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The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete, Unexpurgated Text
by Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Arnold Douglas, Harold Holzer
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Harpercollins (1993-02)
ISBN: 0060168102
EAN: 9780060168100
Dewy Decimal #: 324.977303
Hardcover: 432 pages
Edition: 1st
SKU: 08010052
Condition: Very Good Very Good
Comments: 1993, First Edition , First Printing. Hardback in like new condition with no markings. Dust jacket in very good condition with minor shelf wear. Tanning of jacket and small closed tear at back of top jacket. Tight binding and clear crisp text. Very nice book.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Published together in their original form for the first time, the seven Lincoln-Douglas debates are presented in their entirety, free of editing and embellishment. By the author of Lincoln on Democracy.
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Customer Reviews
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The Lincoln- Douglas Debates: The First Complete, Unexpurgated Text
Rating  (5)
Date: 2007-06-27
This is a great historical resource. I found it to be a great source for insight into the man and the beliefs of Abraham Lincoln. I highly recommend this book.
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History
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-12-17
1 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I have started reading & relaying information to reinactments I have on tape. Really accurate so far. Worth the buy.
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The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: There Were Giants in Those Days
Rating (5)
Date: 2001-02-04
14 out of 15 customers found this reveiw helpful
The series of debates in Illinois between Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 campaign for the U.S. Senate are one of those legendary political encounters of which everyone has heard but few have gone back and actually read. However, since Lincoln never kept any of his papers prior to winning the Presidency, we do not have autograph copies of his Cooper Union or House Divided speeches, let alone his handwritten notes of the great debates. The claim made by Harold Holzer for his edition is that this is the first complete, unexpurgated text of the debates to be published. Holzer notes that what we have relied upon previously for debate transcripts were copies taken down by stenographers for intensely partisan newspapers. Holzer's hypothesis is that the editors and transcribers for these newspapers would improve the remarks by their own candidates while leaving those of his opponent alone. Supporting his idea are the unedited texts of the debate he uncovered. Of course, Holzer provides his own useful additions to the texts of the seven debates in the form of extensive notes (often covering the audience reactions as detailed by various papers). As a two-time winner of the Lincoln/Barondess Award of the Lincoln Round Table and the first Award of Achievement given by the Abraham Lincoln Association for his hundreds of articles and books on Lincoln, Holzer is certainly in a position to make such judgments. You should be warned that reading these debates will both exhilarate and depress you. These debates lasted three hours and forced the candidates to develop comprehensive proposals and to respond in detail to the attacks of their opponent. The thought of Bore or Gush trying to talk from notes for even fifteen minutes is enough to make you laugh, cry or bang you head against the wall. Reading the Lincoln-Douglas debates, in this or any other edition, will certainly give you more of a feel for the issue of Slavery circa 1858 than you will ever get from a history book from which you may get a few choice quotes (what the back cover would call "volleys"). For those of us who want access to primary documents, who read court decisions rather than let talking heads on the tube tell us what they think things might possibly mean, books like this are a great joy. For those who admire Lincoln, the right man in the right place at the right time at the worst moment in our country's history, the Lincoln in these debates who is speaking extemporaneously from notes rather than reading from a carefully crafted and fine tuned text is arguably the closest we get to the real man.
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The authentic sound of a famous debate
Rating (5)
Date: 1997-04-16
10 out of 10 customers found this reveiw helpful
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates have justly been celebrated in American history as one of the milestones in Abraham Lincoln's rise to the presidency. However, Lincoln's own well-meaning assembling of the received text of these debates used only transcripts from papers friendly to either candidate--transcripts which, Harold Holzer argues, were smoothed over and revised by reporters eager to make "their" candidate look good. Holzer insists that we must go to the transcripts of Lincoln's speeches by the pro-Douglas paper, and vice-versa, to get a true sense of what was said off the cuff by the debaters. His edition portrays vividly not only the high-sounding rhetoric of Douglas and the noble ideals of Lincoln, but also the hesitations and mis-speakings of both men. In this way, the reader gets a better sense of what it was like to be in the crowd listening as history was being made
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