The Lincoln-Douglas Debate

By: John Hugh Bowers

Narrated by: Marty Krz

Stephen Arnold Douglas was one of two Democratic Party nominees for president in the 1860 presidential election, which was won by Republican Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln-Douglas debate, which occurred during the senatorial campaign, in Illinois, in 1858, focused on the contentious issue of slavery. The Republican party was in principle opposed to slavery while the Democratic party supported it. Douglas had proposed the Freeport Doctrine, by which the choice of whether to introduce or maintain slavery was the prerogative of the local legislature, in opposition to the decision in the Dredd Scott case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that slavery could not be excluded from any US territory.

In addition to a detailed description of the debate, this text also includes brief biographies of the debaters.

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