Eighth Grade Work on Lincoln-Douglas Debates

In class we watched this short video introducing the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Then students chose small groups (no more than four) and opened a shared google document.

Students went to this page and used the linked resources there for the following.

Section One: using transcripts of the two news articles (Galesburg Democrat and Chicago Press and Tribune) linked:

• Compare and contrast the articles. How are they alike and how are they different from one another?
• Compare the articles to modern day news sources. How does the tone compare? Would modern news portray the debaters similarly?
• Finally, do you think debates like this are valuable? Why or why not?

Section Two: using the three recollections linked:

• How valuable should historians consider these recollection?
• When were they written?
• Should that matter to historians? Why or why not?