Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Summary of Speech at Petersburg, Illinois, 29 October 18581
October 29, 1858
His speech was a clear logical demonstration of the identity of his position with the doctrines of the Fathers of the Republic, in which he showed that all the great statesmen of the nation whom we loved while living, and reverence now that they are dead, held the same doctrines that he now advocates, to be true.2 He dwelt more particularly on the grounds held by H. Clay on the question of slavery, leaving no doubt in the minds of any candid man who heard him, that his own position was the same as Clay’s.3

He touched upon the most important of the many slanders and misrepresentations which have been urged against him, all of which vanished before the ethereal like touch of truth.

1This summary appeared in the November 4, 1858 edition of the Menard Index. The editors were unable to obtain the Menard Index in either the original print format or on microfilm. The source text comes from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.
Roy P. Basler, ed., (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 3:333.

2In the first of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in Ottawa, Illinois, on August 21, 1858, Lincoln argued that the founders of the nation set slavery on a road to ultimate extinction, and that the Republicans were following in that path. He said, “I believe if we could arrest the spread, and place it (slavery) where Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison placed it, it would be in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would, as for eighty years past, believe that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. The crisis would be past and the institution might be let alone for a hundred years, if it should live so long, in the States where it exists, yet it would be going out of existence in the way best for both the black and the white races.”
Lincoln was the Republican candidate from Illinois for the U.S. Senate. At this time the Illinois General Assembly elected the state’s representatives in the U.S. Senate, thus the outcome of races for the Illinois House of Representatives and Illinois Senate were of importance to Lincoln’s campaign. Lincoln campaigned extensively in Illinois in the summer and fall of 1858, delivering speeches and campaigning on behalf of Republican candidates for the General Assembly. He and his opponent, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, the incumbent, both focused their campaign efforts on the former Whig stronghold of central Illinois, where the state legislative races were the closest. In local elections, Republicans gained a majority of the votes, but pro-Douglas Democrats retained control of the General Assembly, and Douglas won reelection. See 1858 Illinois Republican Convention; 1858 Federal Election
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:457-61, 476-77, 513-14, 546-47; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392-99, 400-401, 414-16; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois.

3Lincoln also discussed Henry Clay’s argument against slavery at the Ottawa debate. Like Lincoln, Clay believed that slavery needed to be on the road to extinction. Lincoln argued, “Henry Clay, my beau ideal of a statesman, the man for whom I fought all my humble life—Henry Clay once said of a class of men who would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate emancipation, that they must, if they would do this, go back to the era of our Independence, and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return; they must blow out the moral lights around us; they must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate there the love of liberty; and then and not till then, could they perpetuate slavery in this country?” Lincoln and Douglas battled over which party, the Democratic or the Republican, best represented and defended Clay’s legacy. For published reports of additional 1858 campaign speeches in which Lincoln’s explanations of how the political principles of Clay were similar to the platform of the Republican Party were reported more fully, see Report of Speech at Lewistown, Illinois, Summary of Speech at Augusta, Illinois, Report of Speech at Bloomington, Illinois, and Report of Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois.
First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” 400-401; Illinois Daily Journal (Springfield), 2 October 1854, 2:2; Stephen Hansen and Paul Nygard, “Stephen A. Douglas, the Know-Nothings, and the Democratic Party in Illinois, 1854-1858,” Illinois Historical Journal 87 (Summer 1994), 114, 117-19, 122-23, 125.