Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate [Paperback]

David Zarefsky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1993 | ISBN-10: 0226978761 | ISBN-13: 978-0226978765

Winner of the Speech Communication's Winans-Wichelns Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address.

 

Zarefsky examines the dynamics of the seven 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, placing them in historical context and explaining the complicated issue of slavery in the territories, their focal point. He elucidates the candidates' arguments, analyzes their rhetorical strategies, and shows how public sentiment is transformed.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Zarefsky is dean of the School of Speech and professor of communication studies at Northwestern University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 309 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226978761
• ISBN-13: 978-0226978765
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,314,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A LOT of good context for the debates!, December 16, 2007

By 

Michael Goldman "Nerd Guy" (Sunnyvale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate (Paperback)

First of all, this does not include the debates themselves. It is solely a discussion of the issues they were debating with explanations of the Lincoln, Douglas, Republican, and Democratic politics and goals of the time. It covers each issue in its historical context, as it was developed over the course of the debates, pointing out where an issue was raised, in which debate it became critical, and when it was dropped.

I thought after reading several biographies of Lincoln and his contemporaries and other histories of the period that I knew something about Lincoln and the debates, but I was wrong. After reading this I looked the debates up in various history books and online references. I see now that a lot of other people have only the vaguest notion of what was really going on. This book is really essential reading if you want to be able to make sense out of much of what they were debating since the debates themselves often assume knowledge that the audience of 1858 would have been aware of but are now too complex or detailed for anyone but a scholar in the field to be aware of.

This is a very dense book and I can't read it for very long because the discussions of the complex legal and political issues overwhelm my tiny brain much faster than any other history book I've ever read.

I couldn't possibly begin to detail all the many contextual references that you will miss if you rely solely on the text of the debates themselves for your knowledge. If you really want to understand what they were debating, get this book.