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 wish to address Mr. Lincoln before you as I lay out my reasons against his call for passivity to the most grave injustice which currently afflicts our country. He has made obvious his allegiance to the American government in his previous debate against Steven Douglas, in which he described the Declaration’s assertion that ‘all men are created equal’ as “a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all: constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated” (Lincoln 5). I appeal to Mr. Lincoln how this can be ‘constantly labored’ for if we are discouraged from taking direct action? How can we correct the contradiction upheld by the government if we are to operate only within the government? Mr. Lincoln, you have urged us to settle for the distant hope that slavery will eventually disappear. As you previously stated, “We might, by arresting the further spread of [slavery], and placing it where the fathers originally placed it, put it where the public mind should rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction” (Lincoln 5). You have assured your audience, Mr. Lincoln that you “have proposed nothing more than a return to the policy of the fathers” (Lincoln 6). This policy I find to be one of discounting present evil in the interest of future peace. It was disappointing when first employed in our country’s founding and would be ludicrous to continue now. You have explained that the framers “found slavery among them, and they left it among them because of the difficulty and the absolute impossibility of its immediate removal” (Lincoln 6). This government was based, then, on the sacrifice of morality for efficiency. You have shown then that it was impossible both for the government to be formed and for the freedom of all people to be protected. Is this the type of government we wish to uphold?

I am not a man of politics, Mr. Lincoln, but as your guest in this debate I will proceed in political terms. Is our government one which should answer to conformity and not to truth? Is it the responsibility of the government to protect, not only the justice Americans deserve, but particularly the justice that they are actively clamoring for? I believe you would agree with me, Mr. Lincoln, that the government does not exist so that the people will obey it. In fact, you would claim that the government exists so that people will act with justice. I ask you then, if the government can not firmly establish that justice, is it worthy of being obeyed? I think I am right in saying that between us there is no difference of opinion about the immorality of slavery, rather this debate rests in the very role of government. Surely, in a democracy, those for whom the government exists should not be forced to bend to it by respecting even those laws that they find heinously unjust, until the time when it seems most practical for the government to change them. If this is the case, then democracy is nothing more than a system which ignores the necessity of change and citizenship is merely a passivity to the perpetuation of injustice.

I sympathize with your claim that the government cannot practically expel it at once, however I believe that civil resistance is the only way in which one person can separate himself from evil. Let the government refuse to immediately outlaw injustice; that is no matter. If we are men first and subjects afterward, then let each man personally outlaw injustice in his actions. You say it is not economically practical for the government to outlaw slavery, I believe the government may also find it economically impractical to lose the tax money of abolitionists. If violence is unthinkable, and peace is ineffective, what other possibilities are available to those of us who fit with neither of the political ideologies you laid out. If the Republican party is for those who denounce slavery but will not endorse action, I am not welcome among them, and if the Democratic party endorses slavery, I do not have the least in common with them. So you see, Mr. Lincoln, politics fail us, the citizens who align themselves with parties desert us, and the government disregards us. 

The only measure I see within my power to take then, is one of civil disobedience. You yourself have reckoned it impossible for justice and injustice to coexist, as you said “If you go to the Territory opposed to slavery and another man comes upon the same ground with his slave, upon the assumption that the things are equal, it turns out that he has the equal right all his way and you have no part of it your way” (Lincoln 7). Although it was not your intention, you have shown the very reason why passive resistance to slavery is of no avail. Those who oppose slavery are unrepresented by the government as long as any slave holder dwells in their territory, in their state, or in their country. As long as a single person is enslaved, America is a country of slavery. While this fact is overlooked, how can the government claim to be impartial, even supportive of removing slavery, as you say the founding fathers were? They took no measure to eliminate slavery, rather they hoped merely to contain it. As you yourself have said, Mr. Lincoln, a place containing both slave and free can not equally be both. No state is immune to this abasement of justice, as each is part of a government which continues to undermine the rights it so strenuously claims to protect.

Works Cited

Lincoln, Abraham. Selections from "The Seventh Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Alton, Illinois, Oct. 15, 1858."