10/07/2026
An for NHAs, courtesy of Looking For Lincoln:
On October 7, 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas held their 5th debate at Knox College in Galesburg.
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.
The debates focused on slavery, specifically on whether it should be allowed in the new states to be formed from the western federal territories acquired through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Mexican Cession of 1849.
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.
The Old Main building, location of the debate, is the only extant site of the debates. Two years after the debates, during his presidential campaign, Lincoln was awarded Knox College's first honorary doctorate—a Doctor of Laws degree, announced at the commencement exercises on July 5, 1860.
Photo from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.
