Stephen A. Douglas
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- This article is about the Stephen A. Douglas, the American politician. For others of a similar name, see Steven Douglas (disambiguation).
{{Infobox_Politician | name=Stephen Arnold Douglas | image = Stephen Arnold Douglas.jpg | birth_date = April 23, 1813 | birth_place = Brandon, Vermont
| office = U.S. Congressman from Illinois(1843-1847)
U.S. Senator from Illinois
(1847-1861)
| party = Democrat | death_date = June 3, 1861 | death_place = Chicago, Illinois | spouse = Martha Martin }} 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.
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Service in Congress
In Congress, though one of the youngest members, he at once sprang into prominence by his clever defence 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 was soon recognised 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 thoroughgoing expansionist, Douglas heartily favoured 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 Polk's faltering from the declaration of his party's platform, not to yield up 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 that Congress should 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's 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 the good consequences would outweigh the bad and that the nation would withstand the collateral antagonisms, a position proved 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 in 1854.
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. [Hansen 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 favour in the North, and especially in Illinois, by his vigorous opposition to the method of voting on the [[Lecoegislation", 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. [Stevenson 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's marriage in 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. [Clinton 1988]
Douglas Counties in Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, South Dakota and Nevada are named after him; as is Douglas, Georgia.
See also
Further reading
- Allen Johnson Stephen A. Douglas: A Study in American Politics (New York, 1908)
- Clinton, Anita Watkins. "Stephen Arnold Douglas - His Mississippi Experience" Journal of Mississippi History 1988 50(2): 56-88.
- Dean, Eric T., Jr. "Stephen A. Douglas and Popular Sovereignty" Historian 1995 57(4): 733-748
- 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
- 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.
- Johannsen, Robert W. Stephen A. Douglas 1973, reprinted U. of Illinois Press 1997; 993pp the standard biography
- Johannsen, Robert W. "The Frontier, the Union, and Stephen A. Douglas U. of Illinois Press, 1989.
- 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.
- James Ford Rhodes History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (1920) vol 1-2
- 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 Pr., 1990. 309
===Primary sources===.
- Robert W. Johannsen, ed. The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas (1961)
- Lincoln, Abraham and Douglas, Stephen A. The Lincoln-douglas Debates: The First Complete, Unexpurgated Text. Harold Holzer, Ed. Harpercollins, 1993.
Text supplemented from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
External links
- Project Gutenberg text of Life of Stephen A. Douglas by William Gardner
- Stephen Douglas and the term 'Band of Brothers'
Template:Start box {{U.S. Senator box | state=Illinois | class=2 | before=James Semple | after=Orville H. Browning | alongside=Sidney Breese | years=1847 – 1861}} {{succession box | title=Democratic Party Presidential candidate<ref>The Democratic party split in 1860, producing two presidential nominees. Douglas was nominated by Northern Democrats; John C. Breckinridge was nominated by Southern Democrats.</ref> | before=James Buchanan | after=George McClellan | years=1860 (lost)}} {{succession footnote | marker=* | footnote=<references/>}} Template:End box Template:USDemPresNomineesde:Stephen Arnold Douglas