[Footnote 1: The convention met at the town of Lecompton; in consequence of which the constitution is known as the "Lecompton constitution.">[
%398. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates.%—The term of Douglas as senator from Illinois was to expire on March 4, 1859. The legislature whose duty it would be to elect his successor was itself to be elected in 1858. The Democrats, therefore, announced that if they secured a majority of the legislators, they would reelect Douglas. The Republicans declared that if they secured a majority, they would elect Abraham Lincoln United States senator. The real question of the campaign thus became, Will the people of Illinois have Stephen A. Douglas or Abraham Lincoln for senator?[1]
[Footnote 1: The Republican state convention at Springfield, June 16, 1858, "resolved, that Abraham Lincoln is the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas.">[
The speech making opened in June, 1858, when Lincoln addressed the convention that nominated him at Springfield. A month later Douglas replied in a speech at Chicago. Lincoln, who was present, answered Douglas the next evening. A few days later, Douglas, who had taken the stump, replied to Lincoln at Bloomington, and the next day was again answered by Lincoln at Springfield. The deep interest aroused by this running debate led the Republican managers to insist that Lincoln should challenge Douglas to a series of joint debates in public. The challenge was sent and accepted, and debates were arranged for at seven towns[1] named by Douglas. The questions discussed were popular sovereignty, the Dred Scott decision, the extension of slavery to the territories; and the discussion of them attracted the attention of the whole country. Lincoln was defeated in the senatorial election; but his great speeches won for him a national reputation.[2]
[Footnote 1: One in each Congressional district except those containing Chicago and Springfield, where both Lincoln and Douglas had already spoken. For a short account of their debates see the Century Magazine for July, 1887, p. 386.]
[Footnote 2: Rhodes's History of the United States, Vol. II., pp. 308-339. Nicolay and Hay's Life of Lincoln, Vol. II., Chaps. 10-16. John T. Morse's Life of Lincoln, Vol. I., Chap. 6.]
%399. John Brown's Raid into Virginia%.—As slavery had become the great political issue of the day, it is not surprising that it excited a lifelong and bitter enemy of slavery to do a foolish act. John Brown was a man of intense convictions and a deep-seated hatred of slavery. When the border ruffianism broke out in Kansas in 1855, he went there with arms and money, and soon became so prominent that he was outlawed and a price set on his head. In 1858 he left Kansas, and in July, 1859, settled near Harpers Ferry, Va. (p. 360). His purpose was to stir up a slave insurrection in Virginia, and so secure the liberation of the negroes. With this in view, one Sunday night in October, 1859, he with less than twenty followers seized the United States armory at Harpers Perry and freed as many slaves and arrested as many whites as possible. But no insurrection or uprising of slaves followed, and before he could escape to the mountains he was surrounded and captured by Robert E. Lee, then a colonel in the army of the United States. Brown was tried on the charges of murder and of treason against the state of Virginia, was found guilty, and in December, 1859, was hanged.
[Illustration: Harpers Ferry]
%400. Split in the Democratic Party.%—Thus it was that one event after another prolonged the struggle with slavery till 1860, when the people were once more to elect a President.
The Democratic nominating convention assembled at Charleston, S.C., in April, and at once went to pieces. A strong majority made up of Northern delegates insisted that the party should declare—"That all questions in regard to the rights of property in states or territories arising under the Constitution of the United States are judicial in their character, and the Democratic party is pledged to abide by and faithfully carry out such determination of these questions as has been or may be made by the Supreme Court of the United States."