In the midst of conflicting regional visions that prevailed in that time, northern vs. southern, slavery emerges as an important and controversial political issue. With The Kansas–Nebraska Act (1854) and the Dred Scott Case (1857) as antecedents, the Lincoln-Douglas debates evidentiate the danger that the issue of slavery meant to the nation. These debates were held between Abraham Lincoln (Republican) and Stephen A. Douglas (Democrat) throughout 7 Congressional Districts of Illinois during 1858, when both were competing to win the US Senate seat, which ended with Lincoln’s defeat (Infobahn Outfitters, Inc). The Lincoln-Douglas debates gave Lincoln enough recognition to win the Presidential election of 1860, but its main importance resides in the introduction of a new format to manage political debates between candidates that is still used (AP Project). The following pages will give an analysis about the treatment of slavery related to the sovereignity of the States and the division of the Union, and to the Union’s foundation. The controversial Lincoln-Douglas debates are a signal of a greater conflict between North and South that will come to an end only by the means of wa

Douglas, refering to the Fathers, states that “it is true that they did not establish slavery in any of the States, or abolish it in any of them; but (...) they agreed to form a government uniting them together, as (...) to guaranty forever to each State the right to do as it pleased on the slavery question.” (Douglas, 7th Debate Speech). Douglas recognizes that slavery was not institutionalized at the Nation’s foundation, but he wants slavery to be accepted as a natural and desirable condition of the country’s development. Once more, the issue of sovereignity appears; even though slavery was not established as a constituent element, its existence must be treated by the same principle in which the Nation stands, sovereignity, not allowing others’ to intervene in your concerns. He says: “only live up to this great fundamental principle, there will be peace between the North and the South” (Douglas, Rejoinder Speech). About Lincoln’s idea of the equality of all men that perceives in The Declaration of Independence, Douglas’ answer is agressive and direct: (The Declaration of Independence) “ It was established by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever” (Douglas, 7th Debate Speech). By stating this, Douglas tries to sustain that slavery exists for a specific purpose, as a mean to guarantee white men their capability of enjoying those priveleges without seeing them endanger by others – negros, etc.

r and the imposition of Northern perspective over the Southern states.

One of the main topics discussed in the Lincoln-Douglas debates was the division of the Union in slave and free states and its relation to the sovereignity of the States. In respect to that, Douglas, in his 7th Debate speech, argues that it is not only possible for the Union to exist being divided but it is politically correct because it represents the exercise of each state’s sovereignity. For Douglas, “to throw the weight of federal power into the scale, either in favor of the free or the slave States” (Douglas, 7th Debate Speech) is a threat and violation to the States’ sovereignity, the maximun principle in which the nation was founded. He als

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