As if an El Greco had been taken off the canvas and the elongated features brought to grotesque life. “Nobody has ever expected me to be president,” this long tall drink of water said in a memorable exchange with a man whom just about everybody expected...

The prairie lawyer emerged again into politics in 1854, when he was caught up in the rising quarrel over slavery. He stoutly opposed the policy of Stephen A. Douglas and particularly the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In a speech at Springfield, repeated at...

Fathers base their Declaration of Independence on the statement that "all men are created equal?" More than 170 people at Three Rivers Community College Friday night were transported back in time to hear the emotionally charged issues of 1858, when...

Lincoln appears in The Crisis as a Christ-like figure of boundless wisdom, humor, and compassion. Early in the novel, a judge who is a friend of Lincoln dispatches his newly hired assistant, Stephen Brice, to observe the second of Lincoln’s debates...

Indeed, Little Egypt's well-known Southern sympathies were the main reason U.S. Senate candidate Stephen A. Douglas invited opponent Abraham Lincoln on Sept. 15, 1858, to have their third debate here -- so Douglas could trick Lincoln into making...

And not just once or twice, but many times, with no moderators to intervene or inhibit us. Just two candidates, head to head – Lincoln-Douglas style. As a Lincoln historian, Ive studied the famous meetings between challenger Abraham Lincoln and...