He first tried following Douglas across Illinois, making campaign stops in towns the Senator had just visited in order to rebut his speeches. This approach didn't earn Lincoln much respect, however, and drew ridicule from state Democrats.
"They said if he really wanted an audience, he ought to follow one of the several circuses that were traveling through Illinois at the time," Dr. Rodney Davis recounted.
For about an hour Wednesday night, Davis told a group of about 30 at Iowa Wesleyan College the story of a very different kind of campaign, which culminated in a series of seven debates that changed American history.
It was the first of two addresses for Davis at the college, with the second set for 11 a.m. Thursday.
The event was organized by six students at the college as part of a communications course; four of them took turns questioning Davis, as did members of the audience.
Davis co-chairs the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., the site of the fifth Lincoln-Douglas debate. He said the debates had a pivotal impact on the fortunes of the two candidates, though they didn't prevent Douglas from being returned to the Senate.
His forceful challenge to Douglas gave Lincoln national recognition that made him a credible presidential candidate two years later. Douglas, meanwhile, was forced to take positions unpopular in the South to ensure his re-election to the Senate. In 1860, when he ran for president, Southern states favored then-Vice President John C. Breckinridge, splitting the Democratic vote and allowing Lincoln's election.
But for all their historic significance, what is their impact on modern-day political debates? Not much, Davis said.
In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, one candidate would speak, uninterrupted, for a full hour before the other was given a 90-minute rebuttal. The original speaker would then have 30 minutes to get in the last word. And even with such generous time limits, he said, "one or the other of the people had to be chased off the platform because they wouldn't stop talking." Spectators had no seats, and had to stand through the whole three-hour event.
Today's debates, by contrast, "are not debates," Davis said. "I have trouble watching these things. I don't think we learn very much from them."
In particular, he faulted the rapid-fire "20 questions" format, saying it lent itself to simple slogans without offering a clear sense of what the candidates really thought, especially since modern candidates are extensively coached on what to say.
"Nobody was coaching Lincoln and Douglas," he said. "They didn't need it."
Davis faulted change on the modern public's short attention span. "They wouldn't be willing to stand - and stand is what they did - and listen to two guys hold forth for an hour and a half each."
As such, he said the Lincoln-Douglas debates had little impact on today's political debates - except that had they not occurred, we might not have as many now.
"I'll leave it to decide whether that would be a good or a bad thing."
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