The Republican Party, a new contender in the turbulent years leading
up to the American Civil War (1861–65), became nationally known during the debates in the Illinois senatorial campaign in 1858. In the debate,
an Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) represented the
Republicans, a party drawn together from older parties whose members
wanted to limit the spread of slavery. U.S. senator Stephen A. Douglas
(1813–1861) represented the Democratic Party, which had been the
most powerful U.S. political party for forty years but was struggling to
hold together its bitterly divided northern and southern members.
Founding of the Republican Party
Since 1832, American politics had been dominated by two national political parties—the Democrats and the Whig Party. Because each party
included among its supporters both Northerners and Southerners, it was
in the best interest of both parties to avoid exciting passions over the issue
of slavery. In 1852, sectional allegiances within the Whig Party caused it
to weaken. By 1856, following an unsuccessful run in the presidential
election, the Whig Party dissolved. Other, smaller parties arose in its place,
mainly the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party and the Free Soil
Party, which fought against slavery in the new territories of the nation.
By the 1850s, the bitter conflict over slavery was foremost in everyone’s mind. The Union was held together only through awkward and
complicated compromises that offered proslavery forces something for
every antislavery act passed, and vice versa. In 1854, one of these compromises, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, pushed the wrong buttons. In
order to persuade the proslavery forces to accept the act, Senator Douglas
led a successful effort to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820,
which had prohibited slavery in the unorganized Kansas-Nebraska territory. Douglas’s compromise was to allow Kansas to choose whether or
not it would be a slave state.
Northerners were furious at the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
To many, it seemed that the South could not be trusted to abide by any
legislation. They cried out against the “slave-power conspiracy” that they
felt controlled Congress. To halt this conspiracy, Free-Soilers, antislavery
Whigs, and northern Democrats came together to found a new party, the
Republicans. In the elections of 1854, the Republicans won many senate and congressional seats. In 1858, the Republicans of Illinois nominated Abraham Lincoln as their candidate to unseat Illinois senator
Stephen Douglas.
Senatorial campaign election
Lincoln and Douglas traveled extensively throughout Illinois in 1858. As
they traveled, both candidates made speeches and many unexpected
appearances, mostly from the rear platforms of railroad cars. Their
speeches attracted thousands of listeners and received wide newspaper
coverage. Lincoln, little known before, was suddenly a person of national
reputation.
Lincoln had delivered his famous “House Divided” speech in
Springfield on June 16, 1858, at the Republican meeting endorsing him
for the Senate. The speech expressed the northerners’ belief that slavery
was immoral and should be eliminated or restricted, and their fear, at the
same time, that the issue would tear the Union apart. In Lincoln’s words,
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Douglas feared the rising
power of the Republicans and responded in speeches that linked Lincoln
to the abolitionists, antislavery activists who were considered very radical at the time. (See Abolition Movement.)
After these speeches, Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of
debates. The senator agreed to seven joint appearances.
The debates
The debates formally began in Ottawa, Illinois, on August 21, 1858. The
strategy of both men had been set before the first formal meeting.
Lincoln concentrated on Douglas’s authorship of the Kansas-Nebraska
Act and its repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He charged that
Douglas was merely a puppet of the slave-power conspiracy, and that
there was a national plot to legalize slavery in the free states. Douglas
assailed Lincoln as an advocate of equality for blacks. He also accused
Lincoln of having a hidden intention to interfere with the governments
of individual states.
Lincoln was embarrassed by Douglas’s effort to associate him with
abolitionism. Like Douglas, Lincoln believed that black people were basically inferior to whites. But Lincoln, unlike Douglas, held that slavery was an immoral system inconsistent with the principles and practices of democratic government. Lincoln insisted that slavery must be kept out of the
new territories. Douglas countered by insisting that the settlers be allowed
to make this decision. At the conclusion of the debates, Lincoln said that
the principles of equality set forth in the Declaration of Independence
should be applied to the new territories. Douglas concluded with the
statement that the nation could endure forever half-slave and half-free.
Impact
In the November election, Douglas was reelected in Illinois, but
Lincoln’s strong performance in the debates had helped publicize
Republican ideas so much that Republicans nominated Lincoln as their
presidential candidate in 1860. Ironically, part of Lincoln’s appeal was his
careful response to Douglas’s charges that he supported black equality.
Many northerners at that time, though they did not support slavery,
were not comfortable with the idea of a mixed society of black and white
equals, and probably would not have voted a true abolitionist into office.