Note sull'episodio
August 21, 1858. Twelve thousand people stood in an open square with no shade and no chairs for three hours, listening to two men argue, including the parts that made their own man look worse. Two years later, one of those men published his opponent's arguments word for word alongside his own.
This letter was written for August 21, 2026 and published that day. The recordings are being added to the archive as they are made.
Sourced from the National Park Service's Lincoln Home National Historic Site, the Illinois State Archives, the Illinois State Historical Library's 1908 edition of the debate transcripts, the House Divided Project at Dickinson College, and Smithsonian Magazine's reporting on the debates.
Cover image: Title page, "Political Debates between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, in the Celebrated Campaign of 1858, in Illinois." Columbus: Follett, Foster and Company, 1860. Library of Congress.
Narration is AI-generated using a voice model trained on the author's own voice.