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Many of Lincoln's public anti-slavery sentiments were presented in the seven Lincoln–Douglas debates against his opponent, Stephen Douglas, during Lincoln's unsuccessful campaign for a seat in the U.S. Senate (which was decided by the Illinois legislature).
The speech, with its specific arguments against slavery, was an important step in Abraham Lincoln's political ascension. The 1854 Kansas–Nebraska Act , written to form the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, was designed by Stephen A. Douglas , then the chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories.
As Lincoln had hoped, the proclamation turned foreign popular opinion in favor of the Union by gaining the support of anti-slavery countries and countries that had already abolished slavery (especially the developed countries in Europe such as the United Kingdom and France). This shift ended the Confederacy's hopes of gaining official recognition.
Slavery was the main theme of the Lincoln–Douglas debates, particularly the issue of slavery's expansion into the territories. Douglas's Kansas–Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise 's ban on slavery in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and replaced it with the doctrine of popular sovereignty , which meant that the people of a ...
Slavery in the territories: Lincoln asserted that nothing in the Constitution expressly said what either could or could not be done regarding slavery in the territories. He indicated his willingness to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act , so long as free blacks could be protected from being kidnapped and illegally sold into slavery through its misuse.
Famously, eight years before Lincoln's speech, during the Senate debate on the Compromise of 1850, Sam Houston had proclaimed: "A nation divided against itself cannot stand." However and most relevantly, the expression was used repeatedly earlier in 1858 in discussions of the situation in Kansas , where slavery was the central issue.
In the speech, Lincoln elaborated his views on slavery by affirming that he did not wish it to be expanded into the western territories and claiming that the Founding Fathers would agree with this position. The journalist Robert J. McNamara wrote, "Lincoln's Cooper Union speech was one of his longest, at more than 7,000 words.
Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address on Saturday, March 4, 1865, during his second inauguration as President of the United States.At a time when victory over secessionists in the American Civil War was within days and slavery in all of the U.S. was near an end, Lincoln did not speak of happiness, but of sadness.