Lincoln and Douglas debated in Galesburg on October 7, 1858, in the fifth of seven joint meetings across Illinois as they contested Stephen A. Douglas's Senate seat. Thousands of spectators stood east of Knox College's Old Main to hear a three-hour dispute over the relevance of the Declaration of Independence to the legal status of African-Americans, the expansion of slavery in the West, and the power of states and territories to regulate local institutions. In Galesburg, Abraham Lincoln brought a controversial moral dimension to these issues, declaring slavery a moral, social and political evil and expressing hope that it would come to an end as a wrong. Although Douglas won the election, Lincoln's performance in the debates established him as a national political figure. Galesburg and Knox College had been founded together in 1837 by reformist Presbyterian and Congregationalist colonists led by the Rev. George Washington Gale, and among settlers in the surrounding region from slave-holding border states, the town and college became notorious for anti-slavery sentiments and activism, with some residents helping African-Americans to freedom on the western branches of the Underground Railroad. After the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad reached Galesburg in 1854 and made it a divisional terminal, the once-isolated sectarian community became a center of commerce and transportation, and its population grew from 882 in 1850 to 4,953 in 1860 as railroad employment drew a diverse new population from across the nation and abroad.
