The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
The Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, and the incumbent Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas. At the time, U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures; therefore, Lincoln and Douglas were campaigning for their respective parties to win control of the Illinois legislature. All seven debates primarily discussed the slavery issue, and for Lincoln, the debates provided an opportunity to articulate his position against the expansion of slavery into the territories, which bolstered his popularity with the Republicans and helped him secure the party's nomination in the 1860 presidential election.
As the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Douglas's aim in the debates was to defend his position that popular sovereignty was the best method to legislate on the expansion of slavery, regardless of the Dred Scott decision. Douglas argued that, while the Dred Scott case prohibited Congress from legislating on the expansion of slavery, citizens in the territories could effectively legislate against it by refusing to create the structures and enforcements to protect slave owners' interests within the territory (this position later became known as the Freeport Doctrine). By refusing to enact slave codes, Douglas claimed, territories could remain "free" in every way but a technical sense. In the aftermath of the debates, the Freeport Doctrine effectively alienated Southern Democrats from Douglas and the Northern faction of the Democratic Party.
Lincoln, who had served as the only Whig representative from Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1847 to 1849, had most recently practiced law in Springfield and only returned to politics in order to oppose the proslavery Kansas-Nebraska Act. Lincoln argued that legislating slavery based on popular sovereignty would nationalize and perpetuate slavery in both the territories and in the Northern states. Lincoln asserted that United States policy had always been to legislate against slavery, citing the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which banned slavery from a large part of what is now the Midwest. Therefore, popular sovereignty and the Dred Scott decision were departures from policies of the past.
Addressing Douglas's accusations that he was an abolitionist, Lincoln countered that popular sovereignty and Dred Scott set dangerous precedents and that the nation could not exist perpetually as half slave and half free. Lincoln's vehement opposition to the expansion of slavery in the territories did not mean that he supported emancipation or social equality among races. Indeed many historians argue that while Lincoln was opposed to the expansion of slavery, he occupied a moderate position on the subject, and was primarily concerned with how the institution interfered with the republican principles of the Founding Fathers rather than with taking a moral stance against it. Although Lincoln claimed that African Americans had an equal right to liberty and labor, he remained ambiguous on the matter of emancipation and denied that they were entitled to equal social and civic rights.
U.S. Postage, 1958 issue, commemorating the Lincoln and Douglas debates
Results
After the debates, Southern politicians demanded the establishment of slave codes in territories such as Kansas in order to challenge Douglas's Freeport Doctrine. These demands further splintered the Northern and Southern wings of the Democratic Party and strengthened the Republican Party in the upcoming election of 1860.
On election day, Democrats won a narrow majority of seats in the Illinois General Assembly, despite getting slightly less than half the votes. The legislature then reelected Douglas. However, the widespread media coverage of the debates raised Lincoln's national profile, making him a viable nominee as the Republican candidate in the upcoming 1860 presidential election.