DOUGLAS, STEPHEN ARNOLD Ameri can political leader, was born in Brandon, Vt., on April 23, 1813. Left in infancy to the care of a widowed mother and a bachelor uncle, he became a cabinet-maker's apprentice in Middlebury and Brandon. He attended schools at Brandon and Canandaigua, N.Y., and began the study of law. In 1833 he went west and finally settled in Jacksonville, Ill., where he was admitted to the bar in March 1834. From the first he took an active interest in politics, and his rise was remarkably rapid. In Feb. 1835 he was elected public prosecutor of the first judicial circuit; in Dec. 1836 he became a member of the State legislature. In 1837 he was appointed by President Van Buren registrar of the land office at Springfield, which had just become the State capital. In 1840 he did much to carry the State for Van Buren ; and for a few months he was secretary of State of Illinois. He was a judge of the supreme court of Illinois from 1841 to 1843. In 1843 he was elected to the national House of Representatives.
In Congress, though one of the youngest members, he at once sprang into prominence by his clever defence of Jackson for alleged contempt of court in New Orleans. He was soon recog nized as one of the ablest and most energetic of the Democratic leaders. An enthusiastic believer in the destiny of his country and more especially of the West, and a thorough-going expansion ist, he heartily favoured the measures which resulted in the annex ation of Texas and in the Mexican War—in the discussion of the former foreshadowing his doctrine of "popular sovereignty." Taking an active share in the Oregon controversy, he opposed yielding "one inch" of the territory to Great Britain and advo cated extending United States settlements under military protec tion. He was an advocate of the construction, by the aid of Gov ernment land grants, of a transcontinental railway, and the chief promoter (1850) of the Illinois Central. As chairman of the com mittee on territories, at first in the House, and then in the Senate, of which he became a member in Dec. 1847, he introduced the bills for admitting Texas, Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California and Oregon into the Union, and for organizing the Territories of Minnesota, Oregon, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, Kansas and Nebraska.
In the bitter debates concerning the keenly disputed question' of slavery in the Territories, Douglas was particularly prominent. Against slavery itself he seems never to have had any moral an tipathy; and his first wife and children were by inheritance the owners of slaves, though he himself never was. He did more, probably, than any other one man, except Henry Clay, to secure the adoption of the Compromise Measures of 1850. Nevertheless the bill for organizing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which Douglas reported in Jan., 1854, and which in amended form was signed by the president on May 3o, reopened the whole slavery dispute—wantonly, his enemies charged, for the purpose of securing Southern support—and caused great popular excite ment. It repealed the Missouri Compromise, and declared the people of "any State or Territory" "free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States"; that is, "popular sovereignty" or "squatter sovereignty" would determine the admission of slavery. The passage of this Kansas-Nebraska bill, one of the most momentous in its consequences ever passed by the Federal Congress, was largely a personal triumph for Douglas, who showed marvelous energy, adroitness and resourcefulness, and a genius for leadership, but was universally condemned in the free States. His hostility to "knownothingism" and his plea for religious toler ation also caused him trouble, but in 1852 and again in 1856 he was a strong candidate for the presidential nomination in the National Democratic Convention.
In 1857 he broke with President Buchanan and the "administra tion" Democrats and lost much of his prestige in the South, but partially restored himself to favour in the North, and especially in Illinois, by his vigorous opposition to the method of voting on the Lecompton constitution, which he maintained to be fraudu lent, 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 de cided that Kansas was a "slave" Territory, thus quashing Doug las's theory of "popular sovereignty," he engaged in Illinois in a close contest for the senatorship with Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, whom he met in a series of debates. Al though in Illinois his followers did not poll so large a vote as Lincoln's, Douglas won the senatorship by a vote in the legislature of 54 to 46. In the Senate he was not reappointed chairman of the committee on territories.
In 1860, in the Democratic national convention in Charleston, the adoption of Douglas's 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 dis union, and in the election, though his popular vote was he received an electoral vote of only 12, against Lincoln's 180. Douglas urged the South to acquiesce in Lincoln's election, and he and his second wife, Adele Cutts, were among the foremost to wel come the Lincolns to Washington. On the outbreak of the Civil War he denounced secession as criminal, and was one of the strong est advocates of maintaining the integrity of the Union at all hazards. At Lincoln's request he undertook a mission to the border States and the north-west to rouse the spirit of Unionism; he spoke in West Virginia, Ohio and Illinois. He died on June 3, 1861, at Chicago, where he was buried on the shore of Lake Michigan.
In person Douglas was conspicuously small, being hardly five feet in height, but his large head and massive chest and shoulders gave him the popular sobriquet "The Little Giant." As a re sourceful political leader, and an adroit, ready, skilful tactician in debate, he has had few equals in American history. His generos ity in defeat, his courage and his capacity for inspiring warm personal friendships are among his most attractive qualities. It was regretted that his death came just when a new and great era of usefulness seemed opening before him.
One of the most sympathetic biographies is that by Allen Johnson 0908). Other biographies are by H. M. Flint (186o) ; J. W. Sheahan (186o) ; W. G. • Broun (1902) ; Wm. Gardner (19o5) ; C. E. Carr (1909) ; H. P. Willis (191o) ; and Louis Howland (192o) . See also P. O. Ray, Repeal of the Missouri Compromise (igoo), and an autobio graphical sketch in the Ill. State Hist. Soc. Journal (vol. v., Oct., 1912)•