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Douglas, Stephen
Born: 1813 Died: 1861
Occupation: lawyer, politician
From: Encyclopedia of American History: Civil War and Reconstruction, 1856 to 1869, Revised Edition, vol.
V.
Lawyer and U.S. senator, Stephen Arnold Douglas played a
key role in the sectional politics that led to the outbreak of
the Civil War. Best known for his famous debates against
Abraham Lincoln in the 1858 Illinois senatorial contest and
as Lincoln's opponent in the 1860 presidential race, Douglas
was affectionately called the "Little Giant" for his widely
admired oratory skills and small stature. Douglas,
considered the most talented politician of his generation,
saw his ambitions for higher office destroyed in the bitter
debates and violent struggle between pro- and antislavery
forces over the Kansas-Nebraska territory. Douglas's failure
to gain the support of Southern Democrats in 1860 split the
party and led to Republican Abraham Lincoln's victory.
Douglas was born on April 3, 1813, in Brandon, Vermont,
the son of a doctor. Douglas enjoyed an excellent education
at the Canandaigua Academy in upstate New York, where he moved with his family in
1830. There, Douglas trained in the Latin and Greek classics that would give his political
speeches sparkle, spirit, and a learned quality. As a youth he was already endowed with
the remarkable energy and ambition that led a friend to describe him as a "steam engine
in breeches." After training in law, Douglas moved west to Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1833,
where he quickly proclaimed: "I have become a Western man."
At age 21 he entered state politics, rising to the state supreme court by the age of 27. At
court, he earned and kept the nickname "Judge" Douglas. Hard-working and innovative,
Douglas is credited with building the Illinois Democratic Party from the bottom up. His hero
was Andrew Jackson, and he supported the principles of Jacksonian democracy that stood
for the betterment of the common person. Douglas prospered in the tough world of frontier
politics. In 1843 he won the first of three terms in the U.S. House. He was elected to the
U.S. Senate in 1847, where he served until his death in 1861.
Douglas married a North Carolinian, Martha Martin, in 1847. Martha was the heiress to a
large plantation with 100 slaves that Douglas managed. Shortly after bearing two sons,
Martha died in 1853. The lonely widower remarried in 1856 to the 21-year-old Adele Cutts.
They lived in Washington, D.C., for most of the year. While in Congress, Douglas was a
major proponent of westward expansion and the idea of Manifest Destiny. Leader of the
"Young Democrat" movement, he was a tough-minded politician who usually got his way.
After the end of the war with Mexico in 1848, the settlement of the territories acquired
from that war became a controversial national issue. Should they be reserved for free or
slave labor? Douglas helped push through the various pieces of legislation that made up
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the Compromise of 1850, including the completion of the Illinois Central Railroad, his pet
project. He was absent for the vote on the controversial Fugitive Slave Act but supported
its passage. As a Westerner, he promoted westward expansion, negotiating the slavery
issue to his constituents' benefit. He was neither strongly proslavery nor antislavery, but
his position as chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories put him in the middle of
the coming political firestorm.
In 1854 Douglas promoted the idea of popular sovereignty as a democratic method to
decide the issue of expansion in the Kansas and Nebraska Territories. Douglas's ultimate
goal was the building of a northern route for a transcontinental railroad that would have to
cross these territories, but he needed Southern congressional support to fund its
construction. This need led to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which abolished
the 1820 Missouri Compromise (banning slavery in all territories north of the 36'30'
parallel) and allowed the Kansas and Nebraska Territories to decide their status as either
free or slave territory via popular mandate.
Upon the passage of the act, both Free-Soil and pro-slavery proponents flooded Kansas
Territory in anticipation of a vote on the territory's status. The influx of a divided
population led to the conflict known as "Bleeding Kansas," which served as a preview to
the Civil War. The 1854 act had many more effects than just local conflict. It destroyed the
last remnants of the Whig Party and helped boost the popularity of the newly formed
Republican Party. The act was so divisive and unpopular in the North that Douglas joked
that he could go from his home in Washington, D.C., to his home in Illinois by the light of
his burning effigies.
Controversy aside, Douglas commanded the loyalties of many Democrats and only
narrowly lost the 1856 presidential nomination to James Buchanan. Buchanan and
Douglas, however, were increasingly at odds over Kansas's proslavery Lecompton
Constitution. Their split reduced Douglas's influence with the Southern Democrats that he
hoped to recover in his Senate reelection bid. In 1858 Republican lawyer Abraham Lincoln
challenged Douglas for his Senate seat. The famous Lincoln-Douglas debates drew the
entire nation's attention. As the candidates "stumped" throughout the state, their debates
were followed closely because of the important issues at stake and because Douglas was
the leading candidate for the Democratic Party's 1860 presidential nomination.
The debates' focus was on slavery. Southerners were very interested in what Douglas had
to say. During his speech in Freeport, Illinois, Douglas articulated his famous "Freeport
Doctrine." In it, Douglas sought to reassure Southerners that he would not use federal
power to stop slavery, while at the same time pointedly informing Northerners that no
court, supreme or otherwise, could impose slavery where it was not wanted. He had a
tough position to stake out, because he could not win nationally without the support of the
proslavery South, and he could not win a statewide election without free-labor votes.
Ultimately, he failed to persuade Southerners that Northern Democrats would protect their
property, but he did win the election in Illinois.
Douglas's beloved Democratic Party had split in half by the time the Democratic National
Convention met in Charleston, South Carolina, in the spring of 1860. With little agreement
between the Northern and Southern wings, many delegates from the slave states stormed
out, and the convention adjourned without a candidate. Two months later, a new
Democratic Party convention was called in Baltimore, where Douglas won the party's
nomination. The convention did not attract delegates from the Deep South; that group
nominated John C. Breckenridge as their Democratic candidate.
Douglas campaigned nonstop during the fall elections. Unlike the other candidates,
Douglas took his message to the public. He toured New England and the Deep South,
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where he was greeted with hostility. His message was simple and straightforward: Save
the Union. No issue, he argued, even slavery, should break up the country, but it was too
late for that message to appeal to the voters. In the election, Douglas won only Missouri
outright, but came in second in the popular vote with nearly 30 percent.
When hostilities broke out in April 1861, Douglas stood firmly in support of President
Lincoln and decried any attempts at disunion. Just after Fort Sumter, Douglas made a
speech in which he said: "It is with a sad heart— with a grief that I have never before
experienced, that I have to contemplate this fearful struggle." Months of tireless
campaigning had taken their toll on the "Little Giant," and he died in a hotel room in
Chicago on June 3, 1861.
Stephen A. Douglas was an important figure in U.S. political history, and although an
intelligent and talented man, he never grasped fully the power of the forces he unleashed
when he signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act into law. On his deathbed, he sent a last
message to his two sons: "Tell them to obey the laws and support the Constitution of the
United States."
Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973);
Damon Wells, Stephen Douglas; The Last Years, 1857–1861 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971).
Text Citation (Chicago Manual of Style format):
Stabler, Scott L. "Douglas, Stephen." In Waugh, John, and Gary B. Nash, eds. Encyclopedia of American
History: Civil War and Reconstruction, 1856 to 1869, Revised Edition (Volume V). New York: Facts On File,
Inc., 2010. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?
ItemID=WE52&iPin=EAHV088&SingleRecord=True (accessed October 6, 2014).
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