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While past readings of The Rise of American Democracy have shed light on some of the long-term causes of the Civil War, in chapters 23-25, Wilentz gives us the war’s more immediate political origins. As Emma alludes to in her post, Lincoln lost the 1858 Illinois senate election to his political rival, Democrat Stephen Douglas. Although Wilentz highlights many events as contributing factors to the Civil War, he states that the most influential of these events was Lincoln’s 1858 loss to Douglas.
Central to each candidate’s campaign was what came to be know as the Lincoln-Douglas debates, a series of seven debates held throughout the state which gave the public a chance to see firsthand what each man stood for. Wilentz notes that Douglas’s campaign was ultimately centered on the idea that an individual territory should have the right to decide whether it shall be a free or slave state. Contrasting this stance, Lincoln ran his campaign on the idea that at its most basic form, slavery should be viewed as an issue of morality. In quoting one of his speeches, Wilentz notes Lincoln’s distinction between freedom and slavery, “The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings…It is the same spirit that says, ‘You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it’”(417). Despite losing the election based on the Electoral College’s tally, Lincoln won the election’s popular vote, exhibiting that his framing the issue of slavery as an ethical one resonated with the people of Illinois.
Wilentz goes on to say that even with Lincoln’s loss, the Republican Party outside of Illinois was victorious during the 1858 elections (419). He asserts that the ground made up by the Republican Party in 1858 created favorable conditions for Lincoln’s campaign for the presidency two years later. Ultimately, Lincoln shaped slavery as an issue of morals, a belief that garnered his party political influence and created a defined campaign platform for his presidential candidacy. Whether he was willing to admit it or not, Wilentz shows how Lincoln’s strategy surrounding slavery was the tipping point that eventually pitted the North and the South against each other once and for all.