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The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858 (also known as The Great Debates of 1858) were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. At the time, U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures; thus Lincoln and Douglas were trying for their respective parties to win control of the Illinois legislature. The debates previewed the issues that Lincoln would face in the aftermath of his victory in the 1860 presidential election. Although Illinois, itself, was a free state, the main issue discussed in all seven debates was slavery in the United States. In agreeing to the official debates, Lincoln and Douglas decided to hold one debate in each of the nine congressional districts in Illinois. Because both had already spoken in two—Springfield and Chicago—within a day of each other, they decided that their "joint appearances" would be held only in the remaining seven districts. The debates were held in seven towns in the state of Illinois: * Ottawa on August 21 * Freeport on August 27 * Jonesboro on September 15 * Charleston on September 18 * Galesburg on October 7 * Quincy on October 13 * Alton on October 15 The debates in Freeport, Quincy and Alton drew especially large numbers of people from neighboring states, as the issue of slavery was of monumental importance to citizens across the nation.〔Nevins, Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847–1852, page 163 — "As the fifties wore on, an exhaustive, exacerbating and essentially futile conflict over slavery raged to the exclusion of nearly all other topics."〕〔Abraham Lincoln, Speech at New Haven, Conn., March 6, 1860 — "This question of Slavery was more important than any other; indeed, so much more important has it become that no other national question can even get a hearing just at present."〕 Newspaper coverage of the debates was intense. Major papers from Chicago sent stenographers to create complete texts of each debate, which newspapers across the United States reprinted in full, with some partisan edits. Newspapers that supported Douglas edited his speeches to remove any errors made by the stenographers and to correct grammatical errors, while they left Lincoln's speeches in the rough form in which they had been transcribed. In the same way, pro-Lincoln papers edited Lincoln's speeches, but left the Douglas texts as reported. After losing the election for Senator in Illinois, Lincoln edited the texts of all the debates and had them published in a book.〔''Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln''. Volume 3.〕 The widespread coverage of the original debates and the subsequent popularity of the book led eventually to Lincoln's nomination for President of the United States by the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago. The format for each debate was: one candidate spoke for 60 minutes, then the other candidate spoke for 90 minutes, and then the first candidate was allowed a 30-minute "rejoinder." The candidates alternated speaking first. As the incumbent, Douglas spoke first in four of the debates. ==Background== Stephen Douglas was first elected to the United States Senate in 1846. In 1858, he was seeking reelection for a third term. During his time in the Senate, the issue of slavery was raised several times, particularly with respect to the Compromise of 1850. As chairman of the committee on territories, Douglas argued for an approach to slavery called "popular sovereignty", giving local territories the right to choose slavery. Douglas was successful with passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854. Abraham Lincoln, like Douglas, had also been elected to Congress in 1846. He served one two-year term in the House of Representatives. During his time in the House, Lincoln disagreed with Douglas and supported the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to ban slavery in new territory. Lincoln returned to politics in the 1850s to oppose the Kansas–Nebraska Act, and help develop the new Republican party. Before the debates, Lincoln said that Douglas was encouraging fears of amalgamation of the races with enough success to drive thousands of people away from the Republican Party.〔Abraham Lincoln, Notes for Speech at Chicago, February 28, 1857〕 Douglas tried to convince, especially the Democrats, that Lincoln was an abolitionist for saying that the American Declaration of Independence did apply to blacks as well as whites. Lincoln called a self-evident truth "the electric cord ... that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together", of different ethnic backgrounds.〔(Speech in Reply to Senator Stephen Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of the 1858 campaign for the U.S. Senate, at Chicago, Illinois (July 10, 1858) ).〕 Lincoln argued in his House Divided Speech that Douglas was part of a conspiracy to nationalize slavery. Lincoln said that ending the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery in Kansas and Nebraska was the first step in this direction, and that the Dred Scott decision was another step in the direction of spreading slavery into Northern territories. Lincoln expressed the fear that the next Dred Scott decision would make Illinois a slave state.〔David Herbert Donald, Lincoln, pages 206–210〕 Both Lincoln and Douglas had opposition. Although Lincoln was a former Whig, the prominent former Whig Judge Theophilus Lyle Dickey said that Lincoln was too closely tied to the abolitionists, and supported Douglas. But Democratic President James Buchanan opposed Douglas for defeating the Lecompton Constitution, and set up a rival National Democratic party that drew votes away from him.〔David Herbert Donald, Lincoln, pages 212–213〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lincoln–Douglas debates」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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