Third Lincoln-Douglas Debate at Slave State Borders

MR. DOUGLAS’ SPEECH.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I appear before you today in pursuance of a previous notice, and have made arrangements with Mr. Lincoln to divide time, and discuss with him the leading political topics that now agitate the country.

Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two great political parties known as Whig and Democratic. These parties differed from each other on certain questions which were then deemed to be important to the best interests of the Republic. Whig and Democrats differed about a bank, the tariff, distribution, the specie circular and the sub—treasury. On those issues we went before the country and discussed the principles, objects and measures of the two great parties. Each of the parties could proclaim its principles in Louisiana as well as in Massachusetts, in Kentucky as well as in Illinois. Since that period, a great revolution has taken place in the formation of parties, by which they now seem to be divided by a geographical line, a large party in the North being arrayed under the Abolition or Republican banner, in hostility to the Southern States, Southern people, and Southern institutions. It becomes important for us to inquire how this transformation of parties has occurred, made from those of national principles to geographical factions. You remember that in 1850—this country was agitated from its center to its circumference about this slavery question—it became necessary for the leaders of the great Whig party and the leaders of the great Democratic party to postpone, for the time being, their particular disputes, and unite first to save the Union before they should quarrel as to the mode in which it was to be governed. During the Congress of 1849—50, Henry Clay was the leader of the Union men, supported by Cass and Webster, and the leaders of the Democracy and the leaders of the Whigs, in opposition to Northern Abolitionists or Southern Disunionists. That great contest of 1850 resulted in the establishment of t...

"Then debaters and shorthand reporters dropped south 300 miles, to a point south of Richmond, Virginia. The Jonesboro crowd numbered about 1,400 — most of them rather cool about the great debate. The place was on land wedged between the Slaves States of Kentucky and Missouri; several carloads of passengers had come from those states to listen," wrote historian Carl Sandburg.

Lincoln chronicler George W. Smith wrote: "On the eve of the Jonesboro debate, September 14, 1858, David L. Phillips of Anna met Lincoln at Centralia to escort him to Anna. Phillips, the Republican candidate for Congress in the Ninth District, was Lincoln's host for the evening preceding his third debate with Senator Douglas. Lincoln was accompanied by Horace White, acting as both secretary for the state Republican committee and reporter for the Chicago Press and Tribune, and Robert R. Hitt, the stenographer who took down the debates. After dinner at the Phillips home, Lincoln and Phillips went to the Union House, one mile away in Jonesboro, where White and Hitt were staying, and spent an hour sitting on the front porch gazing heavenward at Donati's Comet. Fortunately for Lincoln, he returned to the Phillips home to spend the night. Nearly half a century later one reporter reminisced about 'the day of semi-starvation and the night with half a dozen roommates' at Jonesboro; everywhere in southern Illinois, he said, accommodations were 'simply abominable.'"

George W. Smith wrote: "Judson Phillips said while in Jonesboro Lincoln spent some time about the old courthouse and with the politicians at the Union Hotel. Mr. Phillips and Lincoln returned to the Phillips home in Anna for an early noon meal as the Douglas train was expected from Cairo before the noon hour. Horace White said he was at the Anna station when the Douglas train with its cannon arrived. There was not a large number on the train nor a very large crowd at the station. Senator Douglas and some friends found carriages waiting...