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How Did Stephen Douglass Win The Election Of 1860

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In 1858 Stephen Douglas a spokesman for the Democratic Party, was seeking reelection to a third term in the U.S. Senate, and Abraham Lincoln was running for Douglas’s Senate seat as a Republican. Douglas and Lincoln traveled across the state of Illinois in a series of debates hitting seven of the nine Congressional Districts. Douglas and Lincoln each took turns discussing party politics, the future of the nation, and the most important topic slavery. Who won the debates, is the question that is still being asked in the year 2016. Through my own personal study and review of The Lincolns Douglas Debates, it is my personal opinion that Stephen Douglas not Abraham Lincoln won the debates because of how the election system was set up in 1858, by …show more content…

At Freeport, Illinois, on August 27, 1858, in the second of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Douglas stated that “slavery” could legally be barred from the territories if the territorial legislatures simply refused to enact the type of police regulations necessary to make slavery work. Without a legal framework and enforcement officials, slavery would be excluded” (Freeport Doctrine n.d.). This statement, though not too popular with the South, was listed as one of the reason that Douglas was able to retain his current seat in the U.S. …show more content…

Senate, however there are those who believe that it was actually Lincoln who won the debates, because even though Lincoln failed to win a Senate seat, his battle with Douglas had placed him into the national spotlight, and made him a serious presidential candidate for the US Presidency in 1861. More support for those who believe Lincoln won the debates was when Lincoln did go on to win the Presidential Election and become the 16th President of the United State. It is noted regarding the debates with Douglas that Lincoln himself said “his defeat was a slip and not a fall" (Digital History ID 3284,

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This premise is undeniably true. As support for his thesis, Holt looks at the final formation of the two party system, the Wilmot Proviso, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act to show how politicians used the issue of slavery to gain political

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Stephen Douglas, an advocate of popular sovereignty, and Abraham Lincoln, a Republican candidate, were both running to represent Illinois in the United States Senate. These two men met in a sequence of seven debates before they battled for office of presidency in the election of 1858. Slavery eventually became the main issue discussed repeatedly in each of the debates, due to the Mexican War adding new territories left to be assessed as free soil or not. During this time, the Compromise of 1850 was a temporary fix to the sectional issues for the states that made the decision to participate in the extension of slavery. However, the Missouri Compromise of 1854 brought the issue back up again.

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The democratic south, represented by Douglas, who took the principle approach. Douglas was also the incumbent candidate at the time, whose party dominated Illinois politics. The republican north, represented by Lincoln, who approached politics with moral principle. The Whig Party was both candidates primary target as they were in between both beliefs due to the issue of slavery - which Lincoln argued to be a moral issue. Later in the novel Guelzo uses statistical tables to prove why the debates had little effect on the outcome of the election.

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The Infamous Lincoln-Douglas Disputations The Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 hold great significance in America's political history. These seven debates for Senate drew tens of thousands of attendees to several cities around Illinois. Its main arguments brought forth slavery's complex division in America as well as the separation of the union because of it. Although Lincoln did not win the election, these debates proved to be the platform for Lincoln's principles and helped his rise towards presidency.

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It was June 16 in 1858, at the Illinois Republican convention in Springfield. Lincoln just started off his bid for the U.S. Senate with a big speech. That speech is called the "House Divided" speech. He believed that the recent Supreme Court decision on Dred Scott was a big part of the Democratic. That was lead legalized slavery in all states The court 's decision was that Dred Scott had to live in a free state and remain as a slave.

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Frederick Douglas, as a slave, lived on a plantation with two other “sister” plantations. The main plantation was so prestigious that a slave would have to be voted on to be able to work on that plantation. Frederick Douglass used an analogy to compare what the political candidate had to do and what a slave had to do to get voted on by the plantation leader.

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The leader of an entire nation and its military forces needs to have a certain intuition and connection with its country. Without this, the leader would seem more like a ruler, which is why electing a president is a more appealing choice to most Americans. In the election of 1864, the fate of our whole country was indirectly affected by the outcome. 3 years into the Civil war, the union was electing, or reelecting, its new president. Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan both ran for president in 1864, but Lincoln came out on top after a very long fight to win for the presidency.

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Competing with Stephen Douglas, he was in the election to become the Senator of Illinois. This state election took place in 1858. He debated with Douglas face to face. There were seven debates held in Illinois. Stephen Douglas also supported the Freedom Doctrine.

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While the debates did not address the rights of Black Americans, it did allow the public to see both Lincoln and Douglas in a brighter light. Douglas publically stated that Lincoln had favored race equality, calling him a Radical Republican and therefore hurting his chances at ever getting a position in politics. Lincoln then challenged Douglas to a series of debates between late August and mid October in Illinois. Douglas accused Lincoln and Trumbull of conspiring to bring down Whig party in order to get their dream of abolishing slavery and getting into office. One person commented that these debates showed how much American politics have changed over the last two years, and will continue to change in the years coming.

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Sectional Tensions Gadsden Purchase: The Gadsden Purchase was a treaty made in 1853 by James Gadsden of South Carolina. Gadsden was appointed by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to secure a chunk of Mexico for a railway route. He was able to negotiate land along the southern tips of current day Arizona and New Mexico, the northern border of Mexico, for $10 million from Spaniard Santa Anna. The land Gadsden had managed to obtain would have made making a southern railroad much more simple than cutting through more northern mountains.

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Douglas, was an important election that would, and did, go down in history. Lincoln had opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, created by Stephen Douglas, which lead him into becoming a Republican. Here, nobody was able to Compromise. He ran against Stephen Douglas, and won the election with getting one hundred eighty electoral votes, and Douglas getting twelve (Southern Democrat Breckinridge seventy-two, and Constitutional Union Bell getting thirty-nine) (Doc H).

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If Lincoln would have won senate he would have never became president while being senate. Some conflicts were slavery because that was a very big issue in the 1800s. The Lincoln vs. Douglas debates main topic was slavery and Lincoln was anti-slavery

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After this act, the president’s political position moved to emphasize the importance of national improvements towards slavery being the new center of attention. James Oakes argues in the text that during Lincoln’s 1860 presidential election campaign in order to gain the vote of the majority non abolitionist in America, Abraham Lincoln used calculated racism to get votes from the high population of non-abolitionists by diverting questions on racial

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In 1858, Abraham Lincoln lost a U.S. Senate race to Stephen A. Douglas after a series of debates on slavery. In 1859, Lincoln and Douglas delivered speeches on the Ohio Statehouse grounds. Lincoln came to Columbus in support of William Dennison, the Republican candidate for Ohio Governor. In his first Ohio speech, Lincoln spoke to a small crowd of fifty people on the east terrace of the Statehouse.

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It was a fierce campaign that contained seven great debates held throughout the state of Illinois. Though Lincoln lost the race, these debates and their transcripts were passed and republished throughout the country familiarizing his name to the american people. Along with this, but the slavery centered debates seemed to foreshadow the issue’s significance in Lincoln’s approaching presidency. His performance in the Lincoln-Douglas debates bought Lincoln popularity among the Republican Party Leaders and decided to make an attempt at the presidency in the 1860 election. Lincoln’s humble but determined following went into the republican convention of 1860 almost certain that Lincoln would lose the nomination to the frontrunner, William H. Seward.

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