By Kyle Garza
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas engaged in public discourse that we have today converted into a format for competitive debate in high schools throughout the United States. Even before the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the two had engaged in open-air discourse at local fairs that usually ran in a format resembling this: Douglas would deliver his speech for three hours; Lincoln would respond for a few hours; each candidate would take about an hour for cross-examination. Once, on October 16, 1854, in Peoria, Illinois, Lincoln told his audience to just go home and have dinner before he began his speech because it was already 5 p.m. The people went home, had dinner, and cordially returned for four more hours of oratory spectacle. Nowadays you’ll see this exchange on TV: “Mr. President, what are you going to do about _______________? You have two minutes to respond.” What happened in the last 160 years?
