Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Political Debates Between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in the Celebrated Campaign of 1858 in Illinois: Including the Preceding Speeches of Each at Chicago, Springfield, Etc;; Also the Two Great Speeches of Abraham Lincoln in Ohio in 1859
The interest which they excited at the time was over whelming. At each meeting was presented the amazing spectacle of from ten to twenty thousand people gathered to listen to rival candidates for a Senatorship! And listen they did, with an attention eager, alert and careful which the champions of few causes can command. With such audiences guaranteed them, and the further knowledge that the immediate publication of the speeches would give them a hearing no less than national in scope, it is not surprising that both discarded the usual verbiage of the political speaker - discarded, indeed, everything but essen tials, and that each formulated his plea in terse sentences and compact paragraphs of the most forceful English which he could master. Clarity was never swept aside by the intensity of feeling which prevailed, heated though this was at times. No orators ever had a greater issue, no leaders ever had a more enthusiastic following or a more anxious hearing. It was more than a contest for a Senatorship or for the vindication of a party doctrine, and the men of the day so regarded it. What wonder, then, that the utterances contained in these pages are to be accounted our greatest heritage in the literature of debate?
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
