Chapter 99: The people and press are riveted by the Lincoln-Douglas debates. 

Douglas’ strategy calls for proving that Lincoln is a Black Republican who favors freeing all slaves, giving them the vote and having them intermarry with whites. In turn, Lincoln paints his rival as unwilling to recognize the “monstrous injustice of slavery” and, given his own plantations, ready to profit from its expansion.

At Freeport, Lincoln traps Douglas into alienating southerners by saying, It matters not what the Supreme Court may hereafter decide (since) the people have to lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please.

Douglas responds at Jonesboro forcing Lincoln into admissions about equality that he will long regret.

I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and
political equality of the black and white races….I am not, nor ever have been, if favor
of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, not to
intermarry with white people…I do not understand that because I do not want a negro
woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife.

At Galesburg, the “Little Giant” reiterates two fundamental positions:

This Government was made by our fathers on the white basis…made by white men
for the benefit of the white men and then their posterity forever.

I hold to that great principle of self-government which asserts the right of every
People to decide for themselves the nature and character of the domestic institutions
and fundamental law under which they are to live.

Lincoln stakes out his difference with Douglas in the final meeting in Quincy.

The difference (is) between the men who think slavery is a wrong and those who
do not think it wrong.

Prevent its growing any larger and so deal with it that there may be some promise
of an end to it.

The outcome is an inevitable win for Douglas two weeks after Alton, as according to current law, he is chosen by the Democrat legislature in Illinois. While Lincoln acknowledges defeat, he knows that the debates have provided him with visibility nationwide.