With that speech, the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates commenced. They included stops at seven communities across the State of Illinois.

In November, Lincoln lost the senate race to Douglas, but he later wrote:

"I am glad that I made the last race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I could have had in no other way; and though I now sink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of liberty long after I am gone."

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