  |
  |
  |
 |
For four months Lincoln and Douglas crisscrossed Illinois, traveling nearly 10,000 miles and participating in seven face-to-face debates before crowds of up to 15,000. Douglas's strategy in the debates was to picture Lincoln as a fanatical "Black Republican" whose goal was to incite civil war, emancipate the slaves, and make blacks the social and political equals of whites. Lincoln denied that he was a radical. He said that he supported the Fugitive Slave Law and opposed any interference with slavery in the states where it already existed. During the course of the debates, Lincoln and Douglas presented two sharply contrasting views of the problem of slavery. Douglas argued that slavery was a dying institution that had reached its natural limits and could not thrive where climate and soil were inhospitable. He asserted that the problem of slavery could best be resolved if it were treated as essentially a local problem. To learn about the Lincoln-Douglas debates, click here. |
|||
|
Abraham
Lincoln, 1858 (attributed to C.S. German)
Click
image to enlarge. |
Image 4 of 24
 |
|||
|
|
||||
