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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.
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.
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.
During Lincoln's presidency, Marx urged Lincoln to take a more hardline stance against slavery in articles Marx wrote for the Tribune. In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, giving Marx and the abolitionists what they wanted. [2] [4] [6] Marx also wrote several articles for European newspapers during the Civil War.
On foreign and military policy, Lincoln spoke against the Mexican–American War, which he imputed President James K. Polk's desire for "military glory — that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood". [88] He supported the Wilmot Proviso, a failed proposal to ban slavery in any U.S. territory won from Mexico. [89]
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 Douglas's Kansas–Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise 's ban on slavery in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and replaced it with the doctrine of popular sovereignty , which meant that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 ...
The Freeport Doctrine was articulated by Stephen A. Douglas on August 27, 1858, in Freeport, Illinois, at the second of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.Former one-term U.S. Representative Abraham Lincoln was campaigning to take Douglas's U.S. Senate seat by strongly opposing all attempts to expand the geographic area in which slavery was permitted.