Beschreibung:

LINCOLN, Abraham (1809-1865). Autograph letter signed ("A. Lincoln") to Henry Asbury, Springfield, Illinois, 31 July 1858. Two pages, 246 x 197mm, bifolium, with lengthy comment by Henry Asbury on the third page, July 1883. (light soiling to folds and margins, else very fine overall). Preparing for the Lincoln-Douglas Debates: Lincoln frames the celebrated Freeport Question on slavery in the territories. First used with effect at the debate at Freeport, Illinois, Lincoln's questions forced Stephen Douglas to express a position on slavery's expansion that would further alienate him from southern voters, leading the Democratic Party to split two years later – a fracture which ensured Lincoln's election as President in 1860. An important letter concerning the storied Lincoln-Douglas debates, outlining a question that would become a significant turning-point in Lincoln's political career. Written at a key point in the historic series of oratorical contests known as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, a local contest from which Lincoln emerged as a national figure with sufficient momentum to propel him to the very threshold of the White House. Lincoln and Asbury's exchange, on forensic tactics to be used in the next debate with Douglas, have particular bearing on the celebrated "Freeport Question," suggested by Asbury and other allies and posed by Lincoln to his opponent in the Second Debate, 27 August 1858, at Freeport, Illinois. In the first of the debates, at Ottawa, on 21 August, Douglas had posed a series of "seven interrogatories" to Lincoln. Adopting a similar debating technique at Freeport, Lincoln countered with four questions of his own. The second question, later famous as the Freeport Question, forced Douglas to enunciate the policy thereafter referred to as the Freeport Doctrine, which served to emphasize that Douglas took no moral position on slavery and to highlight a key difference between him and the Democratic Party. While the Freeport debate and the subsequent contests ultimately failed to secure the Illinois Senate seat for Lincoln, as intended, the question certainly exacerbated the fatal divisions in the Democratic Party in the 1860 Presidential elections which permitted Lincoln to carry the election. Asbury, Lincoln's correspondent here, was a Quincy, Illinois attorney and staunch Democrat who had written Lincoln on 28 July to offer his suggestions for the next debate: "the issues in politics are becoming narrowed. If the constitution of the U States establishes slavery in all our Territories in accordance with the Dred Scott decision which Mr Douglas endorses. Then we have no free territory, nor can ever have any without that decision reversed. Popular sovereignty means that slavery is lawful in all our territories. Will you get Mr. Douglas to say how slavery is protected in the Territories ... Both the North and the South wish to hear from him on this." Asbury implored Lincoln, "Do not let him dodge here" (Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress: Series 1. General Correspondence. 1833-1916: Henry Asbury to Abraham Lincoln, Wednesday, July 28, 1858). Lincoln responded three days later, "Yours of the 28th is received. The points you propose to press upon Douglas, he will be very hard to get up to. But I think you labor under a mistake when you say no one cares how he answers. This implies that it is equal with him whether he is injured here or at the South. That is a mistake. He cares nothing for the South – he knows he is already dead there. He only leans Southward now to keep the Buchanan party from growing in Illinois. You shall have hard work to get him directly to the point whether a territorial Legislature has or has not the power to exclude slavery. But if you succeed in bringing him to it, though he will be compelled to say it possesses no such power; he will instantly take ground that slavery can not actually exist in the territories, unless the people desire it, and so give it protective ter