Old Main, Knox College

Knox College and the city of Galesburg were founded together in eighteen thirty-seven by George Washington Gale, a Presbyterian abolitionist from upstate New York who wanted a community built around anti-slavery principles. By the eighteen fifties Knox was among the first colleges in the United States to admit Black students and women.

Old Main, the college's original building, became nationally famous on October seventh, eighteen fifty-eight, when Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated slavery on a platform built along its east wall. A crowd estimated at well over ten thousand packed the campus. Lincoln pressed Douglas hard: he called him guilty of blowing out the moral lights around us when he contended that whoever wants slaves has a right to own them. Old Main is the only surviving building associated with any of the seven Lincoln-Douglas debates, earning it National Historic Landmark status and a permanent place in the story of American democracy.