The Lincoln Douglas Debates:
Who Was Right
POSI 3331 American Political Thought
Submitted on April 19, 2010
The 1858 debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in the election for Senator of Illinois are perhaps the most famous and controversial in American history. They are important because they highlight the conflicting political perspectives of two parties, and in a broader sense, the regional differences as a result of culture between the North and South. Of additional note, these debates underscore the strong ideologies and rhetoric that would ignite the Civil War several years later.
Before one can fully comprehend the meaning behind Lincoln’s and Douglas’s speeches as regards to slavery, it is necessary to (briefly) review the political conditions of the time; first, the Dred Scott case. This Supreme Court decision handed down in 1857 declared that slaves and their descendents, former or otherwise, were not US citizens and thus not protected by the Constitution. It also stated that the US Congress had no right to prohibit slavery in federal territories such as those found in the Louisiana Purchase.
Moreover, cotton was king in the southern US, and such an agrarian economy required a cheap labor force. The slave system was thus seen as vital to the continuing growth of southern states. Although slavery had been a notorious subject since the country’s creation, the Constitution was constantly circumlocutory concerning the curiosity of this “peculiar institution.” This resulted in a lack of clear, guiding legislation, which left the topic open for moral discussion, and consequently, conflicting methods of thinking. Debates about such matters would often cause talk of secession among the states, which is one reason that the issue was avoided, and the few constricting laws were narrow and often unenforced.
Abraham Lincoln declared himself to be on the side of the abolitionist movement. He believed, first and foremost, that where the US Constitution read “All men are created equal,” it inherently included those of African American descent. He wanted the slaves to be freed because he felt that their obligatory servitude was inconsistent with this national document, and the continuation of the slave system made the nation appear hypocritical. Accordingly, he felt it was the duty of the federal government to prohibit and prevent the slave trade from continuing.
Through reading the Lincoln Douglas debates as found in Classics of American Political & Constitutional Thought, written by Hammond, Hardwick, and Lubert we find that Lincoln has several other reasons for breaking away from slavery. On page 1052 he reveals a belief that slavery deprives the nation, as a republic, from a portion of its influence. Factually speaking, a representative democracy is not fully functioning if it does not represent the whole of its people.
Also, he believed that slavery was not necessary in the mid 1850s, and that it only promoted self interest (Hammond et al. 1052). This lead to his greatest argument against popular sovereignty: that if one disagrees with slavery on a moral level, then the justification of popular sovereignty is negated because nothing gives people the “right to do wrong” (Hammond et al. 1069). Concerning the policy of his day, he took a strong stance against the US allowing any more states to enter the Union, or current members becoming, “slave states.”
Essential to comprehending Lincoln’s point of view is understanding how he arrived at his conclusions. The Compromise of 1850 was seen by many to have loosely established a legal precedent which allowed states south of the 36th parallel to exercise popular sovereignty. It also contributed new fugitive slave laws which effectively negated the ability of a slave to become free by escaping to a “free state.” Lincoln disagreed with the verdicts on both accounts (Hammond et al. 1068). He garnered much of his anti-slavery arguments from the face-value and inferred meanings found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Lincoln, like many other political thinkers of the day, studied the politics of America’s founding fathers. It is not surprising then, that his strong pro-Union views resulted in part from George Washington’s farewell address of 1796, as found in Ronald Oakerson’s The Road to Gettysburg. Washington is paraphrased as saying: “The alternative to Union…was military rivalry and war, accompanied by foreign intrigue, standing armies, and ultimately, the destruction of republican government” (Oakerson 78). Such intense assumptions forced Lincoln to write his “A house divided” speech, and reason that dreams of secession must never be fulfilled. To further this point, he stated that the signing of the Constitution represented an unbreakable, binding contract, which was impossible to renege on.
On the opposite side of the spectrum from Lincoln was Stephen Douglas, the incumbent Senator of Illinois. Douglas argued in the defense of popular sovereignty, which gave each individual states the right (and duty) to decide for themselves whether or not they would permit slavery within their borders. This was specifically important to the newly purchased Louisiana Territory because no laws yet existed to proscribe these latest areas from allowing slavery.
Douglas laid out several explanations whilst attempting to validate this belief. First, he argued that the federal government did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in a state before it was admitted to the union with a state constitution. Also, he alleged that since the Compromise of 1850 had allowed new slave states to be admitted to the union, and the subsequent fugitive slave laws mandated government assistance in the retrieval of human chattel, that it would be contradictory to this ruling if slavery was prohibited. The strengthened fugitive slave laws also made it impossible for free states to protect blacks from retrieval.
The ensuing Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 effectively repealed the Congressional rule that slavery was prohibited north of the 36th parallel. Additionally, the recent Dred Scott case exclaimed that Congress had no rights to prohibit slavery, and the Missouri Compromise was completely overturned. The Scott case went even further by stating publicly that slaves, freedman, and their ancestors, were not protected by the Constitution because they were not proper citizens. Since there was no longer any semblance of protection for African ancestors in America, Douglas was able to assemble clear legal defenses for pro-slavery.
The historical debates produced a decisive winner, selected by the people of his state – Stephen Douglas. Not only did he produce a clearer stream of knowledge, but he used the law to his advantage, and was more effective in his campaigning. It is possible to blame Lincoln’s loss on the untested Constitution which he was defending; but his choice to stand up for a document which was in constant conflict with many state and federal rulings was a poor personal decision.
However obvious, I will proceed to assert why Douglas had the better arguments. Firstly, Douglas was in support of several popular movements in the United States. One of which was a long-standing view that the Union was a federation of separate governments, making individual states were more important than the whole, and thus granting them the power of nullification. This is illustrated by the Supreme Court case McCulloch v. Maryland, in which a state legitimately believed it had the power to tax federal entities. Although this case was rare, Maryland was not alone its conviction, and it was supported by a great following.
Douglas was also willing to do something that Lincoln was not: Put aside his personal beliefs for the benefit of the greater good, which in this case, was American expansionism. Douglas stated during one of the debates that he was morally opposed to slavery, yet he would be willing to accept new territories who opposed that view (Hammond et al. 1065). In this sense he reminds me of Voltaire, who is often attributed the phrase “I may not like what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” In a similar twist, Douglas is the de facto spokesman for secession because his constituency supports the notion, whereas he does not (Hammond et al. 1059-1060).
Douglas also brings up an interesting point which seems to negate Lincoln’s favorite argument against slavery. How is it possible that the framers of the Constitution were advocating abolition (“All men are created equal”) when they were all representing slave-holding constituencies (Hammond et al. 1065)? The writer of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, was himself a slave-owner. This knowledge, combined with the actuality that the slave issue was not addressed in this document, begs questions concerning the intent of the signors.
In proving that Douglas won legitimately, it is beneficial to indicate where Lincoln was wrong. Lincoln’s biggest mistakes were his refusal to compromise, his lack of solutions, and his glaring hypocrisies. The fact that he promoted an all-or-nothing nation, as evidenced in his “house divided” speech, is disheartening. When Douglas responds to this oration, he points out that they would exist under the tyrannical rule of the majority if it was truly impossible for a split house to stand (Hammond et al. 1066).
Also, when confronted with the question of what to do about slavery, Lincoln openly admits, that he has no plan on how to eradicate it, nor what to do afterwards (Hammond et al. 1052). Such was the overall problem with the nascent Republican Party – there was very little organization, no firm platform, no solutions, and a relatively small base which hid behind various other party names, such as the Free Democracy and Lincoln Men (Hammond et al. 1064). Generally speaking, the Republican Party was not a viable alternative in the 1858 election.
The other major subject for concern is Lincoln’s hypocrisy. As the heir apparent to the Republican (abolitionist) Party, why is there no movement for black equality? Why does Lincoln say that he does not wish to reform slave-holding states, but maintain that all men are equal (Hammond et al. 1060)? Or for that matter, why not support women’s suffrage? Why does he say that “I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races” (Hammond et al. 1064), yet in the same breath proclaim that blacks are “[My equal,] the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man” (Hammond et al. 1053)? Such common and horrific double standards abound in Lincoln’s campaign.
I hope that the false pretenses of unity, equality, and political justice for all, allegedly found in Lincoln’s campaign, have been successfully decimated by this point. The true effect of Lincoln’s loss was a country-wide perception that slavery held an excessively powerful pull on America, even though the election race was only for the state of Illinois. In fact, many historians and political scientists agree that slavery would have been voluntarily phased out in the near future because it was no longer as cost-effective as hiring outside immigrant labor.
Regardless, Lincoln and the Republican Party used their momentum (propaganda) to demagogue the South and increase Northern voter turnout in the upcoming presidential election. As their were four times as many electoral votes above the 36th parallel than below, Lincoln’s seat was practically guaranteed. The well-known result was a transformation from subtle Northern aggression, to all out Civil War – and the comparably awful period of Reconstruction.
Despite what Lincoln said about being against political equality and forcing change upon the entire country, he released the Emancipation Proclamation just two years after beating out Douglas for president. The 13th amendment was passed three years later. Perhaps Lincoln should have followed Washington’s leadership when he argued that “Only public opinion could preserve the Union” (Oakerson 79).
Works Cited
Douglas, Stephen, and Abraham Lincoln. “Selected Debates (1858).” Classics of American Political & Constitutional Thought. Vol. 1. Eds. Scott Hammond, Kevin Hardwick, and Howard Lubert. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2007. 1052-1075. Print.
Oakerson, Ronald J. “The Road to Gettysburg: Linking Equality and Union.” Keepers of the Republic. 78-86. PDF.
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