This repeal of a crucial part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 opened Kansas Territory to slavery. Douglas… revoked the ban on slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territory north of 36° 30'. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, rammed through Congress under the leadership of Illinois senator Stephen A. In 1854 a seismic political upheaval occurred that propelled Lincoln back into politics. The national visibility achieved by Lincoln in the debates caused his name to be increasingly mentioned as the possible Republican nominee. This issue split the Democratic party in 1860, virtually assuring the election of a Republican president.
The Freeport Doctrine further alienated Douglas from southern Democrats and kindled their demand for a federal slave code in the territories. His famous question at Freeport forced Douglas to enunciate the "Freeport Doctrine" that settlers could keep slavery out of a territory despite the Dred Scott decision by refusing to enact and enforce a local slave code. In retrospect, Lincoln was the real winner of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Douglas also upbraided Lincoln for his alleged belief in "negro equality." Sensing a winning issue in Illinois, Douglas shouted questions to the crowd: "Are you in favor of conferring upon the negro the rights and privileges of citizenship?" Back would come the response, "No, No!"…The popular vote for Republican and Democratic legislators was virtually even in 1858, but because apportionment favored the Democrats, they won a majority of seats and reelected Douglas…. Lincoln's talk about the "ultimate extinction" of slavery would drive the South into secession.
Why could the country not continue to exist half slave and half free as it had for seventy years? asked Douglas. Douglas accepted, and the two met in seven three-hour debates in every part of the state.
Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of debates. Lincoln continued to ride the circuit each spring and fall the great majority of cases handled by Lincoln and Herndon (some 200 each year) concerned local matters of debt, ejectment, slander and libel, trespass, foreclosure, divorce…. Yet it would be misleading to describe Lincoln as a "corporation lawyer" in the modern sense of that term, since he opposed corporations with equal frequency…. Lincoln at various times represented railroads…. The burst of railroad construction during the decade generated a large caseload. Herndon, to whom Lincoln became a mentor.ĭuring the 1850s he became one of the leading lawyers in the state. In 1844 he also dissolved his partnership with Logan and formed a new one with 26-year-old William H.
In 1844 he bought a house in Springfield-the only home he ever owned. By the time of his marriage Lincoln was earning $1,200 a year, income equal to the governor's salary.
Most of his cases involved damage to crops by foraging livestock, property disputes, debts, and assault and battery, with an occasional murder trial to liven interest.
The Springfield courts sat only a few weeks a year, requiring Lincoln to ride the circuit of county courts throughout central Illinois for several months each spring and fall. Logan, who helped him become more thorough and meticulous in preparing his cases. In 1841 he formed a partnership with Stephen T. Moreover, no record has been found, even in Doubleday's many writings, that he ever played baseball.Īfter retiring from the legislature in 1841, Lincoln devoted most of his time to his law practice. One such anecdote that piqued Mills's interest was provided by Cooperstown resident Abner Graves, who testified that he and Doubleday were schoolmates and that in 1839 Doubleday redesigned a game played by local residents known as "town ball." Doubleday, he said, instituted a smaller number of participants and a new set of rules and renamed the game "base ball." Doubleday may have played a game similar to that of baseball as a child or teenager in Cooperstown, but his status in 1839 as a second-year cadet at West Point makes a prolonged appearance in Cooperstown at that time unlikely. Mills, a former president of the National League, who in this capacity spent two years collecting written anecdotal recollections from interested persons nationwide on the matter, but he acquired little substantive evidence to support either claim. In 1905 a commission was established to determine whether baseball had uniquely American origins or was descended from rounders, a game of English origin….The de facto leader of the commission was Abraham G. Although during his lifetime Doubleday was noted for his military accomplishments, the historical significance attributed to him has been based primarily on his supposed invention of the game of baseball.