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15 Laws 1 (2026)

handle is hein.journals/laws15 and id is 1 raw text is: laws MDPI Article Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, and the Galesburg Challenge Jason W. Stevens Department of History & Political Science, Ashland University, Ashland, OH 44805, USA; jstevens@ashbrook.org Abstract In this essay, I explore the historical challenge that Abraham Lincoln posed to Stephen Douglas at the fifth debate in Galesburg. During an argument regarding the morality of slavery and the meaning and significance of the American regime, Douglas contended that the nation was legally founded on white supremacy. Lincoln, however, affirmed that based on all available historical evidence, the Founders intended to include all humans when they said in the Declaration of Independence, based on their understanding of natural law, that all men are created equal. To demonstrate his confidence in this belief, Lincoln challenged Douglas to provide primary source evidence that anyone, prior to the 1850s, ever said that the black race was not included in the Declaration. Studying Lincoln's natural law challenge and the responses it received offers a new perspective on the importance of the original meaning of the Declaration's equality principle, grounded in the law of nature, as well as how Lincoln thought about that principle-particularly in contrast to rivals like Douglas and Roger Taney. Keywords: Abraham Lincoln; Stephen Douglas; Lincoln-Douglas debates; Declaration of Independence; equality; natural law; civic education Academic Editors: Bolek Z. Kabala, Justin Dyer, Lee Ward, Casey D. Thompson and Adam M. Carrington Received: 24 December 2025 Revised: 2 February 2026 Accepted: 10 February 2026 Published: 13 February 2026 Copyright: © 2026 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commor 1. Introduction Much has been written about Abraham Lincoln's famous Freeport Question at the 1858 joint debates with Stephen A. Douglas. Less recognized is what might be called Lincoln's Galesburg Challenge, which Lincoln presented to Douglas at the fifth debate in Galesburg and then repeated at the seventh and final debate in Alton. In the midst of an argument regarding the morality of slavery and the meaning and significance of the American regime, Douglas contended that the nation was founded on the principle of white supremacy, and that when the Founders said all men are created equal in the Declaration of Independence, they meant only white men. Lincoln, on the other hand, affirmed that based on all available historical evidence, Americans should rest assured that the Founders intended to include all human beings-and all races-in the Declaration's equality principle, based in large part on their commitment to natural law legal reasoning. To demonstrate his confidence in this belief, Lincoln challenged Douglas to provide primary source evidence that anyone, prior to the 1850s, ever said that the black race was not included in the Declaration. Here is the crux of the challenge, as stated by Lincoln at the Galesburg debate in October 1858: I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Laws 2026, 15, 13