Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Tindall, 1999)

Douglas tried to set some traps of his own. It is standard practice, of course, to put extreme constructions upon an adversary's stand. Dougals intimated that Lincoln belonged to the fanatical sect of abolitionists who planned to carry the battle to the slave states, just as Lincoln intimated the opposite about his opponent. Douglas accepted, without any apparent qualms, the conviction of black inferiority that most whites, North and South, shared at the time, and sought to pin on Lincoln the stigma of advocating racial equality.