In 1858 Abraham Lincoln was a former one-term congressman practicing law in Springfield when he challenged Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the Little Giant, for his Illinois seat, at a time when state legislators chose U.S. senators. Lincoln followed Douglas from town to town, delivering long rebuttals to the crowds Douglas had gathered, until Douglas agreed to seven joint debates of three hours each. At Freeport, Lincoln asked whether the people of a territory could exclude slavery before forming a state constitution, forcing Douglas to reconcile popular sovereignty with the Dred Scott decision. Douglas answered with what became the Freeport Doctrine.

The episode examines how Lincoln, under attack from Douglas as an abolitionist, stated at Charleston and Quincy that he opposed Black voting, jury service and intermarriage, then at Alton anchored his case in the Declaration of Independence. It follows the stenographers who used Pitman shorthand, the runners and trains that carried pages to Chicago and onto the Associated Press wire, and the partisan papers that polished one candidate’s words while leaving the other’s stumbles intact. Democrats won the legislature 54 seats to 46 and Douglas kept his seat, but Lincoln edited the debates into a bestselling book that helped carry him to the 1860 Republican convention in Chicago.

• Each debate gave the first speaker 60 minutes, the second 90, and the first a 30-minute rejoinder.
• The Freeport Doctrine held that slavery could not survive without local police regulations, which a territory could refuse to pass, angering Southern Democrats.
• Lincoln mocked the doctrine as homeopathic soup made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death.
• Stenographers captured speech verbatim at up to 200 words per minute before crowds of 10,000 to 18,000.
• Republicans won the statewide popular vote by over 24,000, but outdated apportionment and John J. Crittenden’s endorsement of Douglas kept the legislature Democratic.