The Power of Debates - Essay Example

By the shorthand writing newly invented, reporters would give the country "full phonographic verbatim reports," newspapers told their readers," ("The Great Debates" p.1). Providing background information on both candidates, "Douglas, a Democrat, was the incumbent Senator, having been elected in 1847. He had chaired the Senate Committee on Territories. He helped enact the Compromise of 1850. Douglas then was a proponent of Popular Sovereignty, and was responsible for the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

The legislation led to the violence in Kansas, hence the name 'Bleeding Kansas'," Adding that, "Lincoln was a relative unknown at the beginning of the debates. In contrast to Douglas' Popular Sovereignty stance, Lincoln stated that the US could not survive as half-slave and half-free states. The Lincoln-Douglas debates drew the attention of the entire nation," ("Lincoln-Douglas" p.1). Historians have regarded Lincoln for years as being a strong politician. As any politician knows, debates can either make, or break their chances of political success.

Of the debates, "The main theme of the debates was slavery, especially the issue of slavery expansion into the territories. It was Douglas' Kansas-Nebraska Act that repealed the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and replaced it with the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which meant that the people of a territory could decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. Lincoln said that popular sovereignty would nationalize and perpetuate slavery.[6][7] Douglas argued that both Whigs and Democrats believed in popular sovereignty, and that the Compromise of 1850 was an example of this.

Lincoln said that the national policy was to limit the spread of slavery starting with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which banned slavery from a large part of the modern-day Midwest. Lincoln pointed out that the Compromise of 1850 was just that, a compromise. It allowed the territories of Utah and New Mexico to decide for or against slavery, but it also allowed the admission of California as a free state, reduced the size of the slave state of Texas by adjusting the boundary, and ended the slave trade (but not slavery itself) in the District of Columbia.

In return, the South got a stronger fugitive slave law than the version mentioned in the Constitution. Whereas Douglas said that the Compromise of 1850 replaced the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territory north and west of the state of Missouri, Lincoln said that this was not true, and that the compromises that allowed the territories of Utah and New Mexico to decide on slavery applied only to the specific issues decided as part of the Compromise of 1850," (Wikipedia p.1). Ultimately, the debates were primarily composed of layered speech, but the candidates were said to have taken an approach to their speeches that would continue their earlier thoughts with very little if any variation in thought.

"Though the speeches on both sides were long and elaborate, they were largely taken up with repetition, or with half serious, half playful banter. While Lincoln dwelt at length on the moral wrong of slavery, his constructive proposals can be briefly summarized. Advocating no Federal interference with the institution in the states, he insisted that it be excluded from the territories (this being his most important proposal); in a qualified manner he favored