1 page | SMC 638
What happened in those prairie debates is part of American folklore – and certainly, they occasioned, in Lincoln, the most audacious rise from obscurity to political prominence in American history. The press, of course, was the means by which the drama of the debates, and Lincoln’s apotheosis, were chronicled: but it was the printing of Political Debates Between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A Douglas a few months later that kept the discussion, and the participants, before the public. Douglas was gearing up to take the Democratic nomination; Lincoln was bidding, improbably, for the Republican: not surprisingly, the Lincoln-Douglas Debates became a bestseller. Lincoln was given a hundred copies - by the Republican publisher Follet, Foster and Company – to distribute to friends. Today, 19 presentation copies are known to exist. Only four are signed in ink; this great rarity is one of them.
Stephen T. Logan was Lincoln’s second law partner, a close political associate and, in Lincoln’s words, one of his “most distinguished, and highly valued friends.”
all pages and transcript
From his friend
HON. ABRAHAM LINCOLN
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS,
In the Celebrated Campaign of 1858, in Illinois ;
INCLUDING THE PRECEDING SPEECHES OF EACH, AT CHICAGO, SPRINGFIELD, ETC.; ALSO, THE TWO GREAT SPEECHES OF MR. LINCOLN IN OHIO, IN 1859,
CAREFULLY PREPARED BY THE REPORTERS OF EACH PARTY, AND PUBLISHED AT THE TIMES OF THEIR DELIVERY.