Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Starting point is 00:00:00 The summer of 1858 in Illinois was one of the hottest on a record, yet the weather paled in comparison to the rising political temperatures in the state. What should have been a routine U.S. Senate campaign turned into a profound turning point in American history. Abraham Lincoln, a former four-term state assemblyman, mounted a challenge against the powerful incumbent Senator Stephen A. Douglas. The upstart Lincoln called for a series of seven debates across the state, and much to his surprise, Douglas accepted.

Starting point is 00:00:30 Learn more about the Lincoln Douglas debates and how they changed the course of the country on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMGM and Game Sense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

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Starting point is 00:01:28 With Wayfair, there's no what-if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. In the years preceding the Civil War, America lived in a constant state of political crisis. For 10 years, regional tensions had torn at the fabric of the Union. The territorial gains from the Mexican-American War reintroduced the word secession into the American political vocabulary. The issue of slavery's expansion, seemingly settled by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, suddenly thrust itself back into the center of a national debate.

Starting point is 00:02:04 The dynamic growth of the country in the 1850s completely unraveled the compromise, that had held the country together for over 30 years, a deal that had drawn a literal line across the continent to divide free soil from enslaved soil. Expansion exposed these deep fault lines. As the nation added new states, the specter of slavery emerged every single time. Between the Missouri compromise and the start of the Civil War,

Starting point is 00:02:31 the United States added 11 new states, each bringing its own crisis over whether geography would support the expansion of the state. slavery. As Illinois prepared for the senatorial election of 1858, tensions ran dangerously high. In Illinois, prior to the passage of the 17th Amendment, eligible voters did not elect U.S. senators directly. They elected state legislatures who then chose the state's federal senators. This indirect system, however, did not diminish the intensity of the campaign. Driven by a desire to spark America's westward railroad expansion, the incumbent Democratic

Starting point is 00:03:08 Stephen A. Douglas became the chief champion of a concept called Popular Sovereignty. This doctrine dictated that the federal government step aside, allowing local voters in new territories to decide the question of slavery for themselves. Popular sovereignty triggered violent confrontations across the Kansas Territory, culminating in abolitionist John Brown, killing five pro-slavery settlers. The controversy surrounding the La Compton Constitution, a proposed state constitution for the Kansas territory only made the crisis worse. Backed by President James Buchanan, this rigged pro-slavery document fractured the Democratic Party and set the stage for a dramatic showdown in Illinois.

Starting point is 00:03:51 Stephen A. Douglas broke with the president and Southern Democrats over the La Compton Constitution, turning his 1858 re-election campaign into a fight for his political life. Compounding the drama, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the historic, Dred Scott decision in 1857. Dred Scott held that black Americans could not be U.S. citizens, that Congress could not ban slavery in federal territories, and that enslaved people remain property, even when taken into free territory. Illinois was important because of its geography. Illinois is a very long state. Its north-south axis runs more than 400 miles. The northern border of Illinois is like a different country compared to its southern tip. Kero, Illinois, is

Starting point is 00:04:36 actually further south than Richmond, Virginia, the future capital of the Confederacy. The division splitting Douglas's Democratic Party stood on full display across the state. The southern parts of Illinois embraced the La Compton Constitution, supported the Dred Scott decision, and the expansion of slavery. Meanwhile, the northern section of the state opposed all of these things and sought to limit the expansion of slavery, fully aware that reversing this institution entirely probably meant civil war. He needed to state his case to both the northern and southern parts of the state to both retain his seat and lay the groundwork for a future presidential bid. Abraham Lincoln occupied a very different position in 1858. Lacking Douglas's

Starting point is 00:05:23 name recognition and political reputation, Lincoln had to make a bold statewide case if he was going to unseat the incumbent. Illinois mirrored American politics at the time, prompting one Washington newspaper to note, the forces of the Union will fight the great battle in Illinois. The newly formed Republican Party stood ready to join the fight. Formed in Rippin, Wisconsin in 1854, in opposition to the Douglas Champion Kansas Nebraska Act, the young party had already tasted victory in the state. In 1856, the Republican candidate for Governor William Bissell won a tightly contested three-way election, defeating Democrat candidate William A. Richardson by a a mere 2% of the vote.

Starting point is 00:06:06 Yet the Republican Party in Illinois faced the same challenges as the Democrats, a deeply divided electorate. The old Whig Party once dominated American political life, but it collapsed under the political strains before the Civil War. If the compromise of 1850

Starting point is 00:06:24 cracked the Whig Party's foundation by exchanging California's entry into the Union as a free state for a robust fugitive slave law, the Kansas-Nabrask, Act of 1854 shattered the party entirely. The Whigs fractured into a northern section that strongly opposed the expansion of slavery and a southern section that focused on immediate economic interests, advocating for the

Starting point is 00:06:47 continued expansion of slavery and the preservation of the Union. Illinois presented a remarkable confluence of factors for the dying Whig party, mirroring the trends seen among the Democrats. Northern Whigs in Illinois drifted to the Republicans, rallying around their collective aversion to slavery. Southern Whigs gravitated towards the Democratic Party. Despite his standing as a formidable two-term senator with national recognition, presidential aspirations, and deep institutional support, when Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of debates, he had to accept.

Starting point is 00:07:23 Lincoln wisely proposed seven towns for the debate, two in the north, where his arguments would be welcome, and two in the south where they would be challenged. In the north, Douglas would be on the defensive, whereas in the south the roles would be reversed. The remaining three debates took place in central Illinois, giving both candidates an opportunity to expand their base of support. The structure of the debates looked refreshing compared to modern political debate formats. The opening candidate had 60 minutes to state their case and build an argument. The second candidate had 90 minutes to respond, and then the first candidate had the final 30 minutes for a rebuttal. Unlike modern debates, there was no moderator to ask the candidates' questions.

Starting point is 00:08:07 The candidates alternated the opening slot across the seven stops, and both men pledged and maintained the strict decorum of never interrupting their opponent. And it's quite impressive that two political candidates managed to maintain this agreement amid more than 20 hours of grueling debate across the state before hostile and boisterous crowds. And that doesn't mean that the candidates simply sat there placidly. They were human and they openly shook their heads whenever they disputed a point on stage. While Douglas paced back and forth like a caged lion, Lincoln consistently took notes to record his thoughts. The two rivals were also complete physical opposites.

Starting point is 00:08:47 Standing six foot four, Lincoln cast a literal shadow over Douglas, who stood a full foot shorter at five foot four. For nearly two months from summer into early fall, these polar opposites debated states' rights, economics, and slavery. Unlike Lincoln, Douglas viewed slavery through a pragmatic political lens rather than a moral one, treating the institution not as a national sin, but as a local administrative matter for voters to handle. Whenever presented with an opportunity to make a stand against slavery on moral grounds, Douglas found his bearings in the middle, casting it as an issue for local authorities.

Starting point is 00:09:25 While Lincoln had long disliked the institution of slavery, a passage from the Kansas-Nebraska Act fundamentally transformed his opposition from a quiet disagreement into a fierce moral crusade. His evolution was on full display in one of his most famous speeches given in Springfield on June 16, 1858, just weeks before the debate began. Lincoln adopted soaring almost biblical rhetoric when he declared, quote, A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become a like lawful in all the states, old as well as new, north as well as south.

Starting point is 00:10:18 End quote. Lincoln often evoke the words of the Declaration of Independence, believing the phrase, all men are created equal within the preamble lay at the very heart of the matter. Douglas sharply disagreed, maintaining that the founders fully intended the nation to remain permanently partitioned between free and slave states. While Lincoln was warning that slavery was causing the House to fall, Douglas placed his complete faith in popular sovereignty as the solution. He famously summarized his moral indifference to the institution on the national stage, declaring, quote, I care not whether slavery is voted down or voted up.

Starting point is 00:10:55 That is not the question for the union. But at a second debate in Freeport, Illinois, Lincoln backed Douglas into a corner, forcing him to reconcile popular sovereignty with the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision. Douglas responded with a compromise that became known as the Freeport Doctrine. He argued that, regardless of Supreme Court rulings, slavery could not exist for a day anywhere without local police regulations and slave codes to protect it. Therefore, if a territory citizens oppose slavery, They simply had to elect representatives who would refuse to pass those protective laws.

Starting point is 00:11:34 While Douglas reduced human bondage to a routine local vote, Lincoln forced the public to confront the raw injustice of slavery as a national sin. After seven intense debates across the state, the votes came back as expected. The northern part of the state cast their ballot for Lincoln and the Republicans, while the southern part supported Douglas. In the end, Lincoln and the Republicans were unethical. able to woo enough of the disaffected Whig voters from central Illinois to overcome the strength of the state's entrenched democratic political machine. The election was incredibly close. When the final

Starting point is 00:12:10 ballots were counted, Democrats won 54% of the seats in the Illinois state legislature, and those state representatives then duly re-elected Stephen Douglas as their U.S. Senator. Yet the long-term implications of the Lincoln-Douglas debates on American political culture were extraordinary. The most obvious result was the sudden elevation of Abraham Lincoln into a national political figure. Conversely, the fallout for the Democratic Party was catastrophic. Douglas's failure to support the Lecompton Constitution, along with his prescription for avoiding slavery in areas that didn't want it, deeply alienated Southern Democrats. When it came time to cast their votes for President in 1860, Southern delegates refused to support Douglas.

Starting point is 00:12:57 They split the party entire. opting instead to run their own Southern Democratic candidate, John C. Breckenridge, with Douglas receiving the presidential nomination from the Northern Democrats. The splintering of the Democrats triggered a true multi-party crisis. Alongside Lincoln and Douglas, the race featured Breckenridge and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. Douglas's indecisive stance on slavery led him to a fourth-place finish, carrying only the state of Missouri. Likewise, the party's division handed Abraham Lincoln the presidency. The Lincoln-Douglas debates did not settle the great question of slavery, and Stephen

Starting point is 00:13:36 Douglas won the election, so in the immediate sense, Douglas won the debate. But in the larger sweep of history, Abraham Lincoln won something far more important, a national audience. The debates revealed the moral, political, and constitutional fault lines that were pulling the country apart, and they transformed Lincoln from a respected Illinois lawyer into a serious national figure. Two years later, those same arguments would carry him to the presidency, and the unresolved issues debated across Illinois in 1858 would soon be decided not at the ballot box or on a debate stage, but on the battlefields of the Civil War. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel.

Starting point is 00:14:23 The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. Research in writing for this episode was provided by Joel Hermanson. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord, as this is where everything happens outside of the podcast. As always, if you leave a review on any of the major podcast apps, you too can have it run in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

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