In 1858, there was a great struggle within the state of Illinois for a seat in the Senate. The well know Stephen A. Douglas, the favored candidate, was excepted to win. Abraham Lincoln was not a well known candidate. In a struggle for the possible position, Lincoln proposed that he and Douglas organize a series of debates, so that both men might “divide time, and address the same audiences during the same canvass.” Douglas accepted, and he feared that he had “everything to lose from a joint appearance, and yet to decline the challenge would have seemed unmanly in the West of the mid nineteenth century.” Dou