In Freeport, Illinois, just beyond the somnolent downtown, a small park near the Pecatonica River is wedged next to the public library. In the mid-19th century, however, land along the shore stretched green into the distance, the grassy hills dotted with maples and river birches. It was here, on August 27, 1858, that U.S. senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas waged a war of words.
"Imagine that you're there," says my guide, George Buss, stepping onto the four-foot-high concrete replica of a speaker's platform, installed here in 1992 to memorialize the debate. He places a hand on the head of the squat, life-size bronze sculpture of Douglas, who was a foot shorter than Lincoln. "Picture the banners, brass bands and parades...people pushing and shoving...kids running up to the comurthouse for sandwiches, where they're barbecuing an ox. Douglas is pacing back and forth like a lion. People in the back of the crowd are shouting, â??What'd he say? What'd he say?'"
At 6-foot-5 and with craggy features, deep-set eyes and gangly limbs, Buss, a Freeport school administrator, bears an eerie resemblance to the 16th president. Indeed, for 22 years, Buss has moonlighted as one of the nation's most accomplished Lincoln interpreters. As a schoolboy nearly 40 years ago, he got hooked on Honest Abe when he learned that one of the seven historic Lincoln-Douglas debates had taken place in his hometown.
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