Lincoln Douglas Debates

[Gene C]

I don't know much about the Lincoln Douglas Senate Debates of 1858. Most of what I've read was pretty boring to me. This gave me a better understanding of them.

Currently reading "The Lincoln Reader" edited by Paul Angle
here are some excerpt from the chapter - The Great Debates - part 10 by James Randall
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli...ew=theater

"WHAT WAS IT ALL ABOUT— the parades and rallies, the oratory, the long columns of newsprint? James G. Randall dispassionately weighs the arguments of the rival candidates.
It is surprising how little attention has been given to the actual content of the debates.

Swinging up and down and back and forth across Illinois, making the welkin ring and setting the prairies on fire, Lincoln and Douglas debated — what.? That is the surprising thing. With all the problems that might have been put before the people as proper matter for their consideration in choosing a Senator... these two candidates for the Senate talked as if there were only one issue. Thus instead of a representative coverage of the problems of mid-century America, the debaters gave virtually all their attention to slavery in the territories. More specifically, they were concentrating on the question whether Federal prohibition of slavery in western territories, having been dropped after full discussion in 1850, should be revived as if it were the only means of dealing with the highly improbable chance that human bondage would ever take root in such a place as Kansas, Nebraska, or New Mexico. It is indeed a surprising thing to suppose that the negligible amount of human bondage in Kansas, or the alleged inability of the people of that nascent state to decide the matter for themselves, constituted the only American question of sufficient importance to occupy nearly all the attention of senatorial candidates in one of the most famous forensic episodes of the century."

Here are three more short quotes from Randall
"The debate was a spectacle, a drama, an exhibition, almost a sporting event. In addition it was a serious matter, but its dramatic quality could not be ignored, and that quality would perhaps have been lost if the speakers had not used the language of controversy. In other words, the Lincoln-Douglas canvass was not an effort to work out a formula of agreement. Had such an effort been made, it would have been found that these two leaders had much in common. On the broad problem of racial relations they did not fundamentally differ."

"Lincoln was not proposing any marked change in the depressed status of the Negro, “I am not ... in favor of . . . the social and political equality of the
white and black races” he declared.

"On the whole, any attempt to add luster to Lincoln’s fame by belittling Douglas or by exaggerating the seriousness of differences between the two men, would be a perversion of history. In the sequel, when the severe national crisis came, Douglas “defended the Inaugural address of Mr. Lincoln against the assault of opposition senators,” and stood firmly with Lincoln in upholding the union."

Your thoughts?