Answer:
What is often overlooked is that the debates were part of a larger campaign, that they were designed to achieve certain immediate political objectives, and that they reflected the characteristics of mid-nineteenth-century political rhetoric. Douglas, a member of Congress since 1843 and a nationally prominent spokesman for the Democratic party, was seeking reelection to a third term in the U.S. Senate, and Lincoln was running for Douglas’s Senate seat as a Republican. Because of Douglas’s political stature, the campaign attracted national attention. Its outcome, it was thought, would determine the ability of the Democratic party to maintain unity in the face of the divisive sectional and slavery issues, and some were convinced it would determine the viability of the Union itself. “The battle of the Union is to be fought in Illinois,” a Washington paper declared.
Lincoln opened the campaign on an ominous note, warning that the agitation over slavery would not cease until a crisis had been passed that resulted either in the extension of slavery to all the territories and states or in its ultimate extinction. “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” he declared. Lincoln’s forecast was a statement of what would be known as the irrepressible conflict doctrine. The threat of slavery expansion, he believed, came not from the slaveholding South but from Douglas’s popular sovereignty position–allowing the territories to decide for themselves whether they wished to have slavery. Furthermore, Lincoln charged Douglas with conspiring to extend slavery to the free states as well as the territories, a false accusation that Douglas tried vainly to ignore. Fundamental to Lincoln’s argument was his conviction that slavery must be dealt with as a moral wrong. It violated the statement in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, and it ran counter to the intentions of the Founding Fathers. The “real issue” in his contest with Douglas, Lincoln insisted, was the issue of right and wrong, and he charged that his opponent was trying to uphold a wrong. Only the power of the federal government, as exercised by Congress, could ultimately extinguish slavery. At the same time, Lincoln assured southerners that he had no intention of interfering with slavery in the states where it existed and assured northerners that he was opposed to the political and social equality of the races, points on which he and Douglas agreed.
Douglas rejected Lincoln’s notion of an irrepressible conflict and disagreed with his analysis of the intentions of the Founding Fathers, pointing out that many of them were slaveholders who believed that each community should decide the question for itself. A devoted Jacksonian, he insisted that power should reside at the local level and should reflect the wishes of the people. He was convinced, however, that slavery would be effectively restricted for economic, geographic, and demographic reasons and that the territories, if allowed to decide, would choose to be free. In an important statement at Freeport, he held that the people could keep slavery out of their territories, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, simply by withholding the protection of the local law. Douglas was disturbed by Lincoln’s effort to resolve a controversial moral question by political means, warning that it could lead to civil war. Finally, Douglas placed his disagreement with Lincoln on the level of republican ideology, arguing that the contest was between consolidation and confederation, or as he put it, “one consolidated empire” as proposed by Lincoln versus a “confederacy of sovereign and equal states” as he proposed.
On election day, the voters of Illinois chose members of the state legislature who in turn reelected Douglas to the Senate in January 1859. Although Lincoln lost, the Republicans received more popular votes than the Democrats, signaling an important shift in the political character of the state. Moreover, Lincoln had gained a reputation throughout the North. He was invited to campaign for Republican candidates in other states and was now mentioned as a candidate for the presidency. In winning, Douglas further alienated the Buchanan administration and the South, was soon to be stripped of his power in the Senate, and contributed to the division of the Democratic party.
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