With the final debate at Alton, both candidates recognized their final opportunity to push for support.  One final push.  Douglas started off the debate and his goals were to win over the Whigs, convince the South that he could be trusted, and to hurt Lincoln on his moral stand.  To accomplish this he leaned on the U.S. Constitution.  In 1858, there was a still great feeling towards the Founding Fathers and the beginning of our government.  There is that same feeling today, but remember your dates: 1858 is not too far removed from 1776. “Imagine for a moment that Mr. Lincoln had been a member of the convention that framed the Constitution of the United States, and that when its members were about to sign that wonderful document, he had arisen in that convention as he did at Springfield this summer, and addressing himself to the President, had said ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand; this government divided into free and slave states cannot endure, they must all be free or all be slave, they must all be one thing or all the other, otherwise, it is a violation of the law of God, and cannot continue to exist…’” Douglas went on to state that since, at that time, slave states outnumbered free, slavery would have been introduced as the law of the land.  A permanent institution.

For his response to this issue, Lincoln quoted from the Constitution.  As Lincoln viewed it, the Founding Fathers put slavery on the path to abolition.  “It is not true that our fathers, as Judge Douglas assumes, made this government part slave and part free.  Understand the sense in which he puts it.  He assumes that slavery is a rightful thing within itself, - was introduced by the framers of the Constitution.  The exact truth is, that they found the institution existing among us, and they left it as they found it.  But in making the government they left this institution with many clear marks of disapprobation upon it.  They found slavery among them and they left it among them because of the difficulty – the absolute impossibility of its immediate removal.” Lincoln then points out Douglas “hypocrisy” in saying that we should leave slavery alone as the Founding Fathers did.  Lincoln displays it as hypocrisy because of the introduction of new policies introduced by Douglas and the government in regards to slavery.  The situation was obviously never settled, claims Lincoln.  They never settled it.

Going back to the Constitution was a fitting conclusion for the famous debates of 1858.  The topic of slavery went right to the foundation of the United States.  It was only natural that the two contestants followed this path backwards to the founding.  Right back to the beginning.