Before I full dive into the subject of debate history I would like to thank and apologize to a few people, some of whom I will not name. I would like to thank all the cross-x posters for the scraps of history they pieced together… I would like to thank in particular that debater who posted the list of resolutions that are found at the bottom of this article. I would also I like to give credit to the book Gifted Tongues by Gary Alan Fine and to thank the Bailey-Howe Library and the Lawrence Debate Union. I would like to apologize for writing this when others were planning on it. I also would like to apologize for quoting personal stories and not giving full credit to them. Finally, please forgive me for the numerous errors I am bound to make throughout this article. With that said I will now commence the telling of what we call “history.”

In a poll done in 1990 of debaters, all of whom went to nationals, 64% were male. Eighty-three percent were Caucasian and the majority came from households, which made an income of 45,000 or more. The mean SAT score for this group was 1270 and 99% planed on attending college. With that said should be call debate a sport of the rich, white, intelligent, boy? Obviously not because we as debaters look to be above common flaws in society such as racism, slavery, and oppression. Instead we use rhetoric of the elite, a jargon or speed and discourse. While I may run a Whiteness kritik in a debate round, quoting great philosophers, I myself may be part of a deeply entrenched system in which the white, rich, smart, male is expected to and does thrive. This society of thinking in debate is set up much like we have set up our societies through the ages.
To put a date on when exactly debate started would be impossible. If one were to define debate merely as an oral contestation in a limited topic area we could argue debate could be traced to the likes of the Greeks or Romans, potentially even cavemen. Some argue that the diaries of Socrates presented by Plato are in fact debates – however one-sided they may be. As a matter of fact as a young man Plato was a disciple of Socrates, accepting his basic philosophy and dialectical style of debate: the pursuit of truth through questions, answers, and additional questions. Latter on after the death of Socrates Plato continued to write in dialogue form; philosophical ideas were advanced, discussed, and criticized in the context of a conversation or debate involving two or more persons. Besides the apparent early workings of Plato we can trace debate to the Middle Ages. It is easy to recognize how the Monks of the Middle Ages engaged in the rhetoric we would label as primitive debate. These Monks heavily debated the teachings of the Torah and Talmud. In the early 18th century, rhetoric declined in importance, although more on its theoretical than on its practical side, since the political arena and the debating platform continued to furnish numerous opportunities for effective oratory. Because of this for the next half-century, the art of rhetoric had increasingly fewer exponents. Then, once again we can easily see the re-emergence of debate in the nineteenth century. Debate became notably widespread in most towns across “early” America. Debating societies, literary societies and lyceums flourished. Cities, towns and villages all had debating or literary societies where people gathered and debated a singular favored topic for that particular parley. Journals and memoirs were published which listed resolutions and might give a brief explanation or opinion on them – tactist for debate would be included occasionally and from that the early rules of debate came about. These rules were generally formalities such as speech time, order, topic constraints and appropriate debating code. With the establishment of code debate began to flourish. From the societies rose the Chataqua movement – which would later lead to some of the building blocks for policy debate. Closer to this century but still fully imbedded in the past we can see the use of debate rhetoric in legal practices and politics. Every member of Al Gore's legal team in the lawsuits in Florida was once a debate team member. The use of rivalrous, competitive nature is common both in legislate practices and legal engagement affairs. We can see a clear example in the famous Illinois Senatorial Campaign debates of 1858 from which we draw the title Lincoln-Douglas. Interestingly, at one period a majority of congressmen had debated in high school. While this is no longer true a large group of debaters (40%) look to become lawyers after college.
But after telling all of that to you, you still have yet to find out where the first ever “policy” debate was. According to one source the first intercollegiate debate was between the two great Ivy’s Harvard and Yale in 1892. Which could fit a story in which two highly competitive Ivy league schools were in the final round the deciding college tournament in which a disadvantage was running claiming that by passing plan it would cause the invention of flying machines that could revolutionize war and cause massive devastation. The Negative supposedly won on this position. But because of their win they faced much scrutiny, as debate does today, by a local newspaper covering the event. This paper went on to write an article the 'ridiculous' and 'far-fetched' claims being made by this negative team. The article shared that there was no place for an arguments such as those that were brought up and in fact the article made the classic claim that the negative team was destroying the educational value of the debate. But this may all be a myth, because it is a good story and it paints a nice picture to think Harvard and Yale were the first two schools ever to debate. In contradiction to the Harvard-Yale claim David Zarefsky states that the first real debate between two college teams was years early between the old Chicago University and Northwestern in 1872. No matter which is true the Harvard story provides a clever mythology of two rich, white, intellectually driven schools which at the time were male based. This mythology is still living in a sport, which continues to be dominated by a similar part of society. Anyway, within a few years of the Harvard-Yale debate, the activity swept across large college campuses and universities. From that point the activity tricked down to smaller colleges and eventually high school. The NFL (National Forensic League) was founded at Ripon College in Wisconsin and began national high school tournaments in 1931. Funny enough, the NFL once considered dropping debate, as it "distracted from the true quality of individual forensics activities, including interpretations of drama and humor and extemporaneous speaking." High School policy developed slowly at first while teams grew and rules became stable. Rules began to become standard within regions if not across the country. Many theory arguments would be tried somewhere and if it was well accredited it would disseminate and when it was not well accepted faced a quick death much like the counter warrants did.
One individual claims that in fact debate started back in the 1920s on a high school level in their region. In this area along with many others around the country schools just started debating each other as a hobby. It was customary early on then to have a four-person team on which a pair would debate the affirmative all year while the negative was debated by the other pair all year. Tournament guests were put up in the opponents house rather than staying in hotels. Most debates were small such as the one in this location in which the teams debated over whether or not they should build a levy on the Red River. Our debate - Policy debate cross-examination debate - has not existed for more than a good thirty years. The concept of truncating the speech times in addition to adding cross-examination originated in the middle to late 1950's and some argue early 1960’s at the collegiate level. It was not until the 1970's though that the NFL adopted Cross-X debate. At this same approximate time period topicality became an argument that was common to see in a debate round. The newest argument coming to debate – the kritik – has a consensus birth of very early 1990’s.
While debate has changed a lot from Plato to the Monks to early America to early policy to what we have now. The underlying theme of argumentation and scrutiny of ideas always exists in our argumentative rhetorical styles. Although we do not debate the Torah, the Red River and we don’t even use real cards or counter-warrants we are all still debating and maybe the reason a debater can not trace their history is for the sole reason that our game of language was born before football or basketball and is bound to outlive them in one form or another. Please recognize where we have come from and read over some of the old resolutions. And so to the question when was the first debate and where does it all come from I leave you with this quote:

"It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it."
[Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)]


1924: Resolved, that the United States should adopt a parliamentary system of government.
1925: Resolved, that the United States should enter the World Court.
1926: Resolved, that there should be a Secretary of Education in the President's Cabinet.
1927: Resolved, that a Federal Child Labor Amendment should be adopted.
1928 R: That a federal department of education should be created with a secretary in the president's cabinet.
1929 R: That the English cabinet method of legislation is more efficient than the committee system is in the United States.
1930 R: That installment buying of personal property as now practiced in the United States is both socially & economically desirable.
1931 R: That chain stores are detrimental to the best interests of the American public.
1932 R: That the several states should enact legislation providing for compulsory unemployment insurance.
1933 R: That at least one half of all state and local revenues should be derived from sources other than tangible property.
1934 R: That the United States should adopt the essential features of the Brith's system of radio control and operation.
1935 R: That the federal government should adopt the policy of equalizing educational opportunity throughout the nation by means of annual grants to the several states for public elementary and secondary education.
1936 R: That the several states should enact legislation providing for a system of complete medical service available to all citizens at public expense.
1937 R: That all electric utilities should be governmentally owned and operated.
1938 R: That the several states should adopt a unicameral system of legislation.
1939 R: That the United States should establish an alliance with Great Britain.
1940 R: That the federal government should own and operate the railroads.
1941 R: That the power of the federal government should be increased.
1942 R: That every able-bodied male citizen in the Untied States should be required to have one year of full-time military training before attaining the present draft age.
1943 R: That a federal world government should be established.
1944 R: That the United States should join in reconstituting the League of Nations.
1945 R: That the legal voting age should be reduced to eighteen years.
1946 R: That every able-bodied male citizen of the United States should have one year of full-time military training before attaining age 24.
1947 R: That the federal government should provide a system of complete medical care available to all citizens at public expense.
1948 R: That the federal government should require arbitration of labor disputes in all basic American industries.
1949 R: That the United States now be revised into a Federal World Government.
1950 R: That the president of the United States should be elected by the direct vote of the people.
1951 R: That the American people should reject the welfare state.
1952 R: That all American citizens should be subject to conscription for essential service in time of war.
1953 R: That the Atlantic Pact nations should form a federal union.
1954 R: That the President of the United States should be elected by the direct vote of the people.
1955 R: That the federal government should initiate a policy of free trade among nations friendly to the United States.
1956 R: That governmental subsidies should be granted according to need to high school graduates who qualify for additional training.
1957 R: That the federal government should sustain the prices of major agricultural products at not less than 90% of parity.
1958 R: That the United States foreign aid should be substantially increased.
1959 R: That the United States should adopt the essential features of the British system of education.
1960 R: That the federal government should substantially increase its regulation of labor unions.
1961 R: That the United Nations should be significantly strengthened.
1962 R: That the federal government should equalize educational opportunity by means of grants to the states for public elementary and secondary education.
1963 R: That the United States should promote a Common Market for the Western Hemisphere.
1964 R: That Social Security benefits should be extended to include complete medical care.
1965 R: That nuclear weapons should be controlled by an international organization.
1966 R: That the federal government should adopt a program of compulsory arbitration in labor-management disputes in basic industries.
1967 R: That the foreign aid program of the United States should be limited to non-military assistance.
1968 R: That Congress should establish uniform regulations to control criminal investigation procedures.
1969 R: That the United States should establish a system of compulsory service by all citizens.
1970 R: That Congress should prohibit unilateral United States military intervention in foreign countries.
1971 R: That federal government should establish, finance, and administer programs to control aid and/or water pollution in the United States.
1972 R: That the jury system in the United States should be significantly changed.
1973 R: That governmental financial support for all public and secondary education in the United States be provided exclusively by the federal government.
1974 R: That the federal government should guarantee a minimum annual income to each family unit.
1975 R: That the United States should significantly change the method of selecting presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
1976 R: That the development and allocation of scarce world resources should be controlled by an international organization.
1977 R: That a comprehensive program of penal reform should be adopted throughout the United States.
1978 R: That the federal government should establish a comprehensive program to regulate the health care system in the United States.
1979 R: That the federal government should establish a comprehensive program to significantly increase the energy independence of the United States.
1980 R: That the United States should significantly change its foreign trade policies.
1981 R: That the federal government should initiate and enforce safety guarantees on consumer goods.
1982 R: That the federal government should establish minimum educational standards for elementary and secondary schools in the United States.
1983 R: That the United States should significantly curtail its arms sales to other countries.
1984 R: That the United States should establish uniform rules governing the procedure of all criminal courts in the nation.
1985 R: That the federal government should provide employment for all employable United States citizens living in poverty.
1986 R: That the federal government should establish a comprehensive national policy to protect the quality of water in the United States.
1987 R: That the federal government should implement a comprehensive program to guarantee retirement security for United States citizens over age 65.
1988 R: that the United States government should adopt a policy to increase political stability in Latin America.
1989 R: That the federal government should implement a comprehensive program to guarantee retirement security for Untied States citizens over age 65.
1990 R: That the federal government should adopt a nationwide policy to decrease overcrowding in prisons and jails in the United States.
1991 R: That the United States government should significantly increase space exploration beyond the Earth's mesosphere.
1992 R: That the federal government should significantly increase social services to homeless individuals in the United States.
1993 R: That the United States government should reduce worldwide pollution through its trade and/or aid policies.
1994 R: That the federal government should guarantee comprehensive national health insurance to all United States citizens.
1995 R: That the United States government should substantially strengthen regulation of immigration to the United States.
1996 R: That the United States government should substantially change its foreign policy toward the People's Republic of China.
1997 R: That the federal government should establish a policy to substantially reduce juvenile crime in the United States.
1998 R: That the federal government should establish a policy to substantially increase renewable energy use in the United States.
1999 R: That the United States should substantially change its foreign policy toward Russia.
2000 R: That the federal government should establish an education policy to significantly increase academic achievement in secondary schools in the United States.