Stephen A. Douglas

U.S. senator Stephen Arnold Douglas (1813-1861), the foremost leader of the Democratic party in the decade preceding the Civil War, was Lincoln's political rival for the presidency.

Stephen A. Douglas was born in Brandon, Vt., on April 23, 1813. His father's early death meant Stephen's dependence on a bachelor uncle and later, a detested apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker. When his mother remarried and went to Canandaigua, N. Y., Stephen followed. He attended the academy there, developed a formidable talent as a debater, and became an ardent follower of Andrew Jackson.

Douglas made up for his short stature (5 feet 4 inches) in aggressiveness, audacity, and consuming political ambition. When he said farewell to his mother at 20, he promised to return "on his way to Congress," a prediction he made good 10 years later. He settled in Illinois, where he became a teacher. He taught himself law with borrowed books, became active in the Democratic party, and at 27 was a member of the Illinois State Supreme Court, the youngest ever to attain that office. He was called Judge Douglas thereafter.

Career in Congress

Elected to the House of Representatives in 1843 and to the Senate in 1847, Douglas became a power in all legislation having to do with territories in the West. Known as the "Little Giant" because of his massive head, heavy brown hair, broad shoulders, and booming voice, he soon won the reputation of being the most formidable legislative pugilist in Washington. His enemies called him ruthless; his admirers strove to make him president.

In 1847 Douglas married Martha Denny Martin. The following year she inherited a Mississippi plantation with 150 slaves; by the terms of his father-in-law's will, Douglas was made manager. Though he always denied ownership of any slaves himself, he did manage the plantation up to his death, and there is little doubt that he looked upon his own marriage as symbolic of a successful bridging of North and South. When his wife, after having two sons, died in childbirth, he became depressed and turned for a time to liquor. A tour abroad rejuvenated his spirits, and in 1856 he married the beautiful Adèle Cutts, another Southern woman.

Though privately Douglas held slavery to be "a curse beyond computation," publicly he pronounced it a matter "of climate, of political economy, of self-interest, not a question of legislation." It was good for Louisiana, he said, but bad for illinois. Essentially proslavery in his legislation, he voted against abolition petitions, favored the annexation of Texas, helped Henry Clay push through the Compromise of 1850, and encouraged the purchase of Cuba to make a new slave state.

Doctrine of "Squatter Sovereignty"

Douglas's failure to reckon with the enormity of the slavery evil, and the growing Northern resentment against it, led him to devise in 1854 what modern historian Allan Nevins called "the worst Pandora's box in our history." In planning for two new states, Kansas and Nebraska, he insisted that the slavery issue be resolved by the settlers themselves rather than by Congress, thus repudiating the 20-year-old Missouri Compromise. Southern extremists saw in this "squatter sovereignty" doctrine an opportunity to make Kansas a slave state, though a majority of the actual settlers were against slavery. Missourians crossed the border at election time to overwhelm the polls and vote in a proslavery government. The antislavery majority set up a rival government in Topeka, and soon there was a small but bloody civil was in Kansas. Douglas was denounced by the abolitionists. Charles Sumner in the Senate called him the squire of slavery, "ready to do all its humiliating offices."

When President James Buchanan recognized the proslavery government in Kansas, Douglas, angered by the misuse of his popular-sovereignty doctrine, denounced the President in 1857, thereby alienating his friends in the South and damaging his presidential chances. But his Kansas-Nebraska Bill had also alienated his antislavery followers in illinois, who charged him with conniving with railroad speculators. In 1858 he went home to face a difficult reelection battle, with Abraham Lincoln as his opponent.

Debates with Lincoln

In his famous debates with Lincoln, Douglas opposed African American citizenship in any form and attacked as "monstrous heresy" Lincoln's insistence that "the Negro and the white man are made equal by the Declaration of Independence and by Divine Providence." Douglas held that African Americans "belong to an inferior race and must always occupy an inferior position." Lincoln denounced Douglas's popular-sovereignty idea as "a mere deceitful pretense for the benefit of slavery" and emphasized the callousness of Douglas's statement: "When the struggle is between the white man and the Negro, I am for the white man; when it is between the Negro and the crocodile, I am for the Negro."

Douglas barely won the senatorial election, but the debates won national recognition for his rival. In 1860, when Lincoln was nominated for president on the Republican ticket, Douglas said of him to Republicans, "Gentlemen, you have nominated a very able and a very honest man."

Presidential Candidate

Douglas expected to be nominated for president in the Democratic convention in Charleston, but a block of Southerners bolted the party, nominating instead John C. Breckinridge. The remaining Democrats nominated Douglas at a second convention in Baltimore. A fourth convention, organized by the Constitutional Union party, nominated John Bell. Douglas suspected that the four-candidate election would ensure Lincoln's victory but nevertheless campaigned vigorously, urging support for the Union he loved. "I wish to God," he said in New York City, "that we had an Old Hickory now alive in order that he might hang Northern and Southern traitors on the same gallows." In the South he deplored secession, which he said would make it necessary for his children to obtain a passport to visit the graves of their ancestors.

A Douglas feared, Lincoln's victory brought the immediate secession of South Carolina from the Union, and other states quickly followed. Douglas still labored for compromises to restore the Union, and he urged Lincoln to support a projected 13th Amendment which would guarantee that slavery would never be tampered with in the slave states. The firing on Ft. Sumter on Jan. 9, 1861, by Confederate forces ended his compromise efforts. He now swung behind Lincoln, urging a vigorous war effort and rallying Northern Democrats to the cause of the Union.

Douglas contracted typhoid fever and died June 3, 1861. Thus Lincoln lost his ablest rival at precisely the moment in history when he was most needed.

Further Reading

The bulk of Douglas's papers are at the University of Chicago, with additional letters in the illinois State Historical Society Library and the Chicago Historical Society. The brief Autobiography of Stephen A. Douglas (1913) and a volume of his letters, The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas, edited by Robert W. Johannsen (1961), are good source materials. The earliest good biography is Allen Johnson, Stephen A. Douglas: A Study in American Politics (1908). George Fort Milton in The Eve of Conflict: Stephen A. Douglas and the Needless War (1934) proves to be the most sympathetic of all the biographers and contends that, had Douglas been elected president in 1860, he would have prevented the Civil War. The same thesis in echoed in Gerald M. Capers, Stephen A. Douglas: Defender of the Union, edited by Oscar Handlin (1959). Historians are more critical of Douglas than these laudatory biographers.

For more information on Stephen Arnold Douglas, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: Apr. 23, 1813, Brandon, Vt.
• Political party: Democrat
• Education: studied law at Canandaigua Academy
• Senator from Illinois: 1847–61
• Died: June 3, 1861, Chicago, Ill.

The fragile compromises that glued the Union together began to dissolve in January 1854, when Senator Stephen A. Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. His bill aimed to organize the territorial governments of Kansas and Nebraska for eventual statehood. The Kansas-Nebraska territory lay north of the Missouri Compromise line, where slavery was prohibited. Douglas promoted the bill because it would allow construction of a transcontinental railroad out of Chicago, in his state of Illinois. To win Southern support, his bill canceled the Missouri Compromise and allowed the residents of the territories to decide for themselves whether to permit or prohibit slavery—a plan he called “popular sovereignty” (rule by the people). Douglas expected these territories to remain free, assuming that slavery could never be economical there. A skillful politician, known popularly as the “Little Giant,” Douglas knew that his bill would raise a storm of protest, but even he was surprised by the ferocity of Northern opposition. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill led to the formation of a Republican party dedicated to opposing the spread of slavery into the territories. Rather than uniting the nation, as he had hoped, Douglas's plan divided it even further.

In 1858, Douglas was challenged for re-election to the Senate by Republican Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln-Douglas debates, held throughout Illinois and focusing largely on the slavery issue, drew national attention. Although Douglas defeated Lincoln in that Senate race, two years later in 1860 he lost to Lincoln in the campaign for President. Douglas fell political victim to the forces he had unleashed by repealing the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

See also Missouri Compromise (1821)

Sources

• Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973)

(1813-1861), member of Congress and presidential candidate in 1860. Born in Vermont, Douglas studied law in Canandaigua, New York, before moving to Illinois in 1833, where he became involved in politics. As a youth he had been captivated by Andrew Jackson, and it was as a Jacksonian that he built his career. He played an important part in the organization of the Democratic party in Illinois, introducing such new devices as party committees and nominating conventions and pushing for party regularity and discipline. He enjoyed a lasting popularity among the small farmers of the state, many of whom had migrated from the border South, and he used his popularity to establish a tightly knit Democratic organization.

After holding several state offices, Douglas ran for Congress in 1837, losing by the narrow margin of thirty-five votes. Six years later, he was elected to the House of Representatives, where he sat for two terms. In 1847, he was elected U.S. senator, a position he held until his death in 1861.

Douglas was involved in every major issue to come before the nation during his years in Washington. As chairman of the House and Senate Committees on Territories, he developed a strong interest in the West. One of his first legislative proposals was a program that included territorial expansion, the construction of a Pacific railroad, a free land (homestead) policy, and the organization of territorial governments. "You cannot fix bounds to the onward march of this great and growing country," he declared. He believed in America's unique mission and manifest destiny, was a leading proponent of Texas annexation, demanded the acquisition of Oregon, and supported the war with Mexico. A man of great energy and persuasive power, standing only five feet four inches tall, Douglas became known as the Little Giant.

When slavery became a divisive political issue during the Mexican War, Douglas's romantic nationalism faced a new challenge. Fearing that the issue might disrupt the Republic, he argued for the doctrine of popular sovereignty--the right of the people of a state or territory to decide the slavery question for themselves--as a Union-saving formula. He led the fight in Congress for the Compromise of 1850. Four years later, he incorporated the doctrine in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, thus repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Douglas's hopes for the country suffered a setback when the act aroused bitter opposition from northern antislavery elements, who eventually formed the Republican party.

During the 1850s, he continued to fight for popular sovereignty in Congress and in Illinois, where the state election campaign of 1858 was highlighted by his famous debates with Abraham Lincoln. He blamed the agitation over slavery on abolitionists in the North and disunionists in the South, trying to find a middle way that would preserve the Union. Slavery, he believed, must be treated impartially as a question of public policy, although he privately thought it was wrong and hoped it would be eliminated some day. At the same time, he saw in popular sovereignty an extension of local self-government and states' rights and charged his opposition with seeking a consolidation of power on the national level that would restrict individual liberty and endanger the Union.

Douglas's popularity waned as the party system foundered on the slavery question. Proposed as the Democratic candidate for president in 1852 and 1856, he did not win his party's nomination until 1860, when it was too late. With his party hopelessly divided and a Republican elected to the presidency, he fought strenuously to hold the sections together with a compromise on the slavery issue, but to no avail. Following the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, he pledged his support to the northern cause and urged a vigorous prosecution of the war against the rebels. He died in June, however, worn out from his exertions and broken in spirit.

Bibliography:

Robert W. Johannsen, ed., The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas (1961); Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (1973).

Author:

Robert W. Johannsen

See also Compromise of 1850; Freeport Doctrine; Kansas-Nebraska Act; Lincoln-Douglas Debates; Popular Sovereignty.

Senatorial Career

He was admitted to the bar at Jacksonville, Ill., in 1834. After holding various state and local offices he became a U.S. Representative in 1843, and from 1847 until his death was a U.S. Senator. In the Senate, Douglas was made chairman of the Committee on Territories, an all-important post in the next decade because of the growing battle over the issue of slavery in the territories. For the Compromise of 1850, Douglas drafted the bills instituting territorial government in New Mexico and Utah, whose citizens were left free to act for themselves on all subjects of legislation (including slavery) not inconsistent with the Constitution. This was the essence of Douglas's doctrine of popular sovereignty (a phrase he coined later, in 1854), or Squatter Sovereignty, as its opponents contemptuously called it.

In the early 1850s, when expanding settlement and the great desire for a transcontinental railroad to the Pacific focused attention on the Nebraska region, Douglas proposed a bill in which, as in New Mexico and Utah, all questions of slavery were left to the residents of the new territory. A conference of leaders changed the bill to provide for two territories rather than one, and in this form the Kansas-Nebraska Act became law in 1854. Douglas believed that popular sovereignty would unite the northern and southern wings of the Democratic party and at the same time settle the slavery issue peacefully. But he had not foreseen the bitter contest that would develop between proslavery and Free-State settlers in Kansas. In his report on the Kansas situation he blamed the organized interference of interests outside the territory for the failure of popular sovereignty.

When James Buchanan decided to support the proslavery Lecompton Constitution (see under Lecompton), on which only the proslavery forces in Kansas had voted, Douglas rebelled and in one of his major speeches denounced both the Lecompton Constitution and Buchanan, whom he had formerly supported. It was a courageous and spectacular stand, but his enemies held, unfairly, that Douglas was motivated by political expediency, for he was coming up for reelection in 1858.

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

In the 1858 Illinois campaign the “Little Giant,” as his admirers called him, was pitted against Abraham Lincoln. The contest was made memorable by the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which first gained Lincoln a national reputation. Of the seven debates, the second, held at Freeport on Aug. 27, 1858, had the most important consequences. There Lincoln shrewdly put to Douglas a question exposing the inconsistency between Douglas's doctrine of popular sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott Case—“Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way...exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State constitution?” Had Douglas answered no, in line with the Dred Scott decision, he would have offended many of his constituents and doubtless lost his seat in the Senate. As it was, he replied that people of a territory could exclude slavery, since that institution could not exist for a day without local police regulations and these could be legislated only with their approval.

The Republicans won a popular majority in the ensuing election, but the Democrats controlled the legislature, and Douglas was returned to the Senate. However, his Freeport doctrine, as his answer to Lincoln's question was styled, had made him anathema to Southern Democrats. Since they controlled the Senate, he was relieved of the chairmanship of the Committee on Territories.

Presidential Campaign and After

The Democratic national convention at Charleston, S.C., in 1860 adopted Douglas's recommendations in a platform advocating nonintervention with slavery in the territories; the demands of William L. Yancey that the federal government protect the institution were thus rejected, and Yancey and other Southern delegates withdrew. Although Douglas led on all 57 ballots taken there for the presidential nomination he was unable to muster the necessary two-thirds of the vote, and the convention adjourned. Reconvening at Baltimore, the Democrats finally chose him only after more Southern delegates withdrew to nominate their own candidate, John C. Breckinridge. Douglas won only 12 electoral votes, although he stood second to the victorious Lincoln in the popular count.

In the following months Douglas worked hard to effect a compromise between the sections; when that failed and the Civil War broke out, he vigorously supported Lincoln. One of the greatest orators of his day, he made a speaking tour to rally the people of the Northwest in the crisis, but after an eloquent speech at Springfield, he was stricken with typhoid fever and died. Douglas's reputation suffered with the growth of the Lincoln legend. In recent years, however, historians have asserted that he was one of the few men of pre–Civil War era with a truly national vision, and this was both the basis for his honorable attempts to reconcile differences and for his ultimate political failure, because the age was essentially one of bitter sectional controversy.

Bibliography

See his letters, ed. by R. W. Johannsen (1961); biographies by A. Johnson (1908, repr. 1970), G. M. Capers (1959), and R. W. Johannsen (1973); G. F. Milton, The Eve of Conflict: Stephen A. Douglas and the Civil War (1934, repr. 1963); D. Wells, Stephen Douglas: The Last Years (1970); A. C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America (2008).

A political leader of the nineteenth century, known for twice running against Abraham Lincoln — for a seat in the Senate from Illinois in 1858, which he won, and for the presidency in 1860, which he lost. The two engaged in the Lincoln-Douglas debates over slavery and other issues in 1858.

Stephen Arnold Douglas achieved prominence as a U.S. senator and as the originator of the policy known as Popular Sovereignty. He was born on April 23, 1813, in Brandon, Vermont. He pursued legal studies and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1834.

In 1843 Douglas entered the legislative branch of the federal government as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Four years later, he was elected to the U. S. Senate and served until 1861.

During his lengthy tenure as senator from Illinois, Douglas became an outspoken leader in the slavery controversy, and his many debates and innovative policies earned him the name "Little Giant." He was presiding officer of the Committee on Territories, a forum for the discussion of whether slavery should be allowed in the new territories.

Douglas was instrumental in the formulation of the bills which constituted that section of the Compromise of 1850 that allowed the residents of Utah and New Mexico to decide whether or not their states would institute slavery. This freedom of choice became known as the policy of Popular Sovereignty. Four years later, Douglas again attempted to apply this policy to the slavery issue involved in the admission of Kansas and Nebraska to the Union. The plan was not successful, however, for the proslavery and antislavery forces in Kansas clashed in a violent action. Two separate governments were established, the Lecompton, or proslavery, faction and the abolitionist faction. Douglas vehemently opposed the Lecompton Constitution, and criticized President James Buchanan's support of such a measure. After much violence and debate, Kansas was admitted as a free state. See also Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Abraham Lincoln and Douglas were opponents in the Illinois senatorial election of 1858, and they met seven times throughout their campaign to debate the issues. These arguments were the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, and several of Douglas's responses won him disfavor with southern Democrats. Although he won the senatorial election, this faction was responsible for Douglas's removal from the Committee on Territories.

In 1860 Douglas fared better with the Democrats, and his Popular Sovereignty policy was incorporated into the national program. He was chosen as the Democratic candidate for the presidential election. The southern Democrats still refused to accept him and supported their own candidate, John C. Breckinridge. Both Douglas and Breckenridge lost the election to the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Douglas staunchly supported the newly elected Lincoln. Adept at public speaking, Douglas's last contribution to government was a tour of the Northwest to encourage support of the Union, during which he contracted a fatal case of typhoid fever. Douglas died June 3, 1861, in Chicago, Illinois.

Stephen A. Douglas
United States Senator from Illinois
In office March 4, 1847 – June 3, 1861
Preceded by	James Semple
Succeeded by	Orville H. Browning
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois's 5th district
In office March 4, 1843 – March 3, 1847
Preceded by	None
Succeeded by	William A. Richardson
Born	April 23, 1813 Brandon, Vermont
Died	June 3, 1861 (aged 48) Chicago, Illinois
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Martha Martin Adele Cutts

Stephen Arnold Douglas (April 23, 1813 – June 3, 1861; son of Stephen Arnold Douglas and Sarah Fisk) was an American politician from the western state of Illinois, and was the Democratic Party nominee for President in 1860. He lost to the Republican Party's candidate, Abraham Lincoln, whom he had defeated two years earlier in a Senate contest following a famed series of debates. He was nicknamed the "Little Giant" because he was short but was considered by many a "giant" in politics. Douglas was well-known as a resourceful party leader, and an adroit, ready, skillful tactician in debate and passage of legislation.

As chairman of the Committee on Territories, Douglas dominated the Senate in the 1850s. He was largely responsible for the Compromise of 1850 that apparently settled slavery issues. However, in 1854 he reopened the slavery question by the highly controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act that allowed the people of the new territories to decide for themselves whether or not to have slavery (which had been prohibited by earlier compromises). The protest movement against this became the Republican Party.

Douglas supported the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision of 1857, and denied that it was part of a Southern plot to introduce slavery in the Northern states; but also argued it could not be effective when the people of a territory declined to pass laws supporting it.^[1] When President James Buchanan and his Southern allies attempted to pass a Federal slave code, to support slavery even against the wishes of the people of Kansas, he battled and defeated this movement as undemocratic. This caused the split in the Democratic Party in 1860, as Douglas won the nomination but a breakaway southern faction nominated their own candidate, Vice President John C. Breckinridge. Douglas deeply believed in democracy, arguing the will of the people should always be decisive.^[2] When civil war came in April 1861, he rallied his supporters to the Union with all his energies, but he died a few weeks later.

Contents 1 Earlier career 2 Personal Life and Family 3 Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 4 Presidential Aspirant 5 Historical Disputes 5.1 Position on Slavery 5.2 1861 Lincoln Inaguration 6 Death and Legacy 7 See also 8 Further reading 9 Notes 9.1 Primary sources 10 External links

Earlier career

Born Stephen Arnold Douglass in Brandon, Vermont, Douglas dropped the second "s" from his name some years later^[3]. He came to Illinois in 1833, was an itinerant teacher, studied law, and settled in Jacksonville. By the end of the year, he told his Vermont relatives, "I have become a Western man, have imbibed Western feelings principles and interests and have selected Illinois as the favorite place of my adoption." He served as Morgan County State's Attorney from 1834-36. Within a decade, he was elected to the state legislature, and was appointed registrar of the Springfield Land Office, Illinois Secretary of State, and an associate justice of the Illinois Supreme Court in 1841, at age 27. A leader of the majority Democratic Party, he was elected twice to Congress (1842 and 1844), where he championed expansion and supported the Mexican War. Elected by the legislature to the U.S. Senate in 1846, he was reelected in 1852 and 1858. He was challenged for his Senate position in 1858 by Abraham Lincoln, who had served with Douglas in the legislature, in a series of nationally famous debates which significantly boosted Lincoln's reputation despite his loss to Douglas.

Douglas chiefly designed the Compromise of 1850, however Henry Clay's support was needed and therefore receives much of the credit.The omnibus bill containing it did not pass Congress. Each point separately had majority support, but Northerners and Southerners combined to vote the bill down for their own reasons. Douglas passed the Compromise by dividing it into separate bills, and arranged a different majority for each.^[4] He moved to Chicago, gaining wealth by marriage to a Mississippi woman who inherited a slave plantation. An avid promoter of westward expansion, he devised the land grant system that enabled the funding of the Illinois Central railroad.

Douglas always had a deep and abiding faith in democracy. "Let the people rule!" was his cry, and he insisted that the people locally could and should make the decisions about slavery, rather than the national government. He was passed over for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1852 and 1856.^[5]

A deeply religious man, but one also dedicated to the enterprise of higher education, Stephen Douglas founded a Baptist Seminary in Chicago which was called the University of Chicago in 1857. However, the University was largely destroyed by fire in 1886, leading to its closing. The Old University of Chicago was replaced in 1890 by a newly chartered university, funded largely by the Rockefeller family. The current University of Chicago later added the alumni from the previous incarnation to its graduation rolls, thereby linking to two separate institutions. Currently, the old Stephen Douglas founded seminary's sole remnant is a brick which is located between Weiboldt Hall and the Classics Building on the Hyde Park campus of the University.

Personal Life and Family

Adele Cutts

In person Douglas was conspicuously short (at 5 foot 4 inches and 90 pounds), but his large head and massive chest and shoulders gave him the popular sobriquet "The Little Giant". Though his voice was strong and carried far, he had little grace of delivery, and his gestures were often violent.

Douglas moved to a farm near Clifton Springs, New York and studied at Canandaigua Academy in 1832-33 (where he was honored posthumously in 1996 as a "Graduate of Distinction".) He then moved to Illinois as an itinerant teacher and soon rose in Democratic party politics. Douglas briefly courted Mary Todd (who married Abraham Lincoln instead). Douglas became a member of the Masonic fraternity in Springfield Lodge No. 4 in Springfield, Illinois in 1839. He was a member of several Masonic organizations in Springfield. In March 1847 he married Martha Martin, the daughter of wealthy Colonel Robert Martin of North Carolina. She brought to Douglas the new responsibility of a large cotton plantation in Lawrence County, Mississippi worked by slaves. To Douglas, an Illinois senator with presidential aspirations, the management of a Southern plantation with slave labor presented a difficult situation. However, Douglas sought to escape slaveholding charges by employing a manager for his Mississippi holdings, while using the economic benefits derived from the property to advance his political career. His sole lengthy visit to Mississippi came in 1848, with only brief emergency trips thereafter.^[6] The newlyweds moved their Illinois home to fast-growing Chicago in the summer of 1847. Martha Douglas died on January 19, 1853, leaving the Senator with two small sons (one of whom was Robert M. Douglas). On November 20, 1856, he married 20 year-old Adele Cutts, the daughter of James Madison Cutts and a great-niece of former U.S. First Lady Dolley Madison.^[7]

Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854

Forcing Slavery Down the Throat of a Freesoiler An 1856 cartoon depicts a giant free soiler being held down by James Buchanan and Lewis Cass standing on the Democratic platform marked "Kansas", "Cuba" and "Central America". Franklin Pierce also holds down the giant's beard as Douglas shoves a black man down his throat.

Douglas set off a tremendous political upheaval by proposing the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. New laws were needed to allow for the settlement of the Nebraska territory. Illinois was Douglas's home state, so naturally he had invested in Chicago land, which would be made more valuable by railroads from Chicago that would serve the region, as it had been by the Illinois Central. The Missouri Compromise had guaranteed slavery would not exist there (because it was north of the 36°30' compromise line), and the Compromise of 1850 had reaffirmed this.

Leading Southern senators had met with Douglas, and had insisted on popular sovereignty as a condition for their support of the bill. Douglas's first bill had only enacted it to a limited extent, by providing that Nebraska and Kansas could enter the Union free or slave as the residents might decide; but the Southerners insisted, and Douglas discovered a "clerical error", and revised the bill.^[8]

Douglas argued that the people of the territory should decide the slavery question by themselves, and that soil and climate made the territory unsuitable for plantations; which last reassured his northern supporters it would remain free. Douglas defended his doctrine of popular sovereignty^[9] as a means of promoting democracy and removing the slavery issue from national politics, lest it threaten to rip the nation apart, but it had exactly the opposite effect.

Douglas and Abraham Lincoln aired their disagreement on this topic in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854.[2] Although Mr. Lincoln's three hour "Peoria Speech"[3], presented thorough moral, legal and economic arguments against slavery,[4] it did not stop the Act from passing.

The act was passed by Southern votes, Democratic and Whig alike, and Douglas had little to do with the final text. This was the first appearance of the Solid South, and the opponents of the Act saw it as the triumph of the hated Slave Power and formed the Republican Party to stop it.^[10]

Presidential Aspirant

In 1852, and again in 1856, Douglas was a candidate for the Presidential nomination in the national Democratic convention, and though on both occasions he was unsuccessful, he received strong support. When the Know Nothing movement grew strong he crusaded against it, but hoped it would split the opposition. In 1858 he won significant support in many former Know-Nothing strongholds.^[11] In 1857, he broke with President James Buchanan and the "administration" Democrats, and lost much of his support in the Southern United States, but partially restored himself to favor in the North – especially in Illinois – by his vigorous opposition to the method of voting on the Lecompton constitution, which he saw as fraudulent, and (in 1858) to the admission of Kansas into the Union under this constitution.^[12]

Stephen A. Douglas

In 1858, when the United States Supreme Court – after the vote of Kansas against the Lecompton constitution – had decided that Kansas was a "slave" territory, thus quashing Douglas' theory of "popular sovereignty", he engaged in Illinois in a close and very exciting contest for the Senate seat with Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, whom he met in a series of seven famous debates which became known as the Lincoln-Douglas debates. In the second of the debates, Douglas was led to declare that any territory, by "unfriendly legislation", could exclude slavery, no matter what the action of the Supreme Court. Having already lost the support of a large element of his party in the South, his association with this famous Freeport Doctrine made it anathema to many southerners, including Jefferson Davis, who would have otherwise supported it.

Statue of Douglas at the site of the 1858 debate in Freeport, Illinois.

Before and during the debates, Douglas repeatedly invoked racist rhetoric, claiming Lincoln was for black equality and saying at Galesburg that the authors of the Declaration of Independence did not intend to include blacks. "This Government was made by our fathers on the white basis . . . made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever," he said.^[13] Lincoln pointedly denied Douglas' assertion that the Declaration of Independence did not include minorities.^[14]

Much of the debate was about the redefinition of republicanism. Lincoln advocated equality of opportunity, arguing that individuals and society advanced together. Douglas, on the other hand, embraced a democratic doctrine that emphasized equality of all citizens (only whites were citizens), in which individual merit and social mobility was not a main goal.^[15] Douglas won the senatorship by a vote in the legislature of 54 to 46, but the debates helped boost Lincoln into the presidency.

Douglas waged a furious battle with President Buchanan for control of the Democratic party. Although Douglas was not reappointed chairman of the Senate committee on territories, he bested Buchanan throughout the North and headed into 1860 as the front runner for president.^[16]

In the 1860 Democratic National Convention in Charleston, South Carolina, the failure to adopt a slave code to the territories in the platform brought about the withdrawal from the convention of delegations from Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Texas and Arkansas. The convention adjourned to Baltimore, Maryland, where the Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Maryland delegations left it, and where Douglas was nominated for the presidency by the Northern Democrats. He campaigned vigorously but hopelessly, boldly attacking disunion, and in the election of 1860, though he received a popular vote of 1,376,957 (2nd at 29%) he received an electoral vote of only 12 (4th and last at 4%) - Lincoln receiving 180. His support in the North came from the Irish Catholics and the poorer farmers; in the South the Irish Catholics were his main supporters.^[17]

Douglas urged the South to acquiesce to Lincoln's election, and made efforts to arrange a compromise which would persuade the South to remain in the Union. As late as Christmas 1860, he wrote Alexander H. Stephens, offering to annex Mexico as a slave state as a sweetener; Mexico had abolished slavery in 1829.^[18] At the outbreak of the Civil War, he denounced secession as criminal, and was one of the strongest advocates of maintaining the integrity of the Union at all hazards. At Lincoln's request he undertook a mission to the border states and to the Midwest to rouse the spirit of Unionism; he spoke in West Virginia, Ohio and Illinois.

Douglas's tomb

Historical Disputes

Position on Slavery

For a century and a half, historians have debated whether or not Douglas opposed slavery,^[19] and whether or not he was a trimmer and compromiser or a devotee of principles.^[20]

Douglas married into a slaveholding family (as did Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant), but the issue is whether he supported slavery as a matter of public policy. In his "Freeport Doctrine" of 1858 he repeatedly insisted that he did not care whether slavery was voted up or down, but only that the people had the right to vote it up or down. He denounced as sacrilegious and undemocratic the petitions signed by thousands of clergymen in 1854 who said the Nebraska Act offended God's will.^[21] He rejected the Republican notions that slavery was condemned by a "higher law" (Seward's position) or that the nation could not long survive half slave and half free (Lincoln's position). He disagreed with the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision that Congress had to protect slavery in the territories, regardless of what the people there thought. When Buchanan supported the Lecompton Constitution and thus adopted the pro-slavery position on Kansas, Douglas fought him relentlessly in a long battle that gave Douglas the 1860 Democratic nomination but ripped his party apart.

Historian Allan Nevins was harsh on Douglas, "When it [slavery] paid it was good," wrote Nevins, "and when it did not pay it was bad." Nevins consequently judged that Douglas did not "regard a slaveholding society as one whit inferior to a free society." All in all, Nevins rather brutally assessed what he called Douglas's "dim moral perceptions."^[22] Graham Peck finds that several scholars have given brief opinions to the effect that Douglas was personally opposed to slavery, none of them with "extensive arguments to justify the conclusion". He cites some more recent scholarship as (equally briefly) finding Douglas "insensitive to the moral repugnance of slavery" or even "proslavery". He himself finds, however, that Douglas was the "ideological [and] practical head of the northern opposition to the antislavery movement" and questions whether Douglas "opposed black slavery for any reason, including economics". Harry Jaffa thought Douglas was tricking the South with popular sovereignty—telling Southerners it would protect slavery but believing the people would actually vote against it. Johannsen found Douglas "did not regard slavery as a moral question; at least, he never condemned the institution in moral terms either publicly or privately." However he "privately deplored slavery and was opposed to its expansion (and, indeed, in 1860 was widely regarded in both North and South as an antislavery candidate), he felt that its discussion as a moral question would place it on a dangerous level of abstraction." ^[23]

1861 Lincoln Inaguration

Starting with Josiah Gilbert Holland's 1866 Life of Abraham Lincoln, a number of sources recount an anecdote in which Douglas holds Lincoln's hat during Lincoln's first inaugural address. If true, this short story speaks volumes about both the power of the moment and the character of Stephen A. Douglas. After all, Douglas and Lincoln were well-known rivals both for the senate and, just a few months earlier, for the presidency. In fact, the bitterly contested election of 1860 which had culminated in seven states seceding from the union set the stage for the event. For decades, many scholars viewed the story with skepticism mainly due to its all-too-perfect romantic appeal. In 1959, writing for American Heritage Magazine, the same Allan Nevins who was so critical of Douglas's position on slavery, reported the discovery of two independent contemporary sources that corroborated the story.^[24]

Death and Legacy

Douglas died in Chicago from typhoid fever on June 3, 1861. He was buried on the shore of Lake Michigan. The site was afterwards bought by the state, and an imposing monument with a statue by Leonard Volk now stands over his grave.

Today, there are Douglas Counties in Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin. There is Fort Douglas (Utah) in Salt Lake City, and the city of Douglas, Georgia is also named for him, but it is not located in his namesake county; the city of Douglas is found in Coffee County. The county seat of Georgia's Douglas County is, fittingly, Douglasville.

In Wyoming, the County Seat of Converse County, is named in honor of him. The town is located in east/central Wyoming on the banks of the North Platte River.

See also

American Civil War portal

• Old University of Chicago

Further reading

• Capers, Gerald M. Stephen A. Douglas: Defender of the Union (1959), short biography
• Clinton, Anita Watkins. "Stephen Arnold Douglas - His Mississippi Experience" Journal of Mississippi History 1988 50(2): 56-88. in JSTOR
• Dean; Eric T., Jr. "Stephen A. Douglas and Popular Sovereignty" Historian 1995 57(4): 733-748 online version
• Eyal, Yonatan. "With His Eyes Open: Stephen A. Douglas and the Kansas-Nebraska Disaster of 1854" Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 1998 91(4): 175-217. ISSN 1522-1067
• Glickstein, Jonathan A., American exceptionalism, American anxiety: wages, competition, and degraded labor in the Antebellum United States; University of Virginia Press, (2002)
• Hansen, Stephen and Nygard, Paul. "Stephen A. Douglas, the Know-nothings, and the Democratic Party in Illinois, 1854-1858" Illinois Historical Journal 1994 87(2): 109-130.
• Huston, James L. "Democracy by Scripture versus Democracy by Process: A Reflection on Stephen A. Douglas and Popular Sovereignty." Civil War History. 43#1 (1997) pp: 189+. online version
• Jaffa, Harry V. Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. 1959. online version
• Johannsen, Robert W. Stephen A. Douglas (1973), 993pp the standard scholarly biography
• Johannsen, Robert W. The Frontier, the Union, and Stephen A. Douglas U. of Illinois Press, 1989.
• McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom. Oxford Univ. Press, 1988. Standard modern history.
• Milton, George Fort. The Eve of Conflict: Stephen A. Douglas and the Needless War (1934)
• Morris, Roy, Jr., The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln's Thirty-Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America, HarperCollins Publishers, 2008.
• Morrison, Michael A.Slavery and the American west: the eclipse of manifest destiny and the coming of the American Civil War University of North Carolina Press, (1997)
• Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union especially vol 1-4 (1947-63): Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852; A House Dividing, 1852-1857; Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857-1859; Prologue to Civil War, 1859-1861. highly detailed narrative of national politics with extensive coverage of Douglas
• Nichols, Roy F. "The Kansas-Nebraska Act: A Century of Historiography," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 43 (1956): 187-212; in JSTOR
• Graham A. Peck, "Was Stephen A. Douglas Antislavery?," Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Summer 2005 online
• Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (1920) vol 1-2, detailed narrative
• Russel, Robert R. "What Was the Compromise of 1850?" Journal of Southern History 20 (1956): 292-309 in Jstor
• Russel, Robert R. "The Issues in the Congressional Struggle Over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 1854," Journal of Southern History 29 (May 1963): 187-210; in JSTOR
• Stevenson, James A. "Lincoln vs. Douglas over the Republican Ideal" American Studies 1994 35(1): 63-89
• Zarefsky, David. Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: in the Crucible of Public Debate U. of Chicago Press, 1990. 309 pp

Notes

1. ^ McPherson, pp. 177-8
2. ^ Dean (1994)
3. ^ Morris 2008, pg. 8
4. ^ McPherson
5. ^ Dean 1995
6. ^ Clinton 1988
7. ^ Clinton 1988
8. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp.121-122.
9. ^ Senator Lewis Cass, a leading Democrat from Michigan and the Democratic presidential nominee in 1848, had coined the idea of popular sovereignty.
10. ^ Nichols 1956, who concludes thus (p.212):"It was but a few steps onward to secession, the Confederacy, and the Solid South. The great volcano of American politics was in a state of eruption. In the midst of the cataclysm, one sees Douglas crashing and hurtling about, caught like a rock in a gush of lava. Two new masses were prominent on the political landscape, the Republican party and the Solid South. Douglas had disappeared."
11. ^ Hansen and Nygard
12. ^ Johannsen (1973)
13. ^ David Donald, Lincoln. (1995) p. 222
14. ^ Donald, 222
15. ^ Stevenson 1994
16. ^ Johannsen (1973)
17. ^ Johannsen (1973)
18. ^ Kagan, Dangerous Nation, p. 243
19. ^ Nichols (1956)
20. ^ Dean (1995)
21. ^ Huston 1997
22. ^ Nevins (1947) 2:107-8, quoted in Peck (2005)
23. ^ Peck (2005); Peck cites (footnote 2, and associated text) Johannsen, Stevens, Milton, Capers, Wells, Baker, Potter and David Donald as believing Douglas opposed slavery; on the other side, he cites Morrison, Richards and Glickstein.
24. ^ [1]Nevins,Alan;"He Did Hold Lincoln's Hat: Senator Douglas’ act is verified, at last, by first-hand testimony";American Heritage Magazine;Vol 10, Issue 2 (February, 1959).

Primary sources

• Robert W. Johannsen, ed. The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas (1961)
• Paul M. Angle, ed., Created Equal? The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (1958),
• Lincoln, Abraham and Douglas, Stephen A. The Lincoln-douglas Debates: The First Complete, Unexpurgated Text. Harold Holzer, Ed. Harpercollins, 1993.
• Harry V. Jaffa and Robert W. Johannsen, eds. In the Name of the People: Speeches and Writings of Lincoln and Douglas in the Ohio Campaign of 1859. (1959) online version
• Douglas, Stephen Arnold. A brief treatise upon constitutional and party questions, and the history of political parties, (1861) James Madison Cutts, ed. (1866)

Text supplemented from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Stephen A. Douglas

• Stephen A. Douglas at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Project Gutenberg text of Life of Stephen A. Douglas by William Gardner
• Page images of two Speeches made by Douglas, one on the Compromise of 1850
• Speech made before the NY State Agricultural Society
• Association dedicated to preservation of Douglas history. Site contains many speeches and images.

Political offices
Preceded by Alexander P. Field	Illinois Secretary of State 1840 – 1841	Succeeded by Lyman Trumbull
United States Senate
Preceded by James Semple	Senator from Illinois (Class 2) March 4, 1847 – June 3, 1861 Served alongside: Sidney Breese, James Shields, Lyman Trumbull	Succeeded by Orville H. Browning
Party political offices
Preceded by James Buchanan	Democratic Party presidential candidate¹ 1860	Succeeded by George McClellan
Notes and references
1. The Democratic Party split in 1860, producing two presidential nominees. Douglas was nominated by Northern Democrats; John C. Breckinridge was nominated by Southern Democrats.

v • d • e Illinois Secretaries of State Kane • Lockwood • Blackwell • Birkbeck • Forquer • Field • Douglas • Trumbull • Campbell • Cooley • Gregg • Starne • Hatch • Tyndale • Rummell • Harlow • Dement • Pearson • Hinrichsen • Rose • Doyle • Woods • Stevenson • Emmerson • Stratton • Hughes • Rowe • Barrett • Carpentier • Chamberlain • Powell • Lewis • Howlett • Dixon • Edgar • Ryan • White

v • d • e United States Democratic Party Presidential Nominees Andrew Jackson · Martin Van Buren · James K. Polk · Lewis Cass · Franklin Pierce · James Buchanan · Stephen A. Douglas/John C. Breckinridge (SD) · George B. McClellan · Horatio Seymour · Horace Greeley · Samuel J. Tilden · Winfield Scott Hancock · Grover Cleveland · William Jennings Bryan · Alton B. Parker · William Jennings Bryan · Woodrow Wilson · James M. Cox · John W. Davis · Al Smith · Franklin D. Roosevelt · Harry S. Truman · Adlai Stevenson · John F. Kennedy · Lyndon B. Johnson · Hubert Humphrey · George McGovern · Jimmy Carter · Walter Mondale · Michael Dukakis · Bill Clinton · Al Gore · John Kerry · Barack Obama

v • d • e United States Senators from Illinois Class 2: Thomas • McLean • Baker • Robinson • McRoberts • Semple • S. Douglas • Browning • Richardson • Yates • Logan • Davis • Cullom • Lewis • McCormick • Deneen • Lewis • Slattery • Brooks • P. Douglas • Percy • Simon • Durbin Class 3: Edwards • McLean • Kane • Ewing • Young • Breese • Shields • Trumbull • Oglesby • Logan • Farwell • Palmer • Mason • Hopkins • Lorimer • Sherman • McKinley • Glenn • Dieterich • Lucas • Dirksen • Smith • Stevenson III • Dixon • Moseley Braun • Fitzgerald • Obama • Burris

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