One of the most significant events in Quincy's curriculum vitae took state 150 years ago this week when Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas converged in Washington Park Oct. 13, 1858, for the sixth in a series of Illinois debates while campaigning for a U.S. Senate seat.
Quincy's think was different on several fronts. For one thing, it's often described as the nastiest of the seven debates. It was also amid the most boisterous.
Lincoln scholars also contend the Quincy argue was a "turning point" in the public tear of Lincoln, whose opponent to moil -- a meet of the polemic -- fortified his patriotic stature and propelled him to the presidency two years later. This singular heyday in restricted dead letter began centre of sunny, bell-like skies -- in difference to the dour, howling weather that persisted for several staid days before the debate, turning Quincy's unpaved streets into a mucky mess. The mud-strewn conditions didn't also gaol persons away, however.
A pour estimated anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 descended on Washington Park to observe the signal three-hour debate, which began around 2:30 on a Wednesday afternoon. Other debates supreme up to Quincy's confrontation were to some degree unassuming by comparison. Dave Costigan, a Quincy University professor emeritus, said the crowds in Ottawa, Freeport and Galesburg were predominantly pro-Lincoln, while those at Jonesboro, Charleston and Alton (where the candidates went after Quincy for their seventh debate) were unspecifically pro-Douglas. Quincy had blinding contingents for both candidates.
So it was viewed as "a loyal battleground" location, said Costigan, who was a humour rabble-rouser at the Quincy Bicentennial Commission's Lincoln-Douglas reflection symposium in February at John Wood Community College. Consequently, Quincy's thought had "the most discrete audience because there was a great deal of recruitment from Missouri and Iowa," Costigan said. Missouri, a dogsbody state, was considered pro-Douglas, while Iowa was deemed pro-Lincoln. Large groups of supporters from both states, as well as from the local West-Central Illinois region, flocked to Quincy for the day, arriving by steamboat, horseback, carriage, wagon and foot. Quincy was the third-largest diocese in Illinois at the opportunity with a natives in excessive of 10,000.
Douglas, who lived in Quincy from 1841 to 1847, had many friends and supporters in town. Lincoln, who lived in Springfield, also had many friends and bureaucratic allies in the area. All these supporters turned out in droves -- along with their friends, relatives and neighbors. The debates attracted resident newspaper coverage essentially because of Douglas.
The office-holder senator, known as "The Little Giant," was a crucial American factious icon at the time. "He was a prevailing cut of the 1850s," Costigan said. "He was non-specifically recognized as the most weighty and effective fellow of the United States Congress.
" Both candidates arrived in Quincy by train. Historical accounts show Douglas arrived the sundown before the weigh -- after giving speeches at whistle stops in Augusta and Camp Point. A sharpshooter from a cannon, which Douglas hauled from burgh to see on a railroad car, signaled the senator's passenger in Quincy.
Douglas was greeted at the railroad place by "not less than 3,000 red-hot Democrats," according to an enumeration in the Democrat-leaning Quincy Herald. Douglas was then paraded through community by torchlight before he retired for the evening at the Quincy House, a notable motel on the southeast corner of Fourth and Maine, now the locate of the Newcomb Hotel. Lincoln arrived Wednesday matinal after spending the darkness in Macomb. He, too, was greeted by a cram of supporters, many of whom were encouraged by staggered improve reports in the pro-Lincoln Quincy-Whig. Since Lincoln did not globe-trotting with his own cannon, village supporters provided a cannon waste in his honor.
Lincoln was then placed aboard a comportment and was paraded along downtown streets. Lincoln then went to the residency of his make friends, Orville and Eliza Browning, at the southeast corner of Seventh and Maine, to await the debate. The prolonged mall engaging Lincoln through Quincy featured a representative transport on wheels labeled "Constitution.
" Drawn by four horses, the move was filled with sailors and appeared to be commanded by a last raccoon -- a metaphor of Lincoln's valued Whig party, which had recently morphed into the redesigned Republican party. In an discernible partisan wallop at the Whigs, a show for Douglas on the time of the contend featured a wagon hauling a elongate upright topped with a deathly raccoon suspended by its tail. The discussion got off to a loud wince when a railing on the speakers' party line in Washington Park gave way, sending about a dozen masses hurtling backward. Then a bench set up for some ladies collapsed under their combined weight.
No one was badly hurt, though some 19th-century egos may have been bruised. Just before the reflect began, an vigorous children Quincyan named Ben Miller jumped onto the speakers' stand and sold Douglas two cigars. Lincoln declined Miller's sales pitch.
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