Lincoln-Douglas Debates

 Newspapers around the country began to print transcripts and comment on the debates between Lincoln and Douglas. These articles from the Chicago Tribune highlight what the public thought of the debates and the two men involved. After the debates ended and Douglas took his place in the Senate, Lincoln began to emerge as a possible Republican nominee for the presidency. Ironically, Lincoln and Douglas ran against one another again in 1860, but this time Lincoln won. Stephen Douglas’s party, the Democrats, continued to divide and splinter throughout the election. The doctrine of popular sovereignty, so adamantly defended by Stephen Douglas in the 1858 debates, began to show its faults as civil war raged in “Bleeding Kansas.” Overall, the ideas introduced by Lincoln in 1858 created an outline for Union doctrine during the Civil War. The idea that all men are created equal, white and black, took hold in Yankee hearts and carried Lincoln loyalists through his election and the four bitter years of war.