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Lincoln and Douglas shows how they deal with race indicates two different directions regarding civil and political rights for blacks in Illinois, where Douglas will use race not only to affirm existing white supremacy but to reinforce it. Lincoln brings up race in a way that, in his most controversial statements, defers to the superior status of whites and blacks, but also tries to point whites in the direction of natural equality as the basis of everyone's rights with equal opportunity for blacks as well as whites.3 The reason whites were superior was that African-Americans, through slavery, had been deprived of this right. Therefore, slavery threatened the Union and the principles of the Declaration of Independence. As long as slavery existed in America, equality between the races would be impossible. He acknowledged how far public sentiment had drifted from the Founders' vision of a free America: the belief to establish their independence from England would require a new foundation for Liberty.4 Lincoln argued the Founding of America that slavery was seen as a necessary evil during that period. He believed that federal constitution was being reinterpreted to establish a race-based, not a natural-rights-based, system of government that would extend slavery into every territory and state of the American union. In addition, the Founders planned to cut off its supply and restrict its expansion, which in short, "the framers of the constitution intended and expected the ultimate extinction of that institution.5 Within the cotton boom, it was beneficial for both Americans and African-Americans. Lincoln saw this idea of human equality or race-based as the greatest threat to preserving America's free institutions and allowing slavery to dominate the union.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, mandated "popular sovereignty" allowing settlers of a territory to decide whether slavery would be allowed within a new state's borders.
