— Looking for Lincoln —
Left Section
In the summer of 1856, Abraham Lincoln traveled across much of Illinois, giving speeches supporting the new Republican Party and its national and state candidates. On August 9, 1856, Lincoln arrived in Shelbyville to participate in a debate with Samuel Moulton and Anthony Thornton. Moulton was becoming a strong voice for Democrats who served in the Illinois House of Representatives. Thornton was a former Whig, like Lincoln, until the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, when he became a Democrat. Shelby County had long been a stronghold for the Democratic Party, and Lincoln represented a small minority of Republicans, contending that, "however poorly I may defend my cause, I can hardly harm it, if I do it no good." Lincoln's swing through Democratic counties, including Shelby, was his first as a prominent member of the Republican Party. Illinois Republicans acknowledged Lincoln as the party leader. His efforts in debates against slavery gave him recognition beyond the state. At the 1856 national Republican Convention, Lincoln received a handful of votes as the vice presidential nominee.
Center Section
Robert Root (1863 - 1937), believed that history had forgotten one of Lincoln's first public forays as an anti-slavery Republican. A year before he died, Thornton sat for an interview with Root, who set to work on the painting of the debate. Root accurately captured images of participants and attendees by interviewing people who had attended the debate and were still alive―and by using old pictures of those who had died.
Right Section
Nineteenth-Century newspapers were very partisan, casting their lots with a particular political party. Many communities had at least two newspapers, each following the views of different parties. Correspondents often wrote articles about political events in surrounding communities. In the examples illustrated here, the two descriptions of the same debate are dramatically different. The Democratic newspaper's use of the racial epithet in this context preys on the racial fears of whites in antebellum Illinois. Stephen A. Douglas and other Democrats often referred to the opposition party as "black Republicans" and used race as a motivating factor for citizens to vote against Republican candidates. The comments in the State Register, then, performed a double duty- -mocking Lincoln and claiming that Republicans desired blacks and whites to be equal citizens under the law.
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