On this episode of Our American Stories, Douglas was the greatest debater of his day. Lincoln was an unknown trial lawyer from Illinois. Allen Guelzo tells the story of how the days-long debates between them would lead Lincoln to the Presidency and make America what it is today. Allen is the author of Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America. A special thanks to the Bill of Rights Institute for allowing us to use this audio, originally part of their Scholar Talks series.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
In eighteen fifty eight, a series of debates took place
in Illinois that turned a one time and little known
trial lawyer and one time one term US representative into
the forefront of American political life. We're talking about Abraham Lincoln.
(00:34):
Here to tell the story of the Lincoln Douglas debates
is doctor Alan Gelzo, a distinguished Research scholar at Princeton University,
an author of numerous books, including Lincoln and Douglas, the
Debates that Defined America. And we want to thank the
Bill of Wrights Institute for allowing us to use this audio.
(00:56):
Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Well, I think we really have to be again with
the Kansas Nebraska Act of eighteen fifty four, because that
was the real trigger for Lincoln's emergence to national prominence.
He said himself that October that the passage of the
Kansas Nebraska Act the previous may took us by surprise,
(01:19):
and he's speaking collectively of northerners, of anti slavery people.
It took us by surprise, It astounded us. We were
thunderstruck and stunned, and we reeled and fell in utter confusion.
But he said, we rose, each fighting, grasping whatever he
could first reach, a sigh, the pitchfork, a chopping act,
(01:44):
or a butcher's cleaver. And we struck, he said, in
the direction of the sound. And we are rapidly closing
in upon him. Well, him in this case was the
architect of the Kansas Nebraska Bill, Stephen Arnold Douglas. Lincoln
always spoke of himself as being naturally opposed to slavery.
(02:11):
He also never urged direct action against it. And the
reason he never urged direct action against slavery before eighteen
fifty four, at least, was because he said, the time
will come and must come, when there will not be
a single slave within the borders of this country. This
(02:32):
is what he meant when he talked about the gradual
extinction of slavery, or putting slavery on a path toward
ultimate extinction. What he meant was there was no need
to force a solution to the slavery problem, because the
slavery problem was solving itself. The Great Missouri Compromise of
(02:53):
eighteen twenty had reserved almost all of the original Louisiana
purchase lands and the way best for organization as free
territories and then eventually for admission as free states. Slavery
would remain penned in where it was in the South,
and there it would eventually asphyxiate because everybody knew, or
(03:16):
at least thought that they knew, that slavery required space
in which to expand Lincoln stuck to that belief even
after the Mexican War added the modern Southwest Arizona, New Mexico, California,
Nevada to the American domain, because he convinced himself that
(03:39):
slavery could never flourish in those arid regions. People referred
to them as the Great American Desert, and in fact,
California was admitted to the Union as a free state
in eighteen fifty. So, at least until then, Lincoln saw
no reason to worry. But in eighteen fifty four, his
old political nemesis and the rising star of the Democratic Party,
(04:03):
Stephen A. Douglass, concluded that the territories reserved by the
Missouri Compromise for Freedom back in eighteen twenty would never
be opened for settlement, while southern pro slavery congressmen were
blocking their organization. Well, Douglas was eager to see those
territories developed, so he wrote the Kansas Nebraska Bill, Kansas
(04:27):
and Nebraska being the shorthand description of virtually all of
the west north of the Missouri line, and the bill
would repeal the restrictions on slavery in the Missouri Compromise
and allow the settlers of those lands Kansas and Nebraska
to decide for themselves whether they wished to legalize slavery
(04:49):
as they organized themselves as territories and then a states.
This is what Douglas called popular sovereignty. In other words,
let the people in the territory decide their own future.
Lincoln called it betrayal, betrayal of the Missouri Compromise, betrayal
(05:11):
of his confidence that slavery was on the road to
ultimate extinction, betrayal of the guiding principles of the Declaration
of Independence, because popular sovereignty through the declarations announcement that
all men are created equal and are endired by their
creator with certain inalienable rights, among which our life, liberty,
(05:34):
and the pursuit of happiness to the winds and reduced
liberty and equality to political rewards that voters could extend
or withhold as they pleased. Let that become the rule
for the West, and slavery would spread all over the
(05:54):
old Louisiana purchase, and when it did, it would gain
enough political heft in Congress to force the repeal of
the Free States Bands on the Slavery and legalize slavery
everywhere in the United States. In other words, Lincoln went
to sleep the night before the Kansas Nebraska Bill was passed,
(06:15):
confident that slavery was on its way out the door,
and woke up the next morning to find that it
had kicked back into life and was threatening to take
over the whole house.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
And you've been listening to Alan Galzo tell the story
of what would become the Lincoln Douglas debates, the setup,
the background to what would prompt this remarkable discourse between
Lincoln and Douglas and make Lincoln a national star, at
least get him to a level of national prominence. And
(06:57):
it was a perfect summation there by Gelzo. So Lincoln
want to sleep the night before the Kansas Nebraska Act,
certain or near certain that slavery would ultimately extinguish itself,
and woke up the next morning understanding fully that indeed
the United States Congress had breathed new life into the
(07:19):
institution of slavery. When we come back more of the
remarkable story of the Lincoln Douglas Debates. Here on our
American story. This is Lee Habib, and this is our
American stories, and all of our history stories are brought
to us by our generous sponsors, including Hillsdale College, where
(07:43):
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If you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to
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Hillsdale dot edu. That's Hillsdale dot edu. And we continue
(08:10):
with our American stories and doctor Alan Gelzo and the
story of the Lincoln Douglas Debates.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Let's return to the story. I mean, it is remarkable
when you think about it, comparing the kinds of things
that are called presidential debates today, which really a little
more than kind of televised short order press conferences. A
one hour opening by one speaker, an hour and a
half response a half, three hours on their feet talking NonStop,
(08:41):
and thousands of people come out. I mean to the
first debate in Ottawa, Illinois, twenty five thousand people are
estimated to have come out that afternoon. I mean, that's
a marker just in itself of how important democratic thinking
and democratic decision making was. Debating in particular occupied a
(09:03):
very important part of that political life, because debating really
had a surprisingly long history in American politics. I mean,
the most famous debate before Lincoln and Douglas anyway, was
the debate in the Senate in eighteen thirty between Daniel
Webster and Robert Hayne over the nature of the union.
(09:24):
Abolitionists and slaveholders had been debating each other in public
for quite some time. There was a debate in October
of eighteen forty five in Cincinnati between Jonathan Blanchard and
Nathan L. Rice. This was a debate stretched over four
days upon the question is slave holding in itself sinful?
(09:46):
And the relation between master and slave a sinful relation? Yeah,
they talked about sin. Sin actually was a perennial topic
for public debate. Alexander Campbell, the founder of the Disciples
of Christ, challenged the freethinker Robert Owen to a public
debate in Cincinnati in eighteen twenty nine, and then conducted
(10:08):
a twelve day long debate on baptism in Lexington, Kentucky,
in eighteen forty three, presided over by nobody less than
Henry Clay, the Great Henry Clay, Representative and senator from Kentucky,
perennial presidential candidate, and Lincoln's, as he put it, Lincoln's
(10:29):
bow ideal of a statesman. In those days, every small
town seemed to have its debating society, as did every
small college, and Lincoln had been part of such a
debating society as a twenty something in New Salem, Illinois.
In fact, Lincoln and Douglas together had debated each other
as far back as eighteen thirty nine. What's peculiar about
(10:54):
these debates, and what really separates them from what we
tend to see as debates today, is that, in the
strictest sense, they weren't debates at all. They were more
like sequences of speeches without very much in the way
of back and forth between the speakers. There were no
moderators to interrupt or pose questions. The only role the
(11:17):
moderator had was to introduce each speaker. The debaters simply
took turns standing up and speaking to the question. Edition.
There were debating manuals like James mcgelligate's The American Debater
of eighteen fifty five and Burley's Legislative Guide of eighteen
fifty six. These set out rules for order in debate,
(11:42):
but these rules really only described how to keep the
speakers in an orderly sequence. The most common form of
debates in the American nineteenth century were these sequential speech events,
and usually they are held at the same places on
the same day, and frequently they are described as the
(12:02):
universal Western style of conducting a political campaign. So while
the Lincoln and Douglas debates may look extraordinary to us
in their difference from modern debating, they were actually very
much par for the course in the mid eighteen fifties.
If there's any clear goal in view with these debates,
(12:25):
it really seemed principally to be the goal of getting
them transcribed and then printed in newspapers or sometimes even
published afterward as books. So in that way, debate was
really intended for print rather than to be heard, and
therefore the emphasis will fall more on the logic of
(12:46):
ideas than on putting on a dramatic performance. The carnival atmosphere.
The carnival atmosphere of the debates is something we don't
really expect from Lincoln and Lets. We sometimes expect we're
going to get something much more dignified, and yet it
was there. I mean, these debates are constantly punctuated by
(13:10):
brass bands, barbecues, banners, especially banners. When Douglas spoke at
Rock Island, Illinois, on October twenty ninth, right at the
end of the campaign, the banners the crowds held up
told the whole story of his campaign. They had models
like popular sovereignty now and forever, this country was made
(13:35):
for white men, down with Negro equality and so on
and so forth like that. They were very in that respect.
They were very participatory kinds of events. But Lincoln and
Douglas in these debates really represent two divergent ideas about democracy,
which was struggling for supremacy in America at that time.
(13:57):
This was not just a debate slavery. It wasn't even
just a debate about slavery's legalization in the West. It
was really fundamentally about what we think democracy means and involves.
Douglas's notion of democracy and the notion of many Americans
(14:19):
was that majorities decide all questions purely on the grounds
of being a majority, and without respect to theories of
political right or political wrong, or moral right or moral wrong.
All that mattered to Stephen A. Douglas was whether the
process of recognizing a majority was fair and above board.
(14:41):
After that, he did not care what conclusion the majority enacted,
and he said so very plainly on the slavery question.
He liked to say and did say on the floor
of the Senate. He didn't care whether Kansas or any
of the other Western territories voted slavery up or voted
it down, so long as the vote was legitimate and
(15:04):
expressed the will of the people. For Douglas, the keyword
in democracy was process. Let the process be correct, and
the results were irrelevant. Douglas, in fact, bought at dragging
morality into political questions because he feared how divisive, how paralyzing,
(15:26):
that might make those questions. Lincoln, by contrast, thought of
politics as a moral pursuit. If process was the keyword
for Douglas, then the keyword for Lincoln was principle. He
didn't doubt that the basic operating principle of a democracy
(15:47):
is that a majority, by virtue of being a majority,
ought to rule. But there were certain moral limits on
the questions that majority should be allowed to decide, certain
moral lines that even majorities could not cross, certain transcendent
(16:07):
and foundational truths which no amount of carefully guarded process
could repeal. Lincoln post slavery because it was a violation
of that morality, because it trampled down a self evident truth, liberty.
Douglas argued that the people ought to be allowed to
(16:31):
legalize slavery if they wanted to. Lincoln argued that minds
which could not see that slavery was an abomination were
operating on the wrong principles, process versus principles. In the
end run, the Lincoln debates is Lincoln Douglas debates are
about which is going to predominate in American political life.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
And you've been listening to doctor Alan Gelza, author of
numerous books, including Lincoln and Douglas Debates that defined America,
and my goodness, the debate lines were clear, and by
the way, as you heard from doctor Gelzo, these were
less debates than they were a series and sequences of speeches.
And my goodness, the number of people who attended these
(17:14):
things twenty five thousand on just one occasion. They were
there to see the difference in the end between these
two men their approaches to democracy itself. One emphasized process,
and that of course would be Douglas and the other principle.
It wasn't as if Douglas didn't care about principle or
that Lincoln didn't care about process. But in the end,
(17:36):
the animated passion of these two men that became the
demarcation line. And when we come back, we're going to
learn more about the Lincoln Douglas debates. What happens next
here on our American stories? And we returned to our
(18:09):
American stories and doctor Alan Gelzo, author of numerous books,
including Lincoln and Douglas, The Debates that Define America, And
we want to thank the Bill of Wrights Institute for
allowing us to use this audio. Let's return to the story.
Here again is doctor Alan Gelzo.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
For Stephen Douglas. The Declaration of Independence was a historical artifact,
not a universal aspiration. Douglas had said in eighteen fifty
seven that the signers of the Declaration of Independence, we're
speaking of British subjects on this continent being equal to
(18:53):
British subjects born and residing in Great Britain, and therefore
the guarantees about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
didn't apply to everyone, were intended to apply to everyone,
but only to people of a particular race, a particular nation,
a particular time, a particular culture. And that was what
(19:15):
Douglas led off with in the opening debate at Ottawa, Illinois,
when he said, I believe this government was made on
the white basis, by white men, for the benefit of
white men and their posterity forever, and I am in
favor of confining citizenship to white men. Lincoln's reply was
(19:37):
to point out that Douglas says, no man can defend
the declaration except on the hypothesis that it only referred
to British white subjects, and that no other white men
are included. And from that Lincoln was quick to point
out that must mean that it does not speak alike
to the downtrodden of all nations German, French, Spanish, et cetera,
(20:01):
but simply meant that the English were born equal and
endowed by their creator with certain natural or equal rights,
among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
and that it meant nobody else. And that allowed Lincoln
to ask whether democrats like Douglass are willing to have
the gem taken from the Magna Carta of human liberty
(20:26):
in this shameful way, or will they maintain that its
declaration of equality of natural rights among all nations is correct.
For Lincoln, the declaration was his ancient faith. It teaches
me that all men are created equal, and that there
can be no moral right in connection with one man's
(20:48):
making a slave of another. Anything which produced slavery was
not democracy. That was monarchy, the divine right of kings
to rule the rest of humanity. As Lincoln said in
the next to last debate in Alton, Illinois, it is
the same spirit that says.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
You work and toil and earn bread, and I eat it,
no matter in what shape it comes, whether from the
mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people
of his own nation and live by the fruit of
their labor, or from one race of.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Men as an apology for enslaving another race. It is
the same tyrannical principle, constant universal of application all around
the world. Some people have never forgiven Lincoln for saying,
as he did at the opening of the Fourth Debate
(21:45):
at Charleston, Illinois, that I am not, nor ever have
been in favor of bringing about in any way the
social and political equality of the white and black races.
And he went on from that to say, I am not,
nor ever have been in favor of making voters or
jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office,
(22:08):
nor to intermarry with white people. And I will say,
in addition to this, that there is a physical difference
between the white and black races, which I believe will
forever forbid the two races living together on terms of
social and political equality. Now, listening to that it is damaging.
It makes him sound like a white supremacist. But listen,
(22:32):
listen to what else lincolnsents. I hold that, notwithstanding all this,
there is no reason in the world why the negro
is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in
the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as
(22:54):
much entitled to these as the white man. I agree
with Judge Douglas. He is not my equal in many respects,
certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment,
but in the right to eat the bread without leave
of anybody else, which his own hand earns. He is
(23:15):
my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the
equal of every living man. Now you see, Lincoln is
drawing here a distinction which we do not often draw today,
but which was common in his time, between natural rights
and social or political rights. Natural rights are the rights
(23:37):
described in the Declaration Life, liberty the pursuit of happiness.
Possessing them is what makes us human. They are hardwired
into human nature, and every one of us possesses those
rights in equal quantities. And as Jefferson himself said, the
hand of force may destroy them, but cannot disjoin them.
(24:02):
Political and social rights are something different. Political and social
rights do not define our humanity. They define our participation
in communities, and in democratic communities, majorities decide what those
social and political rights are. Social and political rights do
(24:23):
not define our humanity. I mean, for instance, we don't
give ten year olds the right to vote, But that
doesn't make them less human. Maybe to their siblings, it does,
But you know, beyond that, it doesn't make them less
a human being, much less less a citizen now in
(24:44):
the same way, precisely because unlike natural rights, social and
political rights can change in a democratic community as members
of that community are persuaded to change the social and
political rules. So the entire higher environment of social and
political rights is malleable. We used to set eligibility for
(25:06):
voting rights at age twenty one well as of nineteen
seventy one, and the twenty sixth Amendment, eighteen year olds
could now vote. That allowed me to cast my first
federal vote that year, but it didn't mean that I
was any less human the year before. So Lincoln, by
(25:28):
asserting the equal natural rights of black people, is really
saying something well in advance of Stephen A. Douglas, And
no one understood that better than Douglas himself, because he
responded by saying that conceding natural equality to black people
would eventually result in conceding social and political equality too.
(25:51):
I mean, Douglas indulged race baiting through the debates, which
was so provocative I can't repeat it here, but listed
all along that he bore black people no ill will.
I mean Douglas said, I hold that humanity and Christianity
both require that the negro shall have and enjoy every right,
(26:11):
every privilege, and every immunity consistent with the safety of
the society in which he lives. But notice those were
not privileges or rights or immunities which black people enjoyed
by their own natural right. The moment you began to
talk about black people possessing natural rights, Douglas warned, you're
(26:34):
on the high road to social and political rights and
social and political equality. Douglas claimed at Ottawa, we have
provided that the negro shall not be a slave, and
we have also provided that he shall not be a citizen.
But the Republicans say that he ought to be made
(26:55):
a citizen, and when he becomes a citizen, he becomes
your equal with all your rights and privileges. You know,
that may have been the one point in the debates
where Stephen A. Douglas was absolutely right.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
When we come back the final segment of the story
of the Lincoln, Douglas debates here on our American stories,
(27:37):
and we return to our American stories, and the final
portion of our story on the Lincoln Douglas debates. Telling
the story is doctor Alan Gelzo, author of numerous books,
including Lincoln and Douglas, the Debates that defined America. Let's
return to the story.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Well, if I were to give you the cliff Notes
version of the seven debates, I think I'd have to
say that Lincoln starts slow and Douglas starts fast. It's
maybe a little bit like calling the Kentucky Derby. But
in the first debate at Ottawa, in other words, right
out of the gate, Douglas is quick to pose embarrassing
(28:18):
questions to Lincoln, and Lincoln is hesitant and defensive. Now
this begins to change slightly at Freeport, the site of
the second debate, where it becomes Lincoln's turn to pose
an even more damaging set of questions to Douglas. The
third debate at Jonesborough in the southern part of Illinois,
(28:41):
is probably the most lackluster, and it was also the
most poorly attended too, the basic reason for that being
that Jonesborough was secure Douglas territory. It's when we swing
up to the center of the state, to Charleston the
things really peed up because Charleston, and sitting in the
middle of the state, is in the middle of what
(29:02):
I call the Whig built the north of the state
had been settled very largely by immigrants from the north
and had a certain anti slavery cast below that wig belt.
In the south, settlement mainly comes from Kentucky and the
Upper South, and there's a general democratic pro slavery flavored
(29:24):
of things. The swing counties and districts, so to speak,
are the ones which used to vote Whig. And there
what's in the middle of the state, and in the
middle of those counties, in the middle of those districts
is Charleston, and it's there that Lincoln, at the fourth
debate begins to assert his argument about the morality of slavery,
(29:48):
or rather the immorality of slavery. And from that point onward,
Lincoln increasingly takes on the upper hand, strapping Douglas over
the all of the Declaration of Independence and natural law.
And it didn't help Douglas that his robust oratorical style
(30:11):
wore him out physically, so that by the time we
get to the fifth debate at Galesburg, he's suffering from
bronchitis and medicating himself with liquor, which shows whereas Lincoln.
Lincoln is going straight through the seven debates like the
energizer Bunny. Above all, Douglas made few changes in the
(30:33):
speeches he gave Lincoln. On the contrary, alters improves, deepens
his moral appeal against slavery, until by the seventh debate
at Quincy he clearly has the upper hand, but he
did not have the votes. Remember that this is a
(30:56):
senatorial election, and this occurs in a time when the
state legislatures elected United States Senators. What Lincoln and Douglas
were really doing was campaigning among the people to elect
state legislators who would when the new state legislature met
(31:16):
in January of eighteen fifty nine, select one of them
as US Senator. Now, if we judge purely by the
votes cast for Republican state legislators, Lincoln should have had
no trouble being selected for the Senate. It should have
been the political upset of the nineteenth century. Of the
(31:37):
three hundred and sixty six thousand votes cast for the
state legislature, one hundred and ninety thousand went to Republican
candidates and only one hundred and sixty six thousands of
Douglas's Democrats. If we judge it by that standard, Lincoln
should have easily beaten Douglas. The problem is the state
of Illinois apportionment plan was out of date and unevenly
(32:04):
favored the southernmost districts of the state, which were overwhelmingly Democratic.
That meant they returned more state legislators to the state
legislature than the middle or northern parts of the state did.
In fact, what they did was to return a Democratic
majority to the state legislature, and in January of eighteen
(32:26):
fifty nine, when the legislature meets, they give Douglas a
fifty four to forty six majority and he is re
elected to the US Senate. Actually, Lincoln had this figured
out the night of the vote itself. As the returns
were coming in, he could see the direction it was going.
He saw the handwriting on the wall, and it was
(32:47):
a bitter, bitter disappointment to him because he really had
done well, but the apportionment marched against him. The debates
did two things, one of them practical and the other philosophical.
The practical thing is they made Lincoln nationally known. And
up to this point he had simply been a prominent
(33:09):
Illinois Republican, and many people suspected that when he was
selected as the favorite choice to run against Douglas. What
the Republicans of Illinois were doing was admitting defeat, and
let's send a sacrificial lamb to the election feast. Lincoln
did not look at it that way. He had been
spoiling for a fight with Stephen A. Douglas for quite
(33:31):
a while, and it never occurred to him that he
might not win this, or might not even be intended
to win it. He went in to win, and he
shaped his responses in the debates with that in view.
The debates made him a national figure. I mean this
is partially because technology comes to his assistance. The electrical
(33:54):
telegraph had really only just been invented in the eighteen forties.
Is first put into use in eighteen forty four by
Samuel F. B. Morse, But by eighteen fifty eight there
are thousands of miles of telegraph wires strung all across
the country, and it means that reports of the debates
(34:14):
can be spread at lightning speed all across the nation.
And the process looks something like this. Lincoln would speak,
a shorthand reporter would take down what was said. The
shorthand transcript will be put into the hands of the
hands of a Galloper, who immediately boarded the train to Chicago.
In Chicago, the transcription is made set into type, and
(34:38):
by the next morning the text of the debate is
ready to be printed, and from there ready to be
printed the next day and the day after in newspapers
all across the country. People start out reading the text
of these debates, mostly because they're interested in Douglas, because
he's the famous one. But as they read more and
more of these debates, they are more and more interested
(34:59):
in this man, Lincoln. This is what makes Lincoln someone
talked about from Maine to Louisiana and Texas. That in
turn set him on the path for the invitation he
received to speak in New York City before the Republican
Party's East Coast leadership in February of eighteen sixty, and
that in turn set him up for his nomination to
(35:23):
the presidency in May of that year. So, in practical terms,
the Lincoln Douglas debates are absolutely vital to making Lincoln
a man who gets nominated for the presidency less than
two years later. But then there's the philosophical achievement of
the debates, and that philosophical achievement is Lincoln's clear and
(35:44):
unequivocal definition of the American experiment as the pursuit of
natural rights has embodied in the Declaration of Independence. In
February of eighteen sixty one, after his election, but just
before his annoyuration, he would say in Independence Hall in Philadelphia,
(36:05):
that all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn
so far as I have been able to draw them,
from the sentiments which originated and were given to the
world from this hall in which we stand, I have
often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it
(36:25):
was that motivated the men who assembled here and adopted
that Declaration of Independence. It was not the mere matter
of the separation of the colonies from the motherland that
would have been Douglas's answer. Rather, it was something in
that declaration giving liberty not alone to the people of
(36:47):
this country, but hope to the world for all future time,
which gave promise that in due time the weights should
be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that
all should have an equal chance. This, Lincoln said, this
is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence. And
he went on, and this is slightly eerie. He went
(37:10):
on to add, rather than abandon those principles embodied in
the Declaration of Independence, I would rather be assassinated on
the spot. A little more than four years later, the
body of Abraham Lincoln assassinated would lie in state in
(37:30):
that same Independence Hall, and three hundred thousand people would
file past to pay their respects. That guiding sentiment that
he saw on the Declaration of Independence, that they would
be hoped for the world, that the weights should be lifted,
that all should have an equal chance. That has been
(37:53):
our guiding sentiment ever since, and the Lincoln Douglas debates
are the greatest common very on it.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
A special thanks to doctor Alan Gelzo. The story of
the Lincoln Douglas debates here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
In eighteen fifty eight, a series of debates took place
in Illinois that turned a one time and little known
trial lawyer and one time one term US representative into
the forefront of American political life. We're talking about Abraham Lincoln.
(00:34):
Here to tell the story of the Lincoln Douglas debates
is doctor Alan Gelzo, a distinguished Research scholar at Princeton University,
an author of numerous books, including Lincoln and Douglas, the
Debates that Defined America. And we want to thank the
Bill of Wrights Institute for allowing us to use this audio.
(00:56):
Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Well, I think we really have to be again with
the Kansas Nebraska Act of eighteen fifty four, because that
was the real trigger for Lincoln's emergence to national prominence.
He said himself that October that the passage of the
Kansas Nebraska Act the previous may took us by surprise,
(01:19):
and he's speaking collectively of northerners, of anti slavery people.
It took us by surprise, It astounded us. We were
thunderstruck and stunned, and we reeled and fell in utter confusion.
But he said, we rose, each fighting, grasping whatever he
could first reach, a sigh, the pitchfork, a chopping act,
(01:44):
or a butcher's cleaver. And we struck, he said, in
the direction of the sound. And we are rapidly closing
in upon him. Well, him in this case was the
architect of the Kansas Nebraska Bill, Stephen Arnold Douglas. Lincoln
always spoke of himself as being naturally opposed to slavery.
(02:11):
He also never urged direct action against it. And the
reason he never urged direct action against slavery before eighteen
fifty four, at least, was because he said, the time
will come and must come, when there will not be
a single slave within the borders of this country. This
(02:32):
is what he meant when he talked about the gradual
extinction of slavery, or putting slavery on a path toward
ultimate extinction. What he meant was there was no need
to force a solution to the slavery problem, because the
slavery problem was solving itself. The Great Missouri Compromise of
(02:53):
eighteen twenty had reserved almost all of the original Louisiana
purchase lands and the way best for organization as free
territories and then eventually for admission as free states. Slavery
would remain penned in where it was in the South,
and there it would eventually asphyxiate because everybody knew, or
(03:16):
at least thought that they knew, that slavery required space
in which to expand Lincoln stuck to that belief even
after the Mexican War added the modern Southwest Arizona, New Mexico, California,
Nevada to the American domain, because he convinced himself that
(03:39):
slavery could never flourish in those arid regions. People referred
to them as the Great American Desert, and in fact,
California was admitted to the Union as a free state
in eighteen fifty. So, at least until then, Lincoln saw
no reason to worry. But in eighteen fifty four, his
old political nemesis and the rising star of the Democratic Party,
(04:03):
Stephen A. Douglass, concluded that the territories reserved by the
Missouri Compromise for Freedom back in eighteen twenty would never
be opened for settlement, while southern pro slavery congressmen were
blocking their organization. Well, Douglas was eager to see those
territories developed, so he wrote the Kansas Nebraska Bill, Kansas
(04:27):
and Nebraska being the shorthand description of virtually all of
the west north of the Missouri line, and the bill
would repeal the restrictions on slavery in the Missouri Compromise
and allow the settlers of those lands Kansas and Nebraska
to decide for themselves whether they wished to legalize slavery
(04:49):
as they organized themselves as territories and then a states.
This is what Douglas called popular sovereignty. In other words,
let the people in the territory decide their own future.
Lincoln called it betrayal, betrayal of the Missouri Compromise, betrayal
(05:11):
of his confidence that slavery was on the road to
ultimate extinction, betrayal of the guiding principles of the Declaration
of Independence, because popular sovereignty through the declarations announcement that
all men are created equal and are endired by their
creator with certain inalienable rights, among which our life, liberty,
(05:34):
and the pursuit of happiness to the winds and reduced
liberty and equality to political rewards that voters could extend
or withhold as they pleased. Let that become the rule
for the West, and slavery would spread all over the
(05:54):
old Louisiana purchase, and when it did, it would gain
enough political heft in Congress to force the repeal of
the Free States Bands on the Slavery and legalize slavery
everywhere in the United States. In other words, Lincoln went
to sleep the night before the Kansas Nebraska Bill was passed,
(06:15):
confident that slavery was on its way out the door,
and woke up the next morning to find that it
had kicked back into life and was threatening to take
over the whole house.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
And you've been listening to Alan Galzo tell the story
of what would become the Lincoln Douglas debates, the setup,
the background to what would prompt this remarkable discourse between
Lincoln and Douglas and make Lincoln a national star, at
least get him to a level of national prominence. And
(06:57):
it was a perfect summation there by Gelzo. So Lincoln
want to sleep the night before the Kansas Nebraska Act,
certain or near certain that slavery would ultimately extinguish itself,
and woke up the next morning understanding fully that indeed
the United States Congress had breathed new life into the
(07:19):
institution of slavery. When we come back more of the
remarkable story of the Lincoln Douglas Debates. Here on our
American story. This is Lee Habib, and this is our
American stories, and all of our history stories are brought
to us by our generous sponsors, including Hillsdale College, where
(07:43):
students go to learn all the things that are beautiful
in life and all the things that matter in life.
If you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to
you with their free and terrific online courses. Go to
Hillsdale dot edu. That's Hillsdale dot edu. And we continue
(08:10):
with our American stories and doctor Alan Gelzo and the
story of the Lincoln Douglas Debates.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Let's return to the story. I mean, it is remarkable
when you think about it, comparing the kinds of things
that are called presidential debates today, which really a little
more than kind of televised short order press conferences. A
one hour opening by one speaker, an hour and a
half response a half, three hours on their feet talking NonStop,
(08:41):
and thousands of people come out. I mean to the
first debate in Ottawa, Illinois, twenty five thousand people are
estimated to have come out that afternoon. I mean, that's
a marker just in itself of how important democratic thinking
and democratic decision making was. Debating in particular occupied a
(09:03):
very important part of that political life, because debating really
had a surprisingly long history in American politics. I mean,
the most famous debate before Lincoln and Douglas anyway, was
the debate in the Senate in eighteen thirty between Daniel
Webster and Robert Hayne over the nature of the union.
(09:24):
Abolitionists and slaveholders had been debating each other in public
for quite some time. There was a debate in October
of eighteen forty five in Cincinnati between Jonathan Blanchard and
Nathan L. Rice. This was a debate stretched over four
days upon the question is slave holding in itself sinful?
(09:46):
And the relation between master and slave a sinful relation? Yeah,
they talked about sin. Sin actually was a perennial topic
for public debate. Alexander Campbell, the founder of the Disciples
of Christ, challenged the freethinker Robert Owen to a public
debate in Cincinnati in eighteen twenty nine, and then conducted
(10:08):
a twelve day long debate on baptism in Lexington, Kentucky,
in eighteen forty three, presided over by nobody less than
Henry Clay, the Great Henry Clay, Representative and senator from Kentucky,
perennial presidential candidate, and Lincoln's, as he put it, Lincoln's
(10:29):
bow ideal of a statesman. In those days, every small
town seemed to have its debating society, as did every
small college, and Lincoln had been part of such a
debating society as a twenty something in New Salem, Illinois.
In fact, Lincoln and Douglas together had debated each other
as far back as eighteen thirty nine. What's peculiar about
(10:54):
these debates, and what really separates them from what we
tend to see as debates today, is that, in the
strictest sense, they weren't debates at all. They were more
like sequences of speeches without very much in the way
of back and forth between the speakers. There were no
moderators to interrupt or pose questions. The only role the
(11:17):
moderator had was to introduce each speaker. The debaters simply
took turns standing up and speaking to the question. Edition.
There were debating manuals like James mcgelligate's The American Debater
of eighteen fifty five and Burley's Legislative Guide of eighteen
fifty six. These set out rules for order in debate,
(11:42):
but these rules really only described how to keep the
speakers in an orderly sequence. The most common form of
debates in the American nineteenth century were these sequential speech events,
and usually they are held at the same places on
the same day, and frequently they are described as the
(12:02):
universal Western style of conducting a political campaign. So while
the Lincoln and Douglas debates may look extraordinary to us
in their difference from modern debating, they were actually very
much par for the course in the mid eighteen fifties.
If there's any clear goal in view with these debates,
(12:25):
it really seemed principally to be the goal of getting
them transcribed and then printed in newspapers or sometimes even
published afterward as books. So in that way, debate was
really intended for print rather than to be heard, and
therefore the emphasis will fall more on the logic of
(12:46):
ideas than on putting on a dramatic performance. The carnival atmosphere.
The carnival atmosphere of the debates is something we don't
really expect from Lincoln and Lets. We sometimes expect we're
going to get something much more dignified, and yet it
was there. I mean, these debates are constantly punctuated by
(13:10):
brass bands, barbecues, banners, especially banners. When Douglas spoke at
Rock Island, Illinois, on October twenty ninth, right at the
end of the campaign, the banners the crowds held up
told the whole story of his campaign. They had models
like popular sovereignty now and forever, this country was made
(13:35):
for white men, down with Negro equality and so on
and so forth like that. They were very in that respect.
They were very participatory kinds of events. But Lincoln and
Douglas in these debates really represent two divergent ideas about democracy,
which was struggling for supremacy in America at that time.
(13:57):
This was not just a debate slavery. It wasn't even
just a debate about slavery's legalization in the West. It
was really fundamentally about what we think democracy means and involves.
Douglas's notion of democracy and the notion of many Americans
(14:19):
was that majorities decide all questions purely on the grounds
of being a majority, and without respect to theories of
political right or political wrong, or moral right or moral wrong.
All that mattered to Stephen A. Douglas was whether the
process of recognizing a majority was fair and above board.
(14:41):
After that, he did not care what conclusion the majority enacted,
and he said so very plainly on the slavery question.
He liked to say and did say on the floor
of the Senate. He didn't care whether Kansas or any
of the other Western territories voted slavery up or voted
it down, so long as the vote was legitimate and
(15:04):
expressed the will of the people. For Douglas, the keyword
in democracy was process. Let the process be correct, and
the results were irrelevant. Douglas, in fact, bought at dragging
morality into political questions because he feared how divisive, how paralyzing,
(15:26):
that might make those questions. Lincoln, by contrast, thought of
politics as a moral pursuit. If process was the keyword
for Douglas, then the keyword for Lincoln was principle. He
didn't doubt that the basic operating principle of a democracy
(15:47):
is that a majority, by virtue of being a majority,
ought to rule. But there were certain moral limits on
the questions that majority should be allowed to decide, certain
moral lines that even majorities could not cross, certain transcendent
(16:07):
and foundational truths which no amount of carefully guarded process
could repeal. Lincoln post slavery because it was a violation
of that morality, because it trampled down a self evident truth, liberty.
Douglas argued that the people ought to be allowed to
(16:31):
legalize slavery if they wanted to. Lincoln argued that minds
which could not see that slavery was an abomination were
operating on the wrong principles, process versus principles. In the
end run, the Lincoln debates is Lincoln Douglas debates are
about which is going to predominate in American political life.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
And you've been listening to doctor Alan Gelza, author of
numerous books, including Lincoln and Douglas Debates that defined America,
and my goodness, the debate lines were clear, and by
the way, as you heard from doctor Gelzo, these were
less debates than they were a series and sequences of speeches.
And my goodness, the number of people who attended these
(17:14):
things twenty five thousand on just one occasion. They were
there to see the difference in the end between these
two men their approaches to democracy itself. One emphasized process,
and that of course would be Douglas and the other principle.
It wasn't as if Douglas didn't care about principle or
that Lincoln didn't care about process. But in the end,
(17:36):
the animated passion of these two men that became the
demarcation line. And when we come back, we're going to
learn more about the Lincoln Douglas debates. What happens next
here on our American stories? And we returned to our
(18:09):
American stories and doctor Alan Gelzo, author of numerous books,
including Lincoln and Douglas, The Debates that Define America, And
we want to thank the Bill of Wrights Institute for
allowing us to use this audio. Let's return to the story.
Here again is doctor Alan Gelzo.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
For Stephen Douglas. The Declaration of Independence was a historical artifact,
not a universal aspiration. Douglas had said in eighteen fifty
seven that the signers of the Declaration of Independence, we're
speaking of British subjects on this continent being equal to
(18:53):
British subjects born and residing in Great Britain, and therefore
the guarantees about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
didn't apply to everyone, were intended to apply to everyone,
but only to people of a particular race, a particular nation,
a particular time, a particular culture. And that was what
(19:15):
Douglas led off with in the opening debate at Ottawa, Illinois,
when he said, I believe this government was made on
the white basis, by white men, for the benefit of
white men and their posterity forever, and I am in
favor of confining citizenship to white men. Lincoln's reply was
(19:37):
to point out that Douglas says, no man can defend
the declaration except on the hypothesis that it only referred
to British white subjects, and that no other white men
are included. And from that Lincoln was quick to point
out that must mean that it does not speak alike
to the downtrodden of all nations German, French, Spanish, et cetera,
(20:01):
but simply meant that the English were born equal and
endowed by their creator with certain natural or equal rights,
among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
and that it meant nobody else. And that allowed Lincoln
to ask whether democrats like Douglass are willing to have
the gem taken from the Magna Carta of human liberty
(20:26):
in this shameful way, or will they maintain that its
declaration of equality of natural rights among all nations is correct.
For Lincoln, the declaration was his ancient faith. It teaches
me that all men are created equal, and that there
can be no moral right in connection with one man's
(20:48):
making a slave of another. Anything which produced slavery was
not democracy. That was monarchy, the divine right of kings
to rule the rest of humanity. As Lincoln said in
the next to last debate in Alton, Illinois, it is
the same spirit that says.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
You work and toil and earn bread, and I eat it,
no matter in what shape it comes, whether from the
mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people
of his own nation and live by the fruit of
their labor, or from one race of.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Men as an apology for enslaving another race. It is
the same tyrannical principle, constant universal of application all around
the world. Some people have never forgiven Lincoln for saying,
as he did at the opening of the Fourth Debate
(21:45):
at Charleston, Illinois, that I am not, nor ever have
been in favor of bringing about in any way the
social and political equality of the white and black races.
And he went on from that to say, I am not,
nor ever have been in favor of making voters or
jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office,
(22:08):
nor to intermarry with white people. And I will say,
in addition to this, that there is a physical difference
between the white and black races, which I believe will
forever forbid the two races living together on terms of
social and political equality. Now, listening to that it is damaging.
It makes him sound like a white supremacist. But listen,
(22:32):
listen to what else lincolnsents. I hold that, notwithstanding all this,
there is no reason in the world why the negro
is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in
the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as
(22:54):
much entitled to these as the white man. I agree
with Judge Douglas. He is not my equal in many respects,
certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment,
but in the right to eat the bread without leave
of anybody else, which his own hand earns. He is
(23:15):
my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the
equal of every living man. Now you see, Lincoln is
drawing here a distinction which we do not often draw today,
but which was common in his time, between natural rights
and social or political rights. Natural rights are the rights
(23:37):
described in the Declaration Life, liberty the pursuit of happiness.
Possessing them is what makes us human. They are hardwired
into human nature, and every one of us possesses those
rights in equal quantities. And as Jefferson himself said, the
hand of force may destroy them, but cannot disjoin them.
(24:02):
Political and social rights are something different. Political and social
rights do not define our humanity. They define our participation
in communities, and in democratic communities, majorities decide what those
social and political rights are. Social and political rights do
(24:23):
not define our humanity. I mean, for instance, we don't
give ten year olds the right to vote, But that
doesn't make them less human. Maybe to their siblings, it does,
But you know, beyond that, it doesn't make them less
a human being, much less less a citizen now in
(24:44):
the same way, precisely because unlike natural rights, social and
political rights can change in a democratic community as members
of that community are persuaded to change the social and
political rules. So the entire higher environment of social and
political rights is malleable. We used to set eligibility for
(25:06):
voting rights at age twenty one well as of nineteen
seventy one, and the twenty sixth Amendment, eighteen year olds
could now vote. That allowed me to cast my first
federal vote that year, but it didn't mean that I
was any less human the year before. So Lincoln, by
(25:28):
asserting the equal natural rights of black people, is really
saying something well in advance of Stephen A. Douglas, And
no one understood that better than Douglas himself, because he
responded by saying that conceding natural equality to black people
would eventually result in conceding social and political equality too.
(25:51):
I mean, Douglas indulged race baiting through the debates, which
was so provocative I can't repeat it here, but listed
all along that he bore black people no ill will.
I mean Douglas said, I hold that humanity and Christianity
both require that the negro shall have and enjoy every right,
(26:11):
every privilege, and every immunity consistent with the safety of
the society in which he lives. But notice those were
not privileges or rights or immunities which black people enjoyed
by their own natural right. The moment you began to
talk about black people possessing natural rights, Douglas warned, you're
(26:34):
on the high road to social and political rights and
social and political equality. Douglas claimed at Ottawa, we have
provided that the negro shall not be a slave, and
we have also provided that he shall not be a citizen.
But the Republicans say that he ought to be made
(26:55):
a citizen, and when he becomes a citizen, he becomes
your equal with all your rights and privileges. You know,
that may have been the one point in the debates
where Stephen A. Douglas was absolutely right.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
When we come back the final segment of the story
of the Lincoln, Douglas debates here on our American stories,
(27:37):
and we return to our American stories, and the final
portion of our story on the Lincoln Douglas debates. Telling
the story is doctor Alan Gelzo, author of numerous books,
including Lincoln and Douglas, the Debates that defined America. Let's
return to the story.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Well, if I were to give you the cliff Notes
version of the seven debates, I think I'd have to
say that Lincoln starts slow and Douglas starts fast. It's
maybe a little bit like calling the Kentucky Derby. But
in the first debate at Ottawa, in other words, right
out of the gate, Douglas is quick to pose embarrassing
(28:18):
questions to Lincoln, and Lincoln is hesitant and defensive. Now
this begins to change slightly at Freeport, the site of
the second debate, where it becomes Lincoln's turn to pose
an even more damaging set of questions to Douglas. The
third debate at Jonesborough in the southern part of Illinois,
(28:41):
is probably the most lackluster, and it was also the
most poorly attended too, the basic reason for that being
that Jonesborough was secure Douglas territory. It's when we swing
up to the center of the state, to Charleston the
things really peed up because Charleston, and sitting in the
middle of the state, is in the middle of what
(29:02):
I call the Whig built the north of the state
had been settled very largely by immigrants from the north
and had a certain anti slavery cast below that wig belt.
In the south, settlement mainly comes from Kentucky and the
Upper South, and there's a general democratic pro slavery flavored
(29:24):
of things. The swing counties and districts, so to speak,
are the ones which used to vote Whig. And there
what's in the middle of the state, and in the
middle of those counties, in the middle of those districts
is Charleston, and it's there that Lincoln, at the fourth
debate begins to assert his argument about the morality of slavery,
(29:48):
or rather the immorality of slavery. And from that point onward,
Lincoln increasingly takes on the upper hand, strapping Douglas over
the all of the Declaration of Independence and natural law.
And it didn't help Douglas that his robust oratorical style
(30:11):
wore him out physically, so that by the time we
get to the fifth debate at Galesburg, he's suffering from
bronchitis and medicating himself with liquor, which shows whereas Lincoln.
Lincoln is going straight through the seven debates like the
energizer Bunny. Above all, Douglas made few changes in the
(30:33):
speeches he gave Lincoln. On the contrary, alters improves, deepens
his moral appeal against slavery, until by the seventh debate
at Quincy he clearly has the upper hand, but he
did not have the votes. Remember that this is a
(30:56):
senatorial election, and this occurs in a time when the
state legislatures elected United States Senators. What Lincoln and Douglas
were really doing was campaigning among the people to elect
state legislators who would when the new state legislature met
(31:16):
in January of eighteen fifty nine, select one of them
as US Senator. Now, if we judge purely by the
votes cast for Republican state legislators, Lincoln should have had
no trouble being selected for the Senate. It should have
been the political upset of the nineteenth century. Of the
(31:37):
three hundred and sixty six thousand votes cast for the
state legislature, one hundred and ninety thousand went to Republican
candidates and only one hundred and sixty six thousands of
Douglas's Democrats. If we judge it by that standard, Lincoln
should have easily beaten Douglas. The problem is the state
of Illinois apportionment plan was out of date and unevenly
(32:04):
favored the southernmost districts of the state, which were overwhelmingly Democratic.
That meant they returned more state legislators to the state
legislature than the middle or northern parts of the state did.
In fact, what they did was to return a Democratic
majority to the state legislature, and in January of eighteen
(32:26):
fifty nine, when the legislature meets, they give Douglas a
fifty four to forty six majority and he is re
elected to the US Senate. Actually, Lincoln had this figured
out the night of the vote itself. As the returns
were coming in, he could see the direction it was going.
He saw the handwriting on the wall, and it was
(32:47):
a bitter, bitter disappointment to him because he really had
done well, but the apportionment marched against him. The debates
did two things, one of them practical and the other philosophical.
The practical thing is they made Lincoln nationally known. And
up to this point he had simply been a prominent
(33:09):
Illinois Republican, and many people suspected that when he was
selected as the favorite choice to run against Douglas. What
the Republicans of Illinois were doing was admitting defeat, and
let's send a sacrificial lamb to the election feast. Lincoln
did not look at it that way. He had been
spoiling for a fight with Stephen A. Douglas for quite
(33:31):
a while, and it never occurred to him that he
might not win this, or might not even be intended
to win it. He went in to win, and he
shaped his responses in the debates with that in view.
The debates made him a national figure. I mean this
is partially because technology comes to his assistance. The electrical
(33:54):
telegraph had really only just been invented in the eighteen forties.
Is first put into use in eighteen forty four by
Samuel F. B. Morse, But by eighteen fifty eight there
are thousands of miles of telegraph wires strung all across
the country, and it means that reports of the debates
(34:14):
can be spread at lightning speed all across the nation.
And the process looks something like this. Lincoln would speak,
a shorthand reporter would take down what was said. The
shorthand transcript will be put into the hands of the
hands of a Galloper, who immediately boarded the train to Chicago.
In Chicago, the transcription is made set into type, and
(34:38):
by the next morning the text of the debate is
ready to be printed, and from there ready to be
printed the next day and the day after in newspapers
all across the country. People start out reading the text
of these debates, mostly because they're interested in Douglas, because
he's the famous one. But as they read more and
more of these debates, they are more and more interested
(34:59):
in this man, Lincoln. This is what makes Lincoln someone
talked about from Maine to Louisiana and Texas. That in
turn set him on the path for the invitation he
received to speak in New York City before the Republican
Party's East Coast leadership in February of eighteen sixty, and
that in turn set him up for his nomination to
(35:23):
the presidency in May of that year. So, in practical terms,
the Lincoln Douglas debates are absolutely vital to making Lincoln
a man who gets nominated for the presidency less than
two years later. But then there's the philosophical achievement of
the debates, and that philosophical achievement is Lincoln's clear and
(35:44):
unequivocal definition of the American experiment as the pursuit of
natural rights has embodied in the Declaration of Independence. In
February of eighteen sixty one, after his election, but just
before his annoyuration, he would say in Independence Hall in Philadelphia,
(36:05):
that all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn
so far as I have been able to draw them,
from the sentiments which originated and were given to the
world from this hall in which we stand, I have
often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it
(36:25):
was that motivated the men who assembled here and adopted
that Declaration of Independence. It was not the mere matter
of the separation of the colonies from the motherland that
would have been Douglas's answer. Rather, it was something in
that declaration giving liberty not alone to the people of
(36:47):
this country, but hope to the world for all future time,
which gave promise that in due time the weights should
be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that
all should have an equal chance. This, Lincoln said, this
is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence. And
he went on, and this is slightly eerie. He went
(37:10):
on to add, rather than abandon those principles embodied in
the Declaration of Independence, I would rather be assassinated on
the spot. A little more than four years later, the
body of Abraham Lincoln assassinated would lie in state in
(37:30):
that same Independence Hall, and three hundred thousand people would
file past to pay their respects. That guiding sentiment that
he saw on the Declaration of Independence, that they would
be hoped for the world, that the weights should be lifted,
that all should have an equal chance. That has been
(37:53):
our guiding sentiment ever since, and the Lincoln Douglas debates
are the greatest common very on it.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
A special thanks to doctor Alan Gelzo. The story of
the Lincoln Douglas debates here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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