When Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas met in a series of seven debates while running for a Senate seat from Illinois they fiercely argued the critical issue of the day, slavery. The debates elevated Lincoln's profile, helping to push him toward his run for president two years later. Douglas, however, would actually win the 1858 Senate election.
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates had national impact. The events of that summer and fall in Illinois were covered widely by newspapers, whose stenographers recorded transcripts of the debates, which were often published with days of each event.
Before the second debate, Lincoln called a meeting of advisers. They suggested he should be more aggressive, with a friendly newspaper editor emphasizing that the wily Douglas was a "bold, brazen, lying rascal."
Leading off the Freeport debate, Lincoln asked his own sharp questions of Douglas. One of them, which became known as the "Freeport Question," inquired whether people in a US territory could prohibit slavery before it became a state.
Lincoln's simple question caught Douglas in a dilemma. Douglas said he believed a new state could prohibit slavery. That was a compromise position, a practical stance in the 1858 senate campaign. Yet it alienated Douglas with southerners he would need in 1860 when he ran for president against Lincoln.
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