Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America

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Source Type

Secondary

Publication Type

Book

Year

2008

Note Cards

Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Douglas Bloomington Speech (Guelzo, 2008)

Scholarship

Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 85.

Douglas had no objection to turning this “natural equality” doctrine into another misstep for Lincoln, on top of the House Divided speech.
Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Douglas Springfield Speech (Guelzo, 2008)

Scholarship

Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 85.

By the time [Douglas] arrived in Springfield (in the middle of another of that summer’s drenching rains), he was unblushingly fondling every white racist prejudice he could summon and gleefully painting the bull’s-eye of “Negro equality” all over Lincoln’s back.
Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Election Outcome & Lincoln (Guelzo, 2008)

Scholarship

Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 300.

[Abraham Lincoln's] resiliency now came to his aid in the cave of defeat. Returning home the night of the election, “the path” he walked on his way back to the clapboard house at Eighth and Jackson streets “had been worn hog-backed & was slippering.
Lincoln-Douglas Debates, House Divide Speech (Guelzo, 2008)

Scholarship

Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 85.

But instead of congratulating Lincoln for rebuking Greeley and catching the Douglasites off-guard, the reactions of the Illinois Republican leadership to the House Divided speech ranged from unease to irritation. Yes, Lincoln had certainly painted Douglas in the most dire proslavery colors, and that would keep the faint-hearts and celebrity-struck “sisters” from running after the Little Giant with their caps in hand.
Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Letter Overview (Guelzo, 2008)

Scholarship

Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 91.

Lincoln was counting too heavily and too passively on the division of the Douglasites and Buchananites to hand him the election.
Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Lincoln Springfield Speech (Guelzo, 2008)

Scholarship

Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 85-86.

But it was noticeable that Lincoln devoted far more of his Springfield speech to defending himself than to refuting Douglas – defending the House Divided speech, denying that he was preaching “consolidation and uniformity” in wanting to see slavery “placed in the course of ultimate extinction,” denying that he was inciting the North “to disturb or resist” the Dred Scott decision, denying (at the end) that he wanted “to make negroes perfectly equal with white men in social and political relations.” This was the kind of rhetoric
Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Ottawa Debate (Guelzo, 2008)

Scholarship

Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 130.

But instead of disappointment, the prevailing mood seemed to be surprise. Although Douglas had carefully targeted his attacks by appealing to the worst fears of undecided Whigs, the remarkable fact of the day was how well Lincoln had done. “I can recall only one fact the debates,” one survivor of the audience said to Ida Tarbell four decades later, “that I felt so sorry for Lincoln while Douglas was speaking, and then to my surprise I felt so sorry for Douglas when Lincoln replied.” Even Lincoln sounded a little taken aback.
Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Overview (Guelzo, 2008)

Scholarship

Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), xxii-xxiii.

Both Lincoln and Douglas knew that the election of 1858 would be decided by swing voters in central Illinois counties where only three of the seven debates were held. The debates were, yes, a central feature of the campaigns of 1858, but in the narratives, they have come completely to eclipse the campaigners. That is, in large measure, the accident of print.

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Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America

Record Data

Note Cards

People

Douglas, Stephen Arnold

Lincoln, Abraham

Major Topics