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Updated: June 24, 2025
The Republicans of Illinois nominated Lincoln, who challenged Douglas to a series of joint debates. The famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates are full of interest and repay a full and careful study, but they will be treated very briefly in this volume.
As my father folded up the bits of paper I fairly held my breath in my desire that he should go on with the reminiscence of this wonderful man, whom he had known in his comparative obscurity, or better still, that he should be moved to tell some of the exciting incidents of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
He could not become a master workman until he had served a tedious apprenticeship. It was the quarter of a century of reading thinking, speech-making and legislating which qualified him for selection as the chosen champion of the Illinois Republicans in the great Lincoln-Douglas joint debates of 1858.
The declaration made thus early is worthy of historical notice as being the substance and groundwork of the speaker's famous "Freeport doctrine," or theory of "unfriendly legislation," to which Lincoln's searching interrogatories drove him in the great Lincoln-Douglas debates of the following year.
One of the early shorthand reporters of the State, the reporter of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, he became intimate with Lincoln, and Lincoln was very fond of him. He filled numerous important positions at home and abroad, and married a most beautiful lady, who still survives. He was later appointed Secretary of Legation at Paris.
His adherents were devoted to him at all times and under all circumstances. When he came through the State, the whole Democratic party was alive and ready to rally to his support. I heard him deliver addresses on two occasions before the War. I heard one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates at Ottawa.
In the course of the Lincoln-Douglas debate a question was put by Lincoln to Douglas, as follows: "Can the people of a United States territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizens of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits, prior to the formation of a state constitution?"
Lincoln's Ohio Speeches. The Douglas-Black Controversy. Publication of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. John Brown. His Part in the Kansas Civil War. His Plan of Slave Liberation. Pikes and Recruits. The Peterboro Council. The Chatham Meeting. Change of Plan. Harper's Ferry. Brown's Campaign. Colonel Lee, and the U.S. Marines. Capture of Brown. His Trial and Execution. The Senate Investigation.
It is, of course, out of the question to abridge the various Lincoln-Douglas discussions of which the text fills a good-sized volume. Only a few points of controversy may be stated. Lincoln's convention speech, it will be remembered, declared that in his belief the Union could not endure permanently half slave and half free, but must become all one thing or all the other.
This speech is especially interesting because of the fact that it is the earliest encounter of Lincoln and Douglas that has been preserved. In a way, therefore, it may be regarded as the first Lincoln-Douglas debate. One other rhetorical effort was made, in 1842, and then we find no more specimens of this class of speaking until the so-called Lost Speech of 1856.
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