The Lincoln-Douglas Debates During The Civil War

The Civil War is arguably the most devastating war that has ever befallen the United States. Nearly 1,264,000 soldiers have died in the nation’s wars – and almost half of them, roughly 620,000 people, died during the Civil war. Ironically, the bloodiest war in American history occurred between the citizens of the country. The Civil War occurred due to the opposing viewpoints of those who resided in the Union. The North believed that the South had too much representation in the Congress and Supreme Court, while the South believed that the North had too much influence in the House of Representatives. Due to this each group was afraid that the latter would have too much influence over the government and fought each other at every step. The fights

Stephan A. Douglas was for the Democratic Party and was also the designer of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He urged the point that people should be able to choose if a territory is a slave state or a free state, as well as pointing out much evidence in the Constitution that suggested that the Founding Fathers were not against the concept of slavery as many of them owned slaves. However, Lincoln took the moral route and stated that this was a war between right and wrong and Douglas was advocating for the wrong side. Because of this, the public was divided on who to vote

Dred Scott was a slave who sought citizenship through the American legal system, and his case ended up in the Supreme Court. The Dred Scott Decision, in 1857, denied Scott’s decision to become a citizen by stating that no person with African blood has the right to become a U.S citizen. Besides denying citizenship to African-Americans, it also overturned the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had restricted slavery in certain U.S. territories. However, even before that there were many “amendments” or new laws put in place which had effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise. For example, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. The Act stated that the white males who moved in to populate the territories would have the right to vote and with popular sovereignty have the right to decide whether or not to allow slavery in the