Abraham Lincoln delivered a powerful closing argument at the final Lincoln-Douglas Debate. Republicans triumphed in contests around the country. But then the Illinois Senate race got an October surprise. Blumenthal, Sidney: All The Powers of Earth. Simon and Schuster, 2019. Burlingame, Michael, Abraham Lincoln: A Life. (Vol. 1). The John Hopkins University Press, 1995. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 1953 Edition hosted by the University of Michigan. "Crittenden to Douglas...

As Stephen Douglas staggered under alcohol, illness and the repetition of old ideas, Abraham Lincoln found the clear distinction between them in their debates -- and hammered his opponent pitilessly over his indifference to slavery. Sources used: Blumenthal, Sidney: All The Powers of Earth. Simon and Schuster, 2019. Burlingame, Michael, Abraham Lincoln: A Life. (Vol. 1). The John Hopkins University Press, 1995. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 1953 Edition hosted by the Universi...

In an attempt to respond to Stephen Douglas' relentless race-baiting, Abraham Lincoln reaches the moral nadir of his political life. But from the depths of this disaster he starts finding an argument that he will wield with far more effectiveness in the later debates. Sources used: Blumenthal, Sidney: All The Powers of Earth. Simon and Schuster, 2019. Burlingame, Michael, Abraham Lincoln: A Life. (Vol. 1). The John Hopkins University Press, 1995. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln....

The Lincoln-Douglas debates had some eloquence, lots of repetition and much in the way of grubby politicking. Stephen Douglas hit hard at Abraham Lincoln in the first contest in Ottawa, and Lincoln hit back at the second in Freeport. Sources used: Blumenthal, Sidney: All The Powers of Earth. Simon and Schuster, 2019. Burlingame, Michael, Abraham Lincoln: A Life. (Vol. 1). The John Hopkins University Press, 1995. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 1953 Edition hosted by the Univers...

Abraham Lincoln's House Divided speech drew clear lines between Democrats and Republicans as the 1858 U.S. Senate campaign in Illinois got underway. Sources used: Blumenthal, Sidney: All The Powers of Earth. Simon and Schuster, 2019. Burlingame, Michael, Abraham Lincoln: A Life. (Vol. 1). The John Hopkins University Press, 1995. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 1953 Edition hosted by the University of Michigan. Davis, Rodney and Wilson, Douglas, ed. Herndon's Informants: Letters...

A rift between Stephen Douglas and President James Buchanan appeared to give Abraham Lincoln a break in his run for U.S. Senate. But Lincoln began scrambling to pull Republicans behind him after Douglas started flirting with a bipartisan anti-Buchanan coalition. Sources used: "A Bad Sign." Illinois State Journal, April 14, 1858, p. 2 Blumenthal, Sidney: All The Powers of Earth. Simon and Schuster, 2019. Burlingame, Michael, Abraham Lincoln: A Life. (Vol. 1). The John Hopkins Unive...

The Scott family's decade-long fight to claim the freedom owed to them under the law ran into state and federal judges determined to close the courts -- and broader citizenship -- to Black Americans. For white Americans like Abraham Lincoln, the Dred Scott ruling forced them to consider how denial of rights to one group of people could leave everyone else's rights open to question. Sources used: Blumenthal, Sidney: All The Powers of Earth. Simon and Schuster, 2019. &...

The 1856 presidential election took place amid a backdrop of violence in Kansas and Congress. Abraham Lincoln threw himself into the fight for the Republican Party and free territories. Sources used: "1856 Democratic Party Platform," hosted on the University of California Santa Barbara's American Presidency Project. Blumenthal, Sidney: All The Powers of Earth. Simon and Schuster, 2019. Burlingame, Michael, Abraham Lincoln: A Life. (Vol. 1). The John Hopkins University Press, 1995. Colle...

As the Whig Party withered away in 1855, Abraham Lincoln found himself pulled toward the new Republican Party -- an organization that not only stood foursquare against slavery's expansion, but brought an economic vision that reflected northern attitudes and explicitly rejected the Southern way of life. Sources used: Blumenthal, Sidney: All The Powers of Earth. Simon and Schuster, 2019. Burlingame, Michael, Abraham Lincoln: A Life. (Vol. 1). The John Hopkins University Press, 1995. Collec...

Being an enslaved person in America in the 1850s meant the ever-present threat of violence and separation from loved ones. And throughout the decade, the white South became increasingly determined to spread it as far as they could. Sources for this episode: Berlin, Ira and Rowland, Leslie, ed. Families and Freedom: A Documetary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era. The New Press; 1997. Berlin, Ira, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves. ...