Stephen Douglas in the context of "National Union Party (United States)"

The Lincoln–Douglas debates were a series of seven debates in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. Until the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provides that senators shall be elected by the people of their states, was ratified in 1913, senators were elected by their respective state legislatures. Therefore, Lincoln and Douglas were trying to win the people's votes for legislators in the Illinois General Assembly, aligned with their respective political parties.

The debates were designed to generate publicity—some of the first examples of what in modern parlance would be characterized as "media events". For Lincoln, they were an opportunity to raise both his state and national profile and that of the burgeoning Republican Party, newly organized four years before in Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1854. For Senator Douglas, they were an opportunity to defend his record—especially his role in promoting the doctrine of popular sovereignty in regard to the issue of American black slavery and its role in the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. The candidates spoke in each of Illinois's nine congressional districts. They had already spoken in the state capital of Springfield and in the state's largest city of Chicago within a day of each other, so they decided that their future joint appearances would be held in the remaining seven congressional districts. Since Douglas was the incumbent, he had very little to gain from these debates. However, Lincoln, only a one-term U.S. Representative (congressman) a decade before, was gaining support, having spoken the day after Douglas spoke in Chicago, and thus presenting a rejoinder Douglas could not answer back with a rebuttal. Each debate lasted about three hours, with each candidate speaking for thirty minutes, followed by a ninety-minute response and a final thirty-minute rejoinder by the first candidate. As the incumbent, Douglas spoke first in four of the debates, and Douglas and Lincoln alternated who spoke first at the remaining debates. They were held outdoors, weather permitting, from about 2 to 5 p.m.

The Old State Capitol State Historic Site is a former capitol building for the U.S. state of Illinois. Located in Springfield, it is one of two preserved former Illinois capitol buildings (the other being in Vandalia). It was built in the Greek Revival style in 1837–1840, when Springfield became the capital city, and served as the state house from 1840 to 1876, when it was replaced by the current capitol. It is the site of candidacy announcements by Abraham Lincoln in 1858 and Barack Obama in 2007. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961, primarily for its association with Lincoln and his political rival Stephen Douglas.

Alton (/ˈɔːltən/ AWL-tən) is a city on the Mississippi River in Madison County, Illinois, United States, about 18 miles (29 km) north of St. Louis, Missouri. The population was 25,676 at the 2020 census. It is a part of the River Bend area in the Metro-East region of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area.

It is well known for its limestone bluffs along the river north of the city. It's the former location of an historical state penitentiary, and played a significant role preceding and during the American Civil War. It was the site of the last Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debate in October 1858. The former state penitentiary in Alton was used during the Civil War to hold up to 12,000 Confederate prisoners of war.

William Pitt Fessenden (October 16, 1806 – September 8, 1869) was a politician from Maine, United States. He was a Whig (later a Republican) and member of the Fessenden political family. He served in the United States House of Representatives and Senate before becoming Secretary of the Treasury under President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. Fessenden then re-entered the Senate, where he died in office in 1869.

A lawyer, he was a leading antislavery Whig in Maine; in Congress, he fought the Slave Power, plantation owners who controlled Southern states. He built an antislavery coalition in the state legislature that elected him to the U.S. Senate; it became Maine's Republican organization. In the Senate, Fessenden played a central role in the debates on Kansas, denouncing the expansion of slavery. He led Radical Republicans in attacking Democrats Stephen Douglas, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan. Fessenden's speeches were read widely, influencing Republicans such as Abraham Lincoln and building support for Lincoln's 1860 Republican presidential nomination. During the war, Senator Fessenden helped shape the Union's taxation and financial policies. He abandoned his earlier radicalism, joining pro-Lincoln Moderate Republicans against the Radicals and becoming Lincoln's Treasury Secretary.