Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
In the summer and fall of 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas traveled across Illinois to argue a single question ahead of the Senate election: Is human equality a permanent truth or ought it to be decided by majority vote? Their debates defined American politics on the eve of the Civil War, drawing thousands of spectators and circulating across the country via newspapers and pamphlets.
This Golden Thread Edition of The Lincoln-Douglas Debates presents the full text of all seven debates, side-by-side with the context necessary to understand the history of the slavery debate in America, and the people involved in perpetuating and ending the “peculiar institution.”
Ben Judge curated extensive footnotes for this edition, along with contemporary newspaper commentary from across the nation, period cartoons, etchings, maps, charts, and a detailed timeline of slavery legislation in America—placing readers squarely in the world of 1858. Judge’s introduction, along with Larry P. Arnn’s preface, frame the political context and importance of the debates.
The debates helped Douglas to win the 1858 Senate election, but Lincoln to win the presidency in 1860, and ultimately the North to win the Civil War. The animating question of the debates—which vision of justice will prevail—remains a central discussion in American politics to this day.
The Golden Thread Edition of The Lincoln-Douglas Debates is the definitive, fully annotated edition for students, scholars, and any reader who wants to understand these debates and why they still matter.
Ben Judge is the creator and executive producer of the documentary Right Makes Might: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates. He is also the author of Mr. California: The Political Life of Pete Wilson, as well as the editor of United and Independent: John Quincy Adams on American Foreign Policy and Samuel Flagg Bemis’s Diplomacy of the American Revolution. Judge holds a PhD from Claremont Graduate University, a BA from Claremont McKenna College, and served in the United States Navy Reserve.