The Coming of the Civil WarThe Coming of the Civil War 13

CONTENTS

■Abraham Lincoln speaks as Stephen Douglas gazes at the audience—mostly

standing—during the debate in Charleston, Illinois in 1858, as painted by

Robert Root.

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debate. Lincoln responded in kind: “I don’t want to quar-

rel with him—to call him a liar—but when I come square

up to him I don’t know what else to call him.”

If the tone of politics has changed little over the past

century and a half, its substance is of an entirely differ-

ent character. Each of the seven Lincoln-Douglas debates

lasted three hours: For the first debate Douglas spoke for

one hour. Lincoln’s reply lasted ninety minutes, and

Douglas concluded with another thirty minute speech.

The order of speakers was reversed in subsequent

debates. Such a debate nowadays is unimaginable. Most

viewers would soon be reaching for the remote.

But during the 1850s audiences stood for hours to

hear candidates debate the issues at the heart of this

chapter: the morality of the Fugitive Slave Act; the accu-

racy of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s description of slavery in

Uncle Tom’s Cabin; the question of whether “bleeding

Kansas” should be admitted to the Union as a slave or

free state; the Supreme Court’s inflammatory decision in

the Dred Scott case; John Brown’s manic crusade to free

the slaves by force. Most knew, or at least sensed, that

the fate of the nation depended on the outcome of

these debates. The drumbeat of words came faster and

louder. The din culminated in the superheated rhetoric

of the 1860 presidential campaign and the secession of

the South. Soon words would be drowned out by the

roar of cannon. ■

■Slave-Catchers Come North

■Uncle Tom’s Cabin

■Diversions Abroad: The

“Young America” Movement

■Stephen Douglas: “The Little

Giant”

■The Kansas-Nebraska Act

■Know-Nothings, Republicans,

and the Demise of the Two-

Party System

■“Bleeding Kansas”

■Senator Sumner Becomes a

Martyr for Abolitionism

■Buchanan Tries His Hand

■The Dred Scott Decision

■The Proslavery Lecompton

Constitution

■The Emergence of Lincoln

■The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

■John Brown’s Raid

■The Election of 1860

■The Secession Crisis

■Mapping the Past:

Runaway Slaves: Hard Realities

■Debating the Past:

Was the Civil War Avoidable?

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