omplaining about the prominence that the issue of slavery played in the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, historian J. G. Randall wrote:

“With all the problems that might have been put before the people as proper matter for their consideration in choosing a senator–choice of government servants, immigration, the tariff, international policy, promotion of education, west ward extension of railroads, the opening of new lands for homesteads, protection against greedy exploitation of those lands … encouragement to settlers … improving the condition of factory workers, and alleviating those agrarian grievances that were to plague the coming decades–with such issues facing the country, those two candidates for the Senate talked as if there were only one issue.”

I shall leave the contemporary application as an exercise to the reader.

HT: Between Two Worlds