Steven A. Douglas

Stephen Arnold Douglas
(1813-61)

American politician, noted for his debates with Abraham Lincoln. He was born on April 23, 1813, in Brandon, Vermont, and educated in schools at Brandon and at Canandaigua, New York. He practiced law in Illinois, where he became successively public prosecutor, legislative member (1836), state secretary (1840), and judge of the state supreme court (1841-43).

A U.S. senator for 14 years and a presidential contender, Stephen A. Douglas was a major figure in pre-Civil War politics. He is best remembered for his debates with Abraham Lincoln on the question of slavery in 1858.

Born in Brandon, Vt., on Apr. 23, 1813, Douglas settled in Illinois, where he was admitted to the bar. He rose rapidly in the Democratic party, holding several state and local offices before being elected to the House of Representatives in 1843. From 1847 until his death, he was a U.S. senator.

In the Senate, Douglas chaired the Committee on Territories, an important post because of the growing controversy over the extension of slavery into the territories. Although Douglas was one of the architects of the Ccompromise Act of 1850, he reopened the slavery issue in 1854 when he sponsored the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise. In its place, he advocated the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty, whereby territorial settlers would be allowed to decide on the slavery issue after they achieved statehood. This solution failed to defuse the slavery issue, and Kansas was soon rent with conflict.

Douglas was bypassed for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1856, largely because of the situation in "bleeding Kansas." In 1857 he broke with President James Buchanan over the latter's support of the proslavery forces in Kansas. This alienated Douglas from Southern Democrats. In 1858, Douglas defeated Lincoln in a hard-fought senatorial campaign. The well-publicized Lincoln-Douglas debates, however, helped bring Lincoln to national attention while further alienating Douglas from Southern Democrats because of his inability to reconcile popular sovereignty with the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision (1857).

Douglas received the presidential nomination of the non-Southern wing of the Democratic party in 1860, but the fragmentation of the Democrats allowed Lincoln to win an easy victory. When the Civil War broke out, Douglas supported Lincoln. On a speaking tour to rally support for the Union cause, Douglas was stricken with typhoid and died in Chicago on June 3, 1861.

In addition to his prominent political career, Douglas was a wealthy land speculator in and around Chicago. He helped make that city a major railroad terminus

(See Bibliography below)

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Photography: National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.
Bibliography: Douglas, Stephen A., Letters, ed. by Robert W. Johannsen (1961); Johannsen, Robert W., Stephen A. Douglas (1973); Sigelschiffer, Saul, The American Conscience: The Drama of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1973); Wells, Damon, Stephen Douglas: The Last Years (1971).