The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858


First debate:  Ottawa — August 21, 1858.
Second debate:  Freeport — August 27, 1858.
Third debate:  Jonesboro — September 15, 1858.
Fourth debate:  Charleston — September 18, 1858.
Fifth debate:  Galesburg — October 7, 1858. 
Sixth debate:  Quincy — October 13, 1858.
Seventh debate:  Alton — October 15, 1858.
Since the inception of this website, I have occasionally used links to other sources.  Over time, I have learned that such things can be unreliable, as link addresses change or even die.  Over the life of this website, I have used links to several other sites for the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and all have eventually "gone bad" or changed on me, even the most recent one, a National Park Service site.

One expects NPS links to be stable, but one apparently cannot count on that.  So, here I provide my own text, in my own format, using the material in this book, which was published in 1860 and can be found on the Internet Archive.  (I fully expect that link to go bad on me shortly after I first publish this page, so full bibliographic information is provided here.) The advantage of this book is that it contains the correspondence that set up the debates, as well as the speeches given by the two candidates in Chicago and other locations, prior to the debate arrangements being made.  (I hope to add much of that material to the website, eventually.)  The rules of the debates were much different than those we see from politicians today: 

One candidate opened with an hour-long speech; the second candidate then was allowed an hour and a half to reply, and then the first candidate got a half-hour rejoinder. 

Senator Douglas gave the opening speech at the first debate (Ottawa), and after that they alternated.  A good book on the debates is Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America, by Allen C. Guelzo.   A more recent book is The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete, Unexpurgated Text, by Harold Holzer.

(A curiosity of the debates is that Lincoln consistently refers to Douglas as "Judge Douglas," not "Senator Douglas."  Douglas had served as a Judge, so the title is correct, but it is interesting that Lincoln refuses to call Douglas "Senator.")

Each individual entry below gives a brief (but not exhaustive) outline of the major topics discussed in that joint appearance (as well as the full text of all three speeches), but it must be admitted that both men spent a lot of time deflecting trivial points advanced by the other.

There are no standard texts for the debates, alas.  Both men prepared  remarks, but since much of what was said was in response to what the other man had said, a lot was extemporaneous.  The texts that we have were derived from the shorthand transcripts of several reporters covering the debates for various newspapers.  See the Guelzo or Holzer books for more details on this.   As for the book I used, here is a letter from Lincoln to the publisher (Lincoln's use of "his friends" and "Douglas's friends" refers to newspapers friendly to and endorsing one man or the other) outlining his choice of sources.

LETTER FROM MR. LINCOLN,

 

In response to a request of the Republican State Central Committee, the Board of Equalization, and Republican State Officers of Ohio, requesting for publication copies of the Speeches made in the Illinois Campaign of 1858, Mr. Lincoln made the following reply :

 

 

Springfield, Ills., Dec. 19, 1859.

Messrs. Geo. M. Parsons, and others, Central Executive Committee, etc.:

 
Gentlemen—Your letter of the 7th inst., accompanied by a similar one from the Governor elect, the Republican State officers, and the Republican members of the State Board of Equalization of Ohio, both requesting of me, for publication in permanent form, copies of the political debates between Senator Douglas and myself last year, has been received.  With my grateful acknowledgments to both you and them for the very flattering terms in which the request is communicated, I transmit you the copies.  The copies I send you are as reported and printed, by the respective friends of Senator Douglas and myself, at the time—that is, his by his friends, and mine by mine.  It would be an unwarrantable liberty for us to change a word or a letter in his, and the changes I have made in mine, you perceive, are verbal only, and very few in number. I wish the reprint to be precisely as the copies I send, without any comment whatever.                                   Yours, very truly,

A. LINCOLN.


So, who won the election?  We must first remember that Senators were not chosen (in 1858) by direct election of the citizens.  Rather, they were chosen by the State legislature.*  So, what was really happening was the election of the new legislature in November.  The Republican Party legislative candidates actually received more votes, but Democratic candidates nonetheless won a majority of seats in both houses, so Douglas was returned to the Senate.  However, the national attention to this race made Lincoln a national figure, a first step on the road to the Republican Presidential nomination in 1860.

*  This would be changed with the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913.

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Source: Political debates between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and
Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, in the celebrated campaign of 1856, available on the Internet Archive, here.

Date added to website: November 2, 2022