Stephen A. Douglas

Stephen Douglas is also the name of a member of the band The Trash Can Sinatras.

Stephen Arnold Douglas (April 23, 1813 – June 3, 1861), American politician from Illinois, was one of the Democratic Party nominees for President in 1860. He lost to Republican Party candidate Abraham Lincoln, also from Illinois. He was one of the most important leaders in Congress in the 1850s, and helped shape the Third Party System.

Service in Congress

In Congress, though one of its youngest members, he at once sprang into prominence by his clever defense of Andrew Jackson during the consideration by the House of a bill remitting the fine imposed on Jackson for contempt of court in New Orleans. He soon was recognized as one of the most able and energetic of the Democratic leaders.

An enthusiastic believer in the destiny of his country and more especially of the West, and a staunch expansionist, Douglas heartily favored in Congress the measures which resulted in the annexation of Texas (1845) and in the Mexican War (1846 - 1848). In the discussion of the annexation of Texas he suggested as early as 1840 that the states to be admitted should come in slave or free, as their people should vote when they applied to Congress for admission, thus foreshadowing his doctrine of "Popular Sovereignty".

Douglas took an active share in the Oregon controversy, asserting his unalterable determination, in spite of President James Polk's faltering from the declaration of his party's platform, not to yield one inch of the territory to Britain, and advocating its occupation by a military force; indeed he consistently regarded Britain as the natural and foremost rival of the United States, the interests of the two nations, he thought, being always opposed, and few senators fought more vigorously against the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) or against Britain's reassertion of the right of search on the high seas.

Douglas ardently supported the policy of making Federal appropriations (of land, but not of money) for internal improvements of a national character, being a prominent advocate of the construction, by government aid, of a trans-continental railway, and the chief promoter (1850) of the Illinois Central; in 1854 he suggested Congress impose tonnage duties from which towns and cities might themselves pay for harbor improvement.

Kansas-Nebraska 1854

Douglas is most famous for proposing the Kansas Nebraska Act in 1854. He developed the doctrine of popular sovereignty as a means of removing the slavery issue from national politics, where it threatened to rip the nation apart. Constructed as an alternative to the more extreme solutions of direct federal control or blanket protection of slavery, the doctrine left the decision to the inhabitants of the territories. Douglas' support of the bill was based on his commitment to the principle of sovereignty and local self-government. He believed in the ability of individuals to regulate their own affairs, a clear reflection of his adherence to the idea of Manifest Destiny and US expansionist policies. Essentially, he was betting that the good consequences would outweigh the bad and that the nation would withstand the collateral antagonisms, a position proven incorrect by events leading up to the Civil War. Opponents saw it as the triumph of the hated Slave Power and formed the Republican Party to stop him. He passed the act, but Illinois went Republican for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, where Douglas won just Missouri and New Jersey.

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. and Nygard In 1857 he broke with President Buchanan and the "administration" Democrats and lost much of his prestige in the Southern United States, but partially restored himself to favor in the North, and 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.

In 1858, when the Supreme Court, after the vote of Kansas against the Lecompton constitution, had decided that Kansas was a "slave" territory, thus quashing Douglas’s theory of "popular sovereignty", he engaged in Illinois in a close and very exciting contest for the senatorship 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. 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 whites-only doctrine that ignored work and merit as criteria for individual advancement. 1994 Douglas, however, won the senatorship by a vote in the legislature of 54 to 46, but the debates helped boost Lincoln into the presidency. In the Senate Douglas was not reappointed chairman of the committee on territories.

In 1860 in the Democratic national convention in Charleston the failure to adopt a slave code to the territories in the platform brought about the withdrawal from the convention of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Texas and Arkansas. The convention adjourned to Baltimore, 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, though he received a popular vote of 1,376,957 he received an electoral vote of only 12 - Lincoln receiving 180 (see: U.S. presidential election, 1860).

Later career and legacy

Douglas urged the South to acquiesce to Lincoln's election. At the outbreak of the American 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 North-west to rouse the spirit of Unionism; he spoke in West Virginia (then still a part of Virginia), Ohio and Illinois.

Douglas died from typhoid fever on June 3, 1861 at Chicago, where 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.

Personal and family

In person Douglas was conspicuously small, standing somewhere from 4'6" (137 cm) to 5'4" (163 cm) in height, 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. As a resourceful political leader, and an adroit, ready, skillful tactician in debate, he has had few equals in American history.

Douglas moved to a farm near Clifton Springs, N.Y. and entered Canandaigua Academy in 1832 and studied law there.

Douglas's marriage in March of 1847 to Martha Martin, daughter of Colonel Robert Martin of North Carolina, brought with it 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 James S. Stricklin as agent and 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. 1988 The newlyweds moved their Illinois home to fast growing Chicago in the summer of 1847. Martha Douglas died January 19, 1853 leaving the Senator with two small sons. On November 20, 1856 he married 20 year-old Adele Cutts, the daughter of James Madison Cutts of the District of Columbia, and a great-niece of Dolley Madison.

Douglas Counties in Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, South Dakota and Nevada are named after him; as is Douglas, Georgia.

External links

Stephen Arnold Douglas

Service in Congress

Kansas-Nebraska 1854

Presidential aspirant

Later career and legacy

Personal and family

See also

Further reading

Primary sources

External links

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Stephen A. Douglas

Service in Congress

Kansas-Nebraska 1854

Presidential aspirant

Later career and legacy

Personal and family

See also

Further reading

Primary sources

External links