Authoring, Researching, Reporting, and Other Work

Lincoln-Douglas Debate Learning Activity
A Learning On-Line Learning Activity by Howard Taylor

Sixth Joint Debate, At Quincy, Illinois, October 13, 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.

AL-- Now, I suggest, that that difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest element, is no other than that between the man that thinks slavery wrong and those who do not think it wrong. We, the Republican Party, think it wrong. We think it is a moral, a social, and a political wrong. We think it is a wrong, not confining itself merely to the person or the states where it exists, but it is a wrong in its outspreading, that extends itself to the interest of the whole nation.   Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as a wrong--we propose to treat it as any other wrong, in so far as we can prevent its growing any larger, and so that in the run of time there may be some promise of an end to it.

SAD-- It is the duty of every law abiding man to obey the Constitution, and the laws, and the constituted authorities. He, who attempts to stir up violence and rebellion in the country against the constituted authorities, is stimulating the passions of men to resort to violence and mobs, instead of the law. Hence I tell you, I take the decisions of that Court as they have been pronounced, as the law of the land, and I intend to obey them as such.

Full Text of the Debate (all parts)