The Writer’s Almanac has an excellent item on the Lincoln-Douglas debates. It begins:
It was on this day in 1858, that Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln began a series of seven debates during the Senate campaign [in] … Illinois. At the time, the country was deeply divided over the expansion of slavery into the … territories, and the debates were covered by newspapers as a kind of microcosm of the national debate. One Washington D.C. newspaper said, “The battle of the Union is to be fought in Illinois.”
Stephen A. Douglas was the incumbent Senator and a nationally known spokesman for the Democratic Party, which supported expansion of slavery. Abraham Lincoln was a former … Congressman who was running for Senate as the member of the brand new Republican Party, which opposed slavery expansion. Lincoln had made a name for himself in a speech that June, when he argued that the country’s crisis would only grow worse until all the states came together in agreement about slavery. He famously said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Each debate between the two men lasted three hours. The opening speaker addressed the crowd for 60 minutes, without notes. Then his rival offered a 90-minute reply, and finally the opening speaker returned for a 30-minute rebuttal.
Continue reading about the debates from The Writer’s Almanac or, better yet, listen to Garrison Keillor by clicking here [Real Audio].
Douglas won the election.