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 PREFACE

A new edition of the speeches made by Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln in the set debate during the Illinois senatorial canvass of 1858 would seem a worthy and appropriate part of the general commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of that event. While the campaign was local in its inception, it became national in its significance and in its results. The issues as brought out in the debate, especially in the speech of Douglas at Freeport, widened, if they did not open, the breach between him and the southern Democrats, made a split in the convention of 1860 a foregone conclusion, and thereby paved the way for Republican success and the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. The debate also marked the high-tide of the "stump" method of campaigning; it furnishes, through the unusual space given to it in newspaper reports, an opportunity to study this unique phenomenon of frontier life; while the increasing number of printing presses, the extension of the mail routes, and consequent change in campaign methods, lend to this canvass the melancholy interest of a passing show. The speeches themselves are of a high order of debate, and of unusual import; those of Douglas set forth his untenable position and his impossible theory in the clearest terms; those of Lincoln state the arguments of the new Republican party as they had not been outlined before ; and the combined effect of the whole is a survey of the political aspect of the day not to be found elsewhere.

Many editions of the debates have been printed, beginning with that of 1860; a few have included speeches made