another step to spreading slavery into Northern States. Lincoln feared that the next decision of Dred Scott would introduce slavery in the state of Illinois. Both Douglas and Lincoln had opposition. Nevertheless Abraham Lincoln had been a Whig before; another prominent Whig Theohpilus Lyle Dickey argued that Lincoln had too close ties with