The 1858 Illinois Senate race between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas had famous Lincoln-Douglas debates that helped elevate Lincoln to a higher star status within the Republican Party, which greatly influenced his popularity for the Republican Party. Presidential election of 1860. Douglas' freeport doctrine diminished Douglas' influence and popularity in the South, making the 1860 election largely sectional, won by the more populated and more Republican North. The underlying discussion about slavery ─ i.e. the Dred Scott decision, the Freeport doctrine, etc. ─ raised the ideological debate about the position and place of blacks, thus the ideological battle of race in America that has been fought and largely dominated by the South for nearly a century. Without the crisis of the 1850s and what was then the central debate. Neither the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Fifteenth Amendment, nor the ideological battle over the rave would have happened when this did. This decade, surrounded by major periods in US history such as the Gold Rush and the Civil War, was in direct correlation with everything around it, being heavily influenced by the Gold Rush and directly influencing the Civil War, as well to create ripples throughout history. By understanding the influential periods preceding the crisis of 1850, the substance of the discussion, and the threatening effects of the crisis of 1850, it is difficult to deny the importance of that decade in American history.