Lincoln Forum - Part IV - Lincoln/Douglas Debates

The first lecture last Monday morning was by Allen Guelzo on his new book, "Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Changed America." It was an excellent lecture one of the best
that we heard, both in terms of the content and its delivery. Guelzo is one of those historians who knows his subject and knows how to present it in an interesting and informative manner. I bought the book at the forum (the only book I bought there - an achievement in itself) and have just started to read it so I can't say anything about the book.

Of course I had heard of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and even seen a little bit of CSPAN's recreation of them some years ago. Brian Lamb talked about this during his presentation. He said that he found a book by Harold Holzer about the debates in his local bookstore and decided to look into doing a series about them. Lamb and an associate flew to St. Louis and then spent the next two days traveling over 1000 miles to the seven sites of the debates plus Springfield, Illinois. Back in Washington, he wrote to the mayors of the seven towns saying that if they would recreate the debates, CSPAN would film them and the rest, as they say, is history or history re-created.

Lincoln's opponent in the Senate contest was Stephen Douglas who was the incumbent. The major issue for Douglas was not slavery per se, but rather westward expansion, especially the transcontinental railroad. To achieve his goals in that area, Douglas wanted state governments in place and the pressing national issue about potential new states was the issue of slavery. Douglas' solution to this question was popular sovereignty, simply that the citizens of a new state would decide by majority vote whether the state would be slave or free.

This had the appeal of being "democratic" and I have seen something of Douglas' statements on this indicating that new states are allowed to decide so many other issues for themselves by majority vote so why not slavery. In his lecture Guelzo stated that for Douglas, democracy was the means to an end - that is, let's find out what the majority vote for and then just go with that. Lincoln on the other hand believed that democracy was the end, in the sense of the prime values of the Declaration - "all men are created equal." Therefore, Lincoln believed that while democratic voting was the best way to achieve those values there are some "unalienable rights" that cannot be taken away by the votes of the majority.

Lincoln was, therefore, focused on the rights of the minority in a free society. I was interested by that because of the recent reading I have done about John C. Calhoun who is supposed to be such an eloquent spokesperson for minority rights. Of course Calhoun's interest was in protecting the right of one minority to oppress another minority. Issues about minority rights are still with us (for example, same sex marriage) and they always will be. That is probably why Guelzo ended his talk by saying that Lincoln and Douglas still wait on the platform for us so that the debate can continue.