Stephen A. Douglas

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
Personal details
Born April 23, 1813
Brandon, Vermont
Died June 3, 1861(1861-06-03) (aged 48)
Chicago, Illinois
Political party Democratic
Spouse(s) Martha Martin
Adele Cutts
Signature

Stephen Arnold Douglas (April 23, 1813 – June 3, 1861) was an American politician from the western state of Illinois, and was the Northern 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 of stature 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. He was a leading proponent of democracy—and believed that the majority of citizens should decide, through the principle of Popular Sovereignty, contentious issues such as slavery and territorial expansion.

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 is known as "popular sovereignty"). 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

Early life and education

He was born Arnold Douglass in Brandon, Vermont[3] to Stephen Arnold Douglass and Sarah Fisk. Douglas dropped the second "s" from his name some years later.[4]

He migrated to Winchester, Illinois in 1833, where he served as an itinerant teacher and opened a school for three months at three dollars a pupil.[5] He also studied law, and settled in Jacksonville. By the end of the year, he wrote 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."

Career

Douglas was appointed as Morgan County State's Attorney in 1834, serving until 1836. Within a decade, Douglas was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives, and was appointed registrar of the Springfield Land Office, Illinois Secretary of State. He was appointed an associate justice of the Illinois Supreme Court in 1841, at age 27.[6]

A leader of the majority Democratic Party, he was elected twice to Congress (1842 and 1844), where he championed territorial 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. Their series of nationally famous debates significantly boosted Lincoln's reputation despite his loss to Douglas.

Douglas chiefly designed the Compromise of 1850; however, the support of Henry Clay was needed and he has received much of the credit. The omnibus bill containing the compromise 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.[7]

Moving to Chicago, Douglas married wealth - a Mississippi woman who inherited a plantation worked by slave labor. An avid promoter of railroad expansion, he devised the land grant system to fund the Illinois Central railroad. He intended it to link the nation north and south, from Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico; Douglas hoped that would more thoroughly integrate the regional economies and reduce section tensions. The railroad was funded, but the Civil War interrupted its construction. It did not reach the Gulf until afterward. Douglas owned land in Chicago which the railroad would make more valuable, but his primary motivation was political.[8]

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.[9]

While never a religious man, he was an eager promoter of Chicago. He donated 10 acres of his lakefront property, worth $50,000, to a small new Baptist college, the first University of Chicago. Critics said that he wanted to enhance the value of his adjoining lots.[10]

Marriage and family

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 21-year-old daughter of wealthy Colonel Robert Martin and his wife of North Carolina. The year after their marriage, her father died and bequeathed Martha a 2500-acre cotton plantation with 100 slaves on the Pearl River in Lawrence County, Mississippi.[11] He appointed Douglas the property manager but, as a senator of the free state of Illinois, and with presidential aspirations, Douglas found the Southern plantation presented difficulties. He created distance by hiring a manager to operate the plantation, while using his allocated 20 percent of the income to advance his political career.[12] His sole lengthy visit to Mississippi was in 1848, and he made only brief emergency trips thereafter.[13]

The newlyweds moved their Illinois home from Springfield to fast-growing Chicago in the summer of 1847. They had two sons: Robert M. Douglas (January 1849-1892) and Stephen Arnold Douglas, Jr., (November 1850-d. ?). Martha Douglas died young on January 19, 1853, after the birth of her third child, a daughter. The girl died a few weeks later, and Douglas and the boys were bereft.[13]

On November 20, 1856, Douglas married a second time, to 20-year-old Adele Cutts, another southern woman. She was the daughter of James Madison Cutts of Washington, DC, who was the nephew of President James Madison. Her great-aunt was the former U.S. First Lady Dolley Madison. As her mother was from a Maryland Catholic family, Adele Cutts was Catholic.[13] With Stephen's approval, she had his two sons baptized as Catholic and reared in that faith.[11]

She had a miscarriage in 1858 and became ill. The following year, Adele gave birth to a daughter, Ellen, who lived only a few weeks, and the mother was left weakened by childbirth.[11]

Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854

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.[14]

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[15] 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.[3] Although Mr. Lincoln's three hour "Peoria Speech"[4], presented thorough moral, legal and economic arguments against slavery,[5] 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.[16]

Presidential aspirant

In 1852 and 1856, Douglas was a candidate for the Presidential nomination in the national Democratic convention; although he was unsuccessful, he received strong support on both occasions. 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.[17] In 1857, Douglas broke with President James Buchanan and the "administration" Democrats, and lost much of his support in the Southern United States. He partially regained 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.[18]

Debating Lincoln, 1858

In 1858, 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". In Illinois he engaged in a close contest for the Senate seat with Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, whom he met in a series of seven debates which became known as the Lincoln-Douglas debates. In the second of the debates, Douglas said that any territory, by "unfriendly legislation", could exclude slavery, no matter what the action of the Supreme Court. Having already lost the support of much 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. Before and during the debates, Douglas repeatedly invoked racist rhetoric, claiming Lincoln was for black equality. At Galesburg, he said 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.[19] Lincoln denied his opponent's assertion that the Declaration of Independence excluded blacks.[20]

The debates were redefining republicanism. Lincoln advocated equality of opportunity, arguing that individuals and society advanced together. Douglas 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.[21] Douglas won the senatorship by a vote in the legislature of 54 to 46, assuming office in early 1859, but the debates helped boost Lincoln into the presidency in the 1860 election.

1860 election

Douglas competed 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.[18]

In the 1860 Democratic National Convention in Charleston, South Carolina, which began in late April, the failure of the delegates to include a slave code to the territories in the platform brought about the withdrawal of delegations from Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Texas and Arkansas. The convention adjourned to Baltimore, Maryland, convening in mid-June. The disputes continued, and the Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Maryland delegations left the convention. Douglas was essentially nominated for the presidency by the Northern Democrats.

Douglas campaigned vigorously, 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%), with Lincoln receiving 180. The support for Douglas in the North came from the Irish Catholics and the poorer farmers; in the South, the Irish Catholics were his main supporters.[18]

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 to Alexander H. Stephens and offered to annex Mexico as a slave state; Mexico had abolished slavery in 1829.[22]

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Douglas denounced secession as criminal; he 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 Virginia, Ohio and Illinois.

Historical disputes

Position on slavery

For a century and a half, historians have debated whether Douglas opposed slavery,[23] and whether he was a compromiser or a devotee of principles.[24]

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 said 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 the petitions signed by thousands of clergymen in 1854, who said the Nebraska Act offended God's will.[25] He rejected the Republican notions that slavery was condemned by a "higher law" (Seward's position) or that the nation could not long survive as half slave and half free (Lincoln's position). He disagreed with the US Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision that Congress had no ability to regulate slavery in the territories. When Buchanan supported the Lecompton Constitution and the pro-slavery position on Kansas, Douglas fought him in a long battle that gained Douglas the 1860 Democratic nomination but ripped his party apart.

The historian Allan Nevins was harsh on Douglas, writing "When it [slavery] paid it was good, and when it did not pay it was bad." Nevins assessed that Douglas did not "regard a slaveholding society as one whit inferior to a free society." He criticized what he called Douglas's "dim moral perceptions."[26]

Graham Peck finds that while several scholars have said that Douglas was personally opposed to slavery, none has presented "extensive arguments to justify the conclusion". He cites recent scholarship as (equally briefly) finding Douglas "insensitive to the moral repugnance of slavery" or even "proslavery". He concludes 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 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." [27]

1861 Lincoln Inauguration

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 at the president's first inaugural address. The story seems symbolic of both the power of the moment and the character of Douglas. He and Lincoln had been well-known rivals for both the senate and the presidency. Following the bitterly contested election of 1860, seven southern states seceded from the union. For decades, many scholars viewed the story with skepticism mainly due to its romantic appeal. In 1959, writing for American Heritage Magazine, the historian Nevins reported the discovery of two independent contemporary sources that corroborated the account.[28]

Death

Douglas died in Chicago from typhoid fever on June 3, 1861. He was buried on the shore of Lake Michigan. After his death, Douglas's friends created the Douglas Monument Association. Leonard Volk, a prominent sculptor, was commissioned to design the monument. The Memorial and tomb were completed in 1881.[29]

Legacy and honors

In popular culture

In 1957, the actor Walter Coy portrayed Douglas in the episode "Springfield Incident" of CBS's The 20th Century Fox Hour. Other stars of the segment are Lloyd Corrigan and Tom Tryon, and Alan Hale, Jr.[30]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ McPherson, pp. 177-8
  2. ^ Dean (1994)
  3. ^ Brandon Village Historic District, Vermont Heritage Network via the University of Vermont. Accessed 2009-07-14.
  4. ^ Morris 2008, pg. 8
  5. ^ Johnston, Mary. Roman Life. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1957. Print.
  6. ^ [1]
  7. ^ Holman Hamilton, "Democratic Senate Leadership and the Compromise of 1850," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Dec., 1954), pp. 403-418 in JSTOR
  8. ^ Johannsen (1973) pp 304-7, 335
  9. ^ Dean 1995
  10. ^ Johannsen, p 558, 872
  11. ^ a b c Stephen A. Douglas and the American Union, University of Chicago Library Special Exhibit, 1994, accessed 4 April 2011
  12. ^ "Stephen A. Douglas", Marriage and Fortune,University of Chicago Library, accessed 4 April 2011
  13. ^ a b c Clinton 1988
  14. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp.121-122.
  15. ^ Senator Lewis Cass, a leading Democrat from Michigan and the Democratic presidential nominee in 1848, had coined the idea of popular sovereignty.
  16. ^ 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."
  17. ^ Hansen and Nygard
  18. ^ a b c Johannsen (1973)
  19. ^ David Donald, Lincoln. (1995) p. 222
  20. ^ Donald, 222
  21. ^ Stevenson 1994
  22. ^ Kagan, Dangerous Nation, p. 243
  23. ^ Nichols (1956)
  24. ^ Dean (1995)
  25. ^ Huston 1997
  26. ^ Nevins (1947) 2:107-8, quoted in Peck (2005)
  27. ^ 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.
  28. ^ [2] 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)
  29. ^ University of Chicago Web site http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/spcl/excat/douglas8.html
  30. ^ "Frontier (1955-1956)". Internet Movie Data Base. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047733/episodes. Retrieved February 15, 2009. 

References

Text supplemented from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

Further reading

External links

Political offices
Preceded by
Alexander P. Field
Illinois Secretary of State
1840 – 1841
Succeeded by
Lyman Trumbull
United States House of Representatives
New district Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Illinois's 5th congressional district

1843–1847
Succeeded by
William Alexander Richardson
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.