Question

During their senatorial campaign debates, Douglas depicted Lincoln as:

A. A staunch defender of states' rights
B. An advocate for the expansion of slavery
C. An abolitionist threatening Southern interests
D. A compromiser willing to accept the status quo

Answer 1

Stephen Douglas depicted Abraham Lincoln as C. an abolitionist threatening Southern interests during their senatorial campaign debates in 1858, accusing the Republican Party of aiming to disrupt the Constitutional balance created by the founders.

Step-by-step explanation:

During their senatorial campaign debates, Stephen Douglas depicted Abraham Lincoln as C. An abolitionist threatening Southern interests.

Douglas portrayed the Republican Party, of which Lincoln was a member, as an abolitionist effort, suggesting that their aims would lead to miscegenation, posing a dangerous threat to the Constitution.

Douglas argued that because Lincoln declared the nation could not survive half slave and half free, the Republicans aimed to overthrow the founders' work, essentially casting Lincoln into a role that threatened the status quo in the South.