This Day in History: Lincoln-Douglas Debates

On this day in 1858, Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln continue a series of debates about slavery. Technically, the two men were engaged in a contest for one of Illinois’s Senate seats, yet the debates would prove to have more far-reaching consequences.

Even outside Illinois, Americans were captivated. Transcripts of the debates were published in newspapers nationwide, bringing Lincoln into the national spotlight in a way that might not have happened otherwise.

The structure of the debates was not what one might expect today. One candidate opened by speaking for an hour. The next candidate responded, speaking for an hour and a half. The first candidate then had thirty minutes for rebuttal.  In the seven debates held between August 21 and October 15, Douglas opened four times, while Lincoln opened three.

Most debates were apparently attended by 10,000 people or more, with large crowds gathering outside to hear the candidates speak.

Douglas’s remarks were focused on “popular sovereignty.” He believed that each territory or state must decide how to address the slavery question on its own. His audience would have been unsurprised by such a position. As the incumbent Democratic Senator, Douglas had helped pass the Kansas-Nebraska Act, legislation that created those territories but also let them decide for themselves what to do about slavery.

Lincoln emphatically disagreed with Douglas’s position. “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” he’d already said when accepting the Republican nomination earlier that summer. “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved . . . but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”

He did not advocate for an immediate federal prohibition on slavery, but he envisioned the country getting rid of the institution eventually.

“I believe we shall not have peace upon the question until the opponents of slavery arrest the further spread of it,” he concluded, “and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction . . . .”

“[L]et each State mind its own business and let its neighbors alone,” Douglas retorted in a Quincy debate, “and there will be no trouble on this question. . . . Mr. Lincoln will find that this Republic can exist forever divided into free and slave States.”

Another sharp difference between the two men involved civil rights for black men. Douglas’s position was much harsher than Lincoln’s. Indeed, he poked fun at “Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican party,” asserting that “I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men . . . .”

Lincoln went further than Douglas—but only to a degree.

On one hand, he criticized the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, which held that people descended from enslaved Africans could not be U.S. citizens. Black individuals, he contended, are “entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.” On the other hand, he did not advocate full political rights for black men, either. To the contrary, he declined “to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races.”

The debates were spirited and stretched on for months. But when they were over, Douglas prevailed: The Illinois legislature reelected him to the Senate.

His victory proved short-lived.

Just two years later, Lincoln would win the 1860 presidential election. And just five years after that, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, ending the institution of slavery in America forever.

A note for those who are interested: Some of you might know I am running an experiment in history reels. If you are so inclined, check out my YouTube channel and/or subscribe to those HERE. Don’t miss the reel I wrote to complement my 19th Amendment story, posted over the weekend.

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Primary Sources:

• Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Arnold Douglas, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The Lincoln Studies Center Edition (Rodney O. Davis & Douglas L. Wilson eds.; 2008)

• Historical Analysis of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Purdue University College of Arts: Department of History)

• June 16, 1858: "A House Divided" Speech (Transcript)

• Lincoln-Douglas Debates (American Battlefield Trust; updated July 30, 2026)

• Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 1858 (Bill of Rights Institute)

• Second Debate: Freeport, Illinois (August 27, 1858) (reprinted HERE)

• Sixth Debate: Quincy, Illinois (October 13, 1858) (reprinted HERE)

• The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Nebraska State Historical Society)

• The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Lincoln Home National Historic Site)