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POLITICAL DEBATES

BETWEEN

HON. ABRAHAM LINCOLN

AND

HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS,

In the Celebrated Campaign of 1858, in Illinois;

INCLUDING THE PRECEDING SPEECHES OF EACH, AT CHI-
CAGO, SPRINGFIELD, ETC.; ALSO, THE TWO GREAT
SPEECHES OF MR. LINCOLN IN OHIO, IN 1859,

AS

CAREFULLY PREPARED BY THE REPORTERS OF EACH PARTY, AND PUBLISHED
AT THE TIMES OF THEIR DELIVERY.

COLUMBUS:

FOLLETT, FOSTER AND COMPANY.

US5350.14.11

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860,

BY FOLLETT, FOSTER & CO.,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of Ohio.

FOLLETT, FOSTER & CO., Printers, Stereotypers, Binders and Publishers,

COLUMBUS, OHIO.

CORRESPONDENCE.

Hon. ABRAHAM LINCOLN:

REPUBLICAN STATE

Columbus, Ohio, Dec. 7, 1859.

Dear Sir- The Republican State Central Committee of Ohio, beg leave cordially to thank you for your speeches in the State during the recent campaign, and express the earnest hope, that, together with the seven debates held by you with Judge Douglas, during the famous Illinois campaign, they may be published in authentic and permanent form. We regard them as luminous and triumphant expositions of the doctrines of the Republican party, successfully vindicated from the aspersions of its foes, and calculated to make a document of great practical service to the Republican party in the approaching Presidential contest. We herewith transmit you a letter, signed by our Governor elect, Republican State officers, and the Republican members of the State Board of Equalization representing the several Senatorial Districts of the State, now assembled here, uniting with us in the request for a copy of your speeches. If you can comply with this request, you will please send by express to Wm. T. Bascom, our Secretary, the package, who will superintend the publication of the same.

Very respectfully, yours, etc.,

GEO. M. PARSONS,
SAM'L GALLOWAY,
LUCIEN BUTTLES,
N. H. SWAYNE,

J. H. COULTER,

R. N. BARR,

WM. T. BASCOM,

Central Executive Committee.

Hon. ABRAHAM LINCOLN:

COLUMBUS, OHIO, Dec. 7, 1859.

Dear Sir-As members of the Republican party of Ohio, from different portions of the State, met together for the first time since the election, we thank you in the name of the party for the prompt and efficient aid rendered us in the late campaign, by your speeches at Columbus and Cincinnati. The pro-slavery Democracy, driven to despair by repeated defeats, entered the late contest openly ignoring a defense of the present Administration, and raising the specious flag of popular sovereignty, called the Little Giant himself into the field to tickle the public ear with rehearsals of his "Harper's Magazine" article.

The experience acquired in seven pitched battles with him as an antagonist, enabled you to make such a searching and thoroughly practical exposé of the fallacies of his position, in your Ohio speeches, which were scattered by thousands by our Central Committee among the people, that Douglasism, with its inconsistent theory, that "a thing (slavery) may lawfully be driven away, from where it has a lawful right to be," by the action or non-action of a Territorial Legislature, in spite of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case, was NO WHERE among the voters when polls were closed. Proclaimed victor by a majority of the popular vote of your own State, in the famous debates which have attracted the universal attention of the party as containing the doctrines of the Republican creed, thoroughly discussed and completely vindicated from the misrepresentations of its foes: we would request that you cause to be collected for publication in a permanent form, authentic copies of those debates, together with your two Ohio speeches, as a document that will be of essential service to the cause in the approaching Presidential campaign. The results of the late elections indicate a glorious triumph then, if Republican principles are properly discussed and rightly diffused among the people. The signs of the times bespeak, that there is a West, no longer to be used as a mere

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