U.S. senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas are in Ottawa, Illinois, where they meet in their first joint debate. Newspapers report, "Twelve Thousand Persons Present!" Douglas asserts, "Mr. Lincoln and his party...are trying to array all the Northern States...against the South, to excite a sectional war between the free States and the slave States." Lincoln responds, "I leave it to you to say whether, in the history of our government, this institution of slavery has not always failed to be a bond of union, and, on the contrary, been an apple of discord and an element of division." Daily Illinois State Register (Springfield), 24 August 1858, 2:2-3; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 24 August 1858, 2:3; Chicago (IL) Daily Press and Tribune, 23 August 1858, 1:2-9, 4:1; Abraham Lincoln to Joseph Gillespie, 21 August 1858, CW, 3:1-37.

[Mrs. Lincoln buys and charges soap and coffee, then sends "Son" for eight pounds of sugar. Pratt, Personal Finances, 149.]