Authoring, Researching, Reporting, and Other Work
Lincoln-Douglas
Debate Learning Activity
A Learning On-Line Activity
Page by Howard Taylor
Fourth
Joint Debate at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858
"Selected quotations" or
"Excerpts"
by B.F. McClerren and Robert Sterling for the
Lincoln-Douglas
Debate Museum, Charleston, Illinois SAD is Stephen A.
Douglas,
AL is Abraham Lincoln.
Charleston, Illinois Lincoln-Douglas Debate Picture Album
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AL-- The other way is for us to surrender and let Judge
Douglas
and his friends plant slavery in all the States, and submit to it as
one
of the common matters of property among us, like horses and cattle.
That
would be another way to settle the question, but while it stands in the
way of progress as now, I have ventured the opinion that we will have
no
end to the slavery agitation until it takes one turn or the other.
SAD-- I am willing to offer my whole public life and my
whole
private life to the inspection of any man, or of all men, who desire to
investigate it and if twenty-five years of residence among you, and
nearly
the whole time a public man, exposed, perhaps to more assaults and more
abuse than any man living of my age, or that ever did live, and if I
have
survived it all, and commanded your confidence thus far, I am willing
to
trust to your knowledge of me and my public actions, without making any
personal defense against those assaults from my enemies.
Full Text of the Ottawa Debate (all parts)