Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas

"This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty-criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest." - Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) is one of the most famous Americans in history and one of the country's most revered presidents. Schoolchildren can recite the life story of Lincoln, the "Westerner" who educated himself and became a self made man, rising from lawyer to leader of the new Republican Party before becoming the 16th President of the United States. Lincoln successfully navigated the Union through the Civil War but didn't live to witness his crowning achievement, becoming the first president assassinated when he was shot at Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865.

In the generation after the Civil War, Lincoln became an American deity and one of the most written about men in history. With such a sterling reputation, even historians hesitate to write a critical word; in Team of Rivals Doris Kearns Goodwin casts Lincoln as an almost superhuman puppet master in control of his Cabinet's political machinations and the war's direction, juggling the balancing act flawlessly. As a result, Lincoln the man is far less known than Lincoln the myth. Naturally, Lincoln participated in the most famous debates in American history. Throughout the Fall of 1858, U.S. Senate candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas participated in seven three-hour debates throughout Illinois. This unprecedented method of campaigning drew national attention, one that is still often idealized even today among those who feel politics is too bitterly partisan.

The main theme of the debates was the topic being discussed across the nation: slavery. When Congress created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska in 1854, it allowed the citizens of those territories to vote whether the new states would be free states or slave states. This idea of allowing the citizens to vote was known as "popular sovereignty," and it was championed by the "Little Giant," Stephen Douglas. Casting himself as a moderate, Douglas believed popular sovereignty would not divide the nation, and thinking further ahead he believed slavery could not thrive in the Western territories because the land there was inhospitable to slave labor anyway. Douglas looked to blunt Lincoln's arguments during the debates by casting him as a radical "Black Republican," accusing him of advocating for the social and legal equality of the races. Though he opposed slavery on moral grounds, Douglas also wanted to deny citizenship to all African-Americans, which the Supreme Court had ruled in the Dred Scott case. In his rebuttal, Lincoln offered one of his most quotable moments: "I protest against the counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife."