Abraham Lincoln And Stephen Douglas

Abraham Lincoln was a humble man. Born to a yeoman farm family from the state of Illinois but having a passion for the professional society unlike his father, Lincoln paved his own way to fame within the United States. Gaining entrance to the bar in 1837, Lincoln’s ambitious political journey began.

Lincoln had long felt that human bondage was un-just but did not believe that the federal government had the constitutional authority to tamper with slavery in the South.(1) Winning the Congress election in 1846 against Wilmot Proviso, Lincoln went forward and personally proposed that Congress enact legislation for the gradual (and thus compensated) emancipation of the slaves in the District of Columbia.(2) Lincoln believed that this “step” process of opposition, emancipation and re-colonization of blacks would be the one and only solution to racial diversity. Even though Abraham Lincoln’s plan was sound, he found himself at the head of the axe when it came to reelections. His “middle of the road” policies had lost him the reelections.

Abraham’s valiant return to politics was brought upon by the repealing notion of Stephen Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act to the Missouri Compromise. Stephen Douglas, an American politician also from the state of Illinois, was the Democratic Party nominee in the 1860’s. This Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed the people of new territories to decide for themselves whether they should have slavery, also known as “popular sovereignty.” Douglas’s advocacy of sovereignty brought about Lincoln’s reaffirmation that slavery be allowed to continue in the South but that the national government should exclude it from the territories.(3)

The Senate race in Illinois attracted national interest because of Douglas’s prominence in the Democratic Party and Lincoln’s reputation as a formidable speaker.(4) While Lincoln spent his time speaking out against Douglas’s white supremacy campaign, Douglas stood his ground and secured the election in 1958.

However,...