prise. We reeled and fell in utter confusion.
But we rose each fighting, grasping what-
ever he could reach—a scythe—a pitch-
fork—a chopping axe, or a butcher’s
cleaver.” His figurative language would
soon become literal, as supporters and
opponents of the new bill rushed into
Kansas Territory to decide whether it
would be slave or free.
“Bleeding Kansas,” as it soon became
called, saw an explosion of violence
between the two sides that presaged a
wider conflict between the two increasingly
intractable regions of the country. The
worsening crisis spelled the end of the Whig
Party, which was torn in half by the slavery
issue, and the rise of a new Republican
Party focused entirely in the North. Lincoln
soon became a leader of the new party,
receiving the nomination to run against his
old rival Stephen Douglas for Douglas’s
Senate seat in 1858. Lincoln cemented his
leadership with an instantly famous speech
accepting the party’s nomination. The
“House Divided” speech, as it became
known, warned that “a house divided
against itself cannot stand. I believe this
government cannot endure, permanently
half slave and half free. I do not expect the
Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the
house to fall—but I do expect it will cease
to be divided. It will become all one thing,
or all the other.”
When Douglas heard that the Republi-
cans had nominated Lincoln, he was con-
cerned but not surprised. “I shall have my
hands full,” he told Pennsylvania newspa-
per editor John W. Forney. “He is the
strong man of his party—full of wit, facts,
dates—and the best stump speaker, with his
droll ways and dry jokes, in the West. He
is as honest as he is shrewd, and if I beat
him my victory will be hardly won.” After
some delay, the two men agreed to engage
in a series of debates in all but two of the
state’s county seats.
Under guidelines set down by Douglas,
as the incumbent, he and Lincoln would
meet seven times over the course of the next
seven weeks. The first debate was slated for
Ottawa, 80 miles southwest of Chicago in
the north-central part of the state. It wasreliable Republican territory and as such
presented Lincoln with the opportunity to
get his campaign off to a running start. On
August 20, the day before the scheduled
debate, huge crowds of people began flock-
ing into the little town (population 9,000),
which sat between the Fox and Illinois
Rivers. Men, women, and children poured
into town on foot, horseback, wagons, rail-
road trains, and canal boats blazing with
partisan political banners. By eight o’clock
on the morning of the debate, Ottawa’s
population had tripled, with the huge
crowds kicking up clouds of dust until
Ottawa looked like “a vast smoke house”
in the evocative words of a Chicago Tri-
bunecorrespondent.
The two candidates arrived separately.
Lincoln came by train from Chicago,
pulling in at noon to the Rock Island
depot, where he was met by Ottawa
mayor Joseph O. Glover and escorted to
Glover’s home by a half-mile-long parade
of supporters. Douglas entered town from
the west, his elegant private carriage
drawn by six white horses. Like Lincoln
he opted to freshen up before the debate,checking into the Geiger House while his
supporters marched back and forth in
front of the hotel, hurrahing their hero
with loud cheers and improvised music.
The audience crammed into Lafayette
Square an hour before the scheduled 2 PM
starting time. There were no chairs and few
trees, and the late summer sun pounded
down mercilessly on everyone. Vendors
sold water and lemonade; more potent liq-
uid refreshments were also available. The
stage, a simple platform of unfinished
wood, was topped by a flimsy awning. No
one had thought to guard the stage, and it
took a good 30 minutes to clear a space
for the candidates and local dignitaries.
Meanwhile, village clowns dangled pre-
cariously from the awning to the delight of
the crowds. In short order the awning gave
way, toppling the miscreants into the laps
of the front-row crowd. Everyone enjoyed
the spectacle.
The candidates arrived a few minutes
later and climbed with difficulty onto the
stage. Lincoln, wearing a simple dark suit,
sat at the end of the front row, a worn car-
petbag filled with notes and copies of old
speeches at his feet, while Douglas stepped
to the front of the stage. He was dressed,
planter-style, in a wide-brimmed white hat,
ruffled shirt, light trousers, and dark blue
coat with polished buttons. Under the
agreed upon format, Douglas would speak
first for an hour, Lincoln would have 90
minutes to respond, and Douglas would
conclude with a 30-minute rebuttal. The
order would alternate for each subsequent
debate.
Having faced Lincoln many times in the
past, Douglas confidently took the offen-
sive. Like a skilled prosecuting attorney
confronting a petty defendant, Douglas
threw a series of sharp questions at his
obviously startled opponent, demanding
to know Lincoln’s positions on the Fugitive
Slave Act, the slave trade in general, the
admission of new states to the Union, and
popular sovereignty in the territories.
Introducing a theme that would run
through the debates, Douglas raised the
doleful specter of black citizenship, charg-
ing that the Republicans favored bestow-ABOVE: A somewhat disheveled Lincoln sports a
gigantic bow tie in this 1858 photograph, believed to
have been made the day after Lincoln’s first cam-
paign speech for Douglas’s Senate seat. OPPOSITE:
Lincoln speaks while Douglas listens during one of
their seven debates across Illinois in 1858. Douglas
won the election, but the vast amount of publicity
helped put Lincoln on the national stage.CWQ-Sum16 Lincoln Douglas_Layout 1 4/20/16 4:03 PM Page 28