rogatories” from the previous debate. He
denied favoring repeal of the Fugitive Slave
Law, the abolition of slavery in the District
of Columbia, the prohibition of slave trade
between the territories, or the admission of
new slave states to the Union. He supported
the right of people within a new state to draft
“such a constitution as they may see fit,” but
he also supported the right of Congress to
prohibit slavery in all territories. Finally, he
waffled on the question of whether he
opposed acquiring new territories unless
slavery was first prohibited within their bor-
ders. “I would or would not oppose such
acquisition,” he said weakly, “according as
I might think such acquisition would or
would not aggravate the slavery question
among ourselves.” He demanded to know if
Douglas believed that the people of a new
territory could legally exclude slavery within
its own borders “prior to the formulation of
a state constitution.”
As Lincoln, Douglas, and all discerninglisteners immediately understood, this was
the crux of the entire campaign. By cham-
pioning the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Douglas
had gone on record as supporting popular
sovereignty. But conflicting pro- and anti-
slavery constitutions had been presented in
Kansas, and President James Buchanan—
against Douglas’s advice—had recognized
the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution (so
named for the town in which the pro-slav-
ery legislature was sitting). “Kansas,” said
Buchanan, “is therefore at this moment as
much a slave state as Georgia and South
Carolina.” Douglas had denounced the
state constitution as “a fraudulent submis-
sion” and “a violation of the fundamental
principle of free government.” Kansas
remained, for the time being, an unincor-
porated territory.
Now, answering Lincoln’s interrogation,
Douglas reiterated his view that the people
of a territory already “have the lawful
means to introduce slavery or exclude it asthey please, for the reason that slavery can-
not exist a day or an hour anywhere unless
it is supported by local police regulations.
Those police regulations can only be estab-
lished by the local legislature, and if the
people are opposed to slavery they will
elect representatives to that body who will
by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent
the introduction of it into their midst.” He
was only stating the obvious, but Douglas’s
“Freeport Doctrine” would come back to
haunt him by comprehensively alienating
southern Democrats—as Lincoln had can-
nily foreseen.
From Freeport the candidates traveled to
Jonesboro, in the southernmost part of the
state, nicknamed Egypt after its best-known
town, Cairo (pronounced, frontier-style,
Kay-Ro). Jonesboro was safe territory for
Douglas and the Democrats— Republican
presidential nominee Jon C. Fremont had
won less than four percent of the vote in the
last election—but it was also small and iso-
lated, with only 800 residents. Further
depressing turnout that day was the fact
that the state fair was underway at nearby
Centralia, and many local farmers had
opted to view giant rutabagas and corn-fat-
tened hogs rather than stick around to lis-
ten to the two senatorial candidates. Only
about 1,500 people turned out for the
debate, which devolved into a question of
whether or not Lincoln and other like-
minded politicians were secretly campaign-
ing beneath “the black flag of Abolition-
ism.” “Suppose Mr. Lincoln should die,
what a horrible condition would they be
in,” Douglas conjectured—allowing Lin-
coln to steal a laugh from the pro-Democ-
ratic crowd by loudly groaning at the sheer
horror of such a thought. Lincoln unchar-
acteristically concluded his own remarks
with 10 minutes to spare, leading the
Chicago Timesto comment afterward, “We
fancy he has had enough of Egypt, and cer-
tainly Egypt has had enough of him.”
Three days later Lincoln was on friendlier
soil at Charleston in the extreme eastern
corner of the state. Indeed, he was some-
thing of a favorite son, having immigrated
to Coles County from nearby Indiana at the
age of 19. His widowed stepmother, SarahThis period image gives a romanticized view of the two longtime rivals. Neither they nor their crowds were
quite so well dressed or well behaved as they are shown to be here.CWQ-Sum16 Lincoln Douglas_Layout 1 4/20/16 4:03 PM Page 30