Prompt: What if Abe Lincoln challenged Henry David Thoreau to a debate? It’s late 1858. Abraham Lincoln has lost the US Senate race to Stephen Douglas but is itching for more debate. He writes Henry David Thoreau to challenge him to a debate over their ideas about American democracy, citizenship, and slavery in the United States. Thoreau accepts.

Your assignment is as follows: 2-3 pages – Writing as either Lincoln or Thoreau (you get to pick), draft a brief opening statement that he would deliver to start the debate, identifying his specific points of disagreement with the other. What ideas of Thoreau’s would Lincoln challenge, or vice versa? How would he explain his own views? Base your knowledge of each man’s views on our assigned readings. Be specific about lines and ideas that your chosen debater would pick out to challenge from his opponent.

Ladies and Gentlemen; I am here today to speak to Mr Thoreau not on a moral level, but on a logical, political level. There is much we can agree on, and to those principles I have little to question. The institution of slavery in this country has indeed been protected and defended for much too long. It seems necessary for me to attest this is not the fault of our Nation's founders or its “evil” Constitution. Our founders understood well that the extinction of slavery in our country would never be immediate, and thus embedded in our founding documents the necessary provisions to lead to the eventual eradication of slavery. They, as well as I, hold faith in this Democratic system and in God that through these provisions freedom could be granted to all. Mr Thoreau appears to be lacking in this faith. Perhaps this is why he holds such a bleak view on voting. In his essay on civil disobedience, Mr Thoreau claims that “All voting is a sort of gaming…with a slight moral tinge to it....” There stands an inherent morality in the issues which are voted on, but the morality of the players of this game is not affected by how they vote or the results of the poll. The vote is left up to the majority, with the individual left utterly separated and unaffected from the consensus. I think Mr Thoreau forgets Thomas Jefferson's Land Ordinance of 1784.1 The first drafting of this ordinance included a clause which would have abolished the institution of slavery many years ago. This clause was voted out by a single vote. Was that vote a feeble voice, or has it had a nearly insurmountable effect on a sixth of the population for the past 59 years. Pardon me, Mr Thoreau would argue that the effect is in fact insurmountable. Unlike Mr Thoreau, I have faith. One vote. Regardless of your moral protests towards voting, the effect of just a single vote is very real; it is not a game.

When Mr Thoreau was imprisoned overnight for not paying his taxes, did he not submit to the penalty of imprisonment for that transgression? Did he not make use of the States resources while incarcerated? Further, did he not continue to submit to the laws of the State when he was granted release upon the payment of his taxes for him? He seems to condemn those actions of his neighbor paying for his release, yet still he accepts them. All these actions involve living under the government and accepting its rules.

I do not bring up my opponent's time in prison to bring about any ill-will towards his character, but rather to highlight the fallacies in his argument. He claims he has withdrawn his “allegiance to the State,” yet continues to live among it. He claims to refuse protection from the state, yet by living within it and accepting its prison system he reaps the benefits of that which he claims to reject. He claims voting is just a game, yet if this “game” had gone differently in Jefferson's day all men in this country would today be free men. To call that a game undermines the stakes which have been and continue to be at play. The freedom of men is not decided by a game, rather, our fathers carefully instituted a system allowing citizens voices to be heard, and held faith that these citizens, perhaps in their lifetime or perhaps afterwards, would use that voice to advocate for and set free all men within this country, according to their God given, unalienable rights. 

I have faith in America. I have faith in every person in this audience, and in Mr Thoreau to make use of our Democratic system and pursue a nation not so in favor of these brutal transgressions against the Divine creation which is man. What is my alternative? To sit idly by and remain apathetic to it all? That is not in mine, nor any truly impassioned beings nature. I believe in right and wrong. I cannot stand idly by. I petition for peace, I vote for freedom, and I hope for grace to be bestowed upon all.

Works Cited

Merkel, William G. "Jefferson's Failed Anti-Slavery Proviso of 1784 and the Nascence of Free Soil Constitutionalism." Seton Hall Law Review, 38, no. 2 (2008): 555-603, https://ssrn.com/abstract=1123973

Thoreau, Henry David. Civil Disobedience, 1849.