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‘No Vote Can Make
a Wrong Right’

Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas were nearing the end of seven grueling debates across Illinois in their campaign for a U.S. Senate seat. Quincy’s Washington Square was the site of the sixth debate.

Slavery was the focus of each debate. The founding fathers had put slavery on the road to ultimate extinction. But a series of events, including Senator Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which replaced geographical limits on slavery with “popular sovereignty” – letting voters decide on it – enabled its spread throughout the country. The measure drew Lincoln, who in 1849 had returned to Springfield and law after a single term in Congress, back into politics.

Unsuccessful in numerous attempts in the debates to get Douglas, a former Quincy resident, to admit slavery was immoral, Lincoln told his audience at the Quincy Debate:

“When Judge Douglas says that whoever or whatever community wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong. . . .If it be a wrong, he cannot say that he would as soon see a wrong voted up as down.”

Sculptor Lorado Taft’s Tribute to the Sixth Debate Washington Park, Quincy

Douglas answered that the issue was a legal, not moral, question. The Constitution provided for slavery and gave each state the right to decide for itself whether it should have it.

Re-elected to the Senate, Douglas was said to have won the debates. But Lincoln’s performances catapulted him to the presidency two years later.

The Quincy Debate – October 13, 1858

New DVD Features
Full Debate Symposium

Turning Point DVD

     If you missed the February symposium that told the stories of Quincy’s historic role in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, you have an opportunity to see all 19 presentations.
     WGEM-Television recorded and produced a DVD of the event.
     Click these links for:
     A symposium program.
     A DVD order form.
     Symposium Pictures.

Quincy’s Lincoln Bicentennial Commission invites you and your group to share the stories of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in Quincy. Our community meant more to these two giants of American history than simply as one of the stops in their series of great debates in 1858.
The Commission has created a speakers bureau to bring the stories to you. For a look at the list of speakers and their topics and information about how your group can schedule a program, click here.

The Quincy Lincoln Bicentennial Commission
	Speakers Bureau
Educate, Celebrate, Commemorate

Symposium Looks at Quincy’s Douglas

Bicentennial Commission
Forms Speakers Bureau
To Celebrate City’s Role
With Lincoln, Douglas

Quincy Herald-Whig
KHQA Television
WGEM Television

Watch This Space

The Stephen A. Douglas Symposium will be streamed from this space in the near future.

WGEM Television taped the proceeding, which soon will be available online here.

Click logo for coverage:

City of Quincy Lincoln Bicentennial Commission 706 Maine Quincy, Illinois 62301
lincolncommission@quincyil.gov

Dogwood Celebration Salutes Lincoln-Douglas Debate

Parade welcomes Lincoln and Douglas. . .

Baldwin School’s Lincoln Brigade. . .

Two of Dogwood’s Younger Paradegoers

Dogwoods Bloom for Parade. . .

The Quincy Lincoln Bicentennial Commission salutes the organizers and participants in the 2008 Quincy Dogwood Festival, which focused on Quincy’s role in the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

More Pictures - Click