POLITICAL RECORD OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS ON THE SLAVERY QUESTION. A TRACT ISSUED BY THE ILLINOIS REPUBLICAN STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. CONTENTS. PART I., ANTI-SLAVERY. PART II., PRO-SLAVERY. PART III., MISCELLANEOUS.
[Springfield? Chicago? 1860]. 16pp. Caption title, as issued. Disbound with some loosening, paper clip shadow on first and last leaves. Printed in two columns per page. Good+.
This Illinois campaign document is probably the first of three printings, each with similar but not identical material. Each attacks Douglas for hypocrisy on the question of Congressional power to control slavery in the Territories. Each paints him as an extreme Southern Rights partisan, supporting the Dred Scott Decision and scuttling the Missouri Compromise.
It is, as Ernie Wessen noted, "a most important Lincoln campaign document; quoting heavily from Lincoln's Columbus speech."
In his early public career, Douglas had extolled the immutable nature of the 1820 Missouri Compromise, and insisted that Congress had full power over the Territories. But in 1854, leading the Kansas-Nebraska Act forces and advocating Popular Sovereignty, he changed horses: only a Territory's inhabitants could decide whether to bar slavery within its borders. His attempt to reconcile the Dred Scott Decision with Popular Sovereignty, and his unconcern with slavery as a social and moral question, are mocked and scorned.
FIRST EDITION. LCP 8794. Sabin 20696n. Not in Monaghan, Eberstadt, Decker, Miles, Ante-Fire Imprints. 97 Midland Notes 308. Item #36243
Price: $1,250.00