Before They Were Rivals–Lincoln and Douglas

This week I ended up returning to Chapter 3 of my novel after uncovering comments from my writers group that I had not fully addressed. It felt a little unhappy moving backward in the manuscript instead of forward, but revision often works that way. Sometimes the foundation needs attention before the upper floors can be built.

While revising, I also rewatched part of a Lincoln documentary. One detail that stuck you to me was the long relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. Today, most people remember them as opponents in the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates. By then, however, they had known each other for years. Both men arrived in Springfield as ambitious young politicians trying to build careers. They moved in many of the same circles, argued politics, practiced law, and encountered one another repeatedly as their reputations grew. Long before they became national figures, they were already measuring themselves against each other.

I have read accounts of Lincoln and Douglas debating issues in the back of Joshua Speed’s store. Those informal arguments helped build Lincoln’s political savvy. Neither man could have known where history would eventually take them. One would become president during the nation’s greatest crisis. The other would become one the most influential politicians of his generation.

At the time, they were simply two young men with strong opinions and large ambitious. That is one of the things I enjoy about writing historical fiction. We know how the story ends. The people living it did not. When writing about it, I have to pretend that I am like them and I don’t know how it ends. When I work on scenes involving Lincoln in the 1830s, I try to remember that he not yet the Lincoln of history books. He was growing and learning. He was a lawyer, a friend, a rival, and a man still trying to find his place in the world.

History often turns people into symbols. Fiction gives us the opportunity to see them as human beings again.

Current projects:

• My book: revisions continuing, including work on Chapter 3
• Edward Bryant: continuing to review stories for future publication

Sometimes the most interesting part of history is not the famous moment itself, but everything that happened before it.

Thanks for reading and walking alongside me.