Lincoln-Douglas debates
Senate campaign showdowns
The Lincoln-Douglas debates were a series of seven political debates in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, competing for an Illinois Senate seat.
The debates focused intensely on slavery's expansion into new territories.
Though Lincoln lost the election, the debates elevated his national profile, contributing to his presidential nomination two years later.
In modern usage, Lincoln-Douglas debate is also a competitive high school and college debate format emphasizing values and philosophical argumentation rather than policy details.
- Kansas-Nebraska Act1854 territorial organization law
- Emancipation ProclamationExecutive order freeing Confederate slaves
- stump speechCandidate's standard campaign oration
- slaveryOwnership of people
- slave statePolity permitting human bondage
free state · free soil · sectionalism · public speaking · Dred Scott decision · states' rights · racial equality · popular sovereignty · Frederick Douglass · audience engagement · house divided · Civil War · rebuttals · constitutional law · federalism · persuasive rhetoric · expansionism · Fugitive Slave Act
- Lincoln writingsGettysburg Address, Emancipation Proclamation, farewell address, collected works, inaugural addresses
- oratorypublic speaking, speeches, oration, orations, addresses
- Antebellum Americaantebellum era, Compromise of 1850, sectionalism, states' rights, Fugitive Slave Act
- Illinois historyChicago, Springfield, Chicago Fire, Great Chicago Fire, Great Migration
- LincolnGettysburg Address, Emancipation Proclamation, assassination, Ford's Theatre, log cabin
- rhetoricrhetoric, persuasion, oratory, argumentation, public speaking
Lincoln-Douglas debatesTwitter wars
Online public arguments
shouting matches · attack ads · mudslinging · demagoguery · talking points
Lincoln-Douglas debatespresidential debates
Formal candidate confrontations
Lincoln-Douglas debatesstump speeches
Repeated political orations
campaign rallies · press releases · robocalls · fireside chats
Lincoln, Douglas, debate, debates, debater, debaters, debating, debatable, debated