The pair of freshmen had been invited by a local civic group to travel 230 miles to McKeesport, Pa., to debate one of the most hotly contested pieces of legislation that had been making its way through their committee. If nothing else, it was a chance for the two new lawmakers to raise their profiles. “We didn’t get that many invitations in those days,” Nixon would recall in an oral history interview years later, “and there was no honorarium.”…

Kennedy and Nixon would have some 18 hours up and back to McKeesport to get to know each other better and discuss the issues of the day. They disagreed on much, but they agreed on a great deal more, especially the emerging landscape of the Cold War, a term that had been coined only a few weeks earlier but had yet to enter the public lexicon. In the decades to come, they would each sculpt the nation’s political identity, Kennedy for his idealism and glamour and Nixon for his foreign policy achievements and more so for his cynical misuse of power.

But on that day 75 years ago this month, before they were political rivals, they were political arrivals who developed a respectful, even amicable working relationship at a time when societal and partisan divisions were raw and deep. Their first debate, 13 years before their legendary televised duels, is a fleeting and little-known chapter of American political history. It is also a reminder of a time when members of opposite parties, without teams of handlers and policy aides to run interference or shape their message, could disagree vehemently about major issues and yet still place the need to inform and persuade the public above their own political differences.