Past and Present: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 150 Years Later

Looking back on the debates, Lincoln was satisfied that he had made "some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone." Douglas's notion of liberty began and ended with the popular will of the people, and he proudly announced that he didn't care whether slavery was "voted up or voted down," so long as the majority prevailed. For Lincoln, however, democracy could not survive unless the majority "voted up" what was right. Lincoln's democracy was built around the core principles of the Declaration of Independence; Douglas's democracy had at its core nothing but process.

In the age of the sound bite and the TelePrompTer, it's hard to imagine the candidates of 2008 replicating the style and complexity of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. But there are still lessons from 1858 from which we could profit. For one thing, we could dispense with the moderators (Lincoln and Douglas had none). For another, we could get the candidates and the audience out of the chatty coziness of the sound stage and out in a large open forum where persuasion and logic, not just charm, would be demanded. And we could require the candidates to take turns using one podium - to speak, in other words, not to each other, but to the people in front of them. And perhaps, just once, in the spirit of Lincoln and Douglas, we could ask the candidates to tell us what their vision of democracy is. For the sake of democracy, it's a debate worth putting back into play.

Allen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College and the author of Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America (2008).