Lincoln-Douglas Right Up There With Plato

The Lincoln-Douglas debates easily rank somewhere in the top-10 most easily recognized events in American history—although the reason isn't entirely obvious. They were, after all, simply a series of speeches delivered by the two chief rivals for the Illinois U.S. Senate seat, conducted outdoors in the dry heat of a late Illinois summer and the damp chill of its early fall. Each session lasted three hours and was delivered with no form of artificial amplification for the thousands of citizens who turned out to listen. Worst of all, no one in 1858 would be casting a vote for either Lincoln or Douglas. U.S. senators were still chosen by state legislatures; at best, Illinois's residents would be voting for state-legislative proxies for Honest Abe or the Little Giant.