At first glance the two contestants seemed ill matched. The well-groomed and polished Douglas, with stocky figure and bullish voice, presented a striking contrast to the lanky Lincoln, with his baggy clothes and unshined shoes. Moreover, "Old Abe," as he was called in both affection and derision, had a piercing, high-pitched voice and was often ill at ease when he began to speak.

Lincoln, as Republican nominee for the Senate seat, boldly challenged Douglas to a series of joint debates. This was a rash act, because the stumpy senator was probably the nation's most devastating debater.

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.

While the Dred Scott case was being decided, leaders of the proslavery faction in Kansas concluded that the time was ripe to draft a constitution and seek admission to the Union as a slave state.  Since settlers with free-state views were now an overwhelming majority in the territory, the success of the plan required a rigged, gerrymandered election for convention delegates.  When it became clear the election was fixed, the free-staters boycotted it.  The resulting constitution, drawn up at Lecompton, was certain to be voted down if submitted to the voters in a fair electio

Amid the recriminations over Dred Scott, Kansas, and the depression, the center could not hold. The Lecompton battle put severe strains on the most substantial cord of union that was left, the Democratic party. To many Douglas seemed the best hope, one of the few remaining Democratic leaders with support in both sections. But now Douglas was being whipsawed between the extremes. Kansas-Nebraska had cast him in the role of 'doughface,' a southern sympathizer. His opposition to Lecompton, the fradulent fruit of popular sovereignty, however, had alienated him from Buchanan's southern junta.

In December 1857, the referendum called earlier by the constitution convention was held. Boycotted by free-staters, the constitution with slavery passed overwhelmingly. Two weeks later, in the election called by the territorial legislature, the proslavery side abstained and the constitution went down to crushing defeat. Buchanan tried to ignore this second election, but when he attempted to bring Kansas into the Union under the Lecompton constitution, Congress blocked him and forced yet another referendum.

As Douglas predicted, the election was hardfought. It was also closely contested. In the nineteenth century, citizens voted for state legislators, who in turn selected the U.S. senator. Since Democrats won a slight majority in the legislature, the new legislature chose to return Douglas to the Senate. But the debates thrust Lincoln, the prairie Republican, into the national spotlight.

Meanwhile, events in Kansas continued to boil.  Early in 1857, elections were held to choose delegates for the upcoming constitutional convention.  Suspecting that proslavery forces would rig the elections, the antislavery forces boycotted them.  The constitutional convention, made up of exclusively proslavery delegates, met at Lecompton and drafted a constitution that protected the rights of slaveholders already living in Kansas.  The Lecompton Constitution gave the voters of Kansas the right to decide only whether more slaves would enter the territory. 

By 1851, the issue of slavery arose again.

HAYES, Rutherford Birchard, a Representative from Ohio and 19th President of the United States; born in Delaware, Delaware County, Ohio, October 4, 1822; attended the common schools, the Methodist Academy in Norwalk, Ohio, and the Webb Preparatory School in Middletown, Conn.; graduated from Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, in August 1842 and from the Harvard Law School in January 1845; admitted to the bar on May 10, 1845, and commenced practice in Lower Sandusky (now Fremont); moved to Cincinnati in 1849 and resumed the practice of law; city solicitor 1857-1859; commissione