Douglas

DOUGLAS, Stephen Arnold, American politician: b. Brandon, Vt., 23 April 1813; d. Chicago, 3 June 1861. His father, a physician, died three months after his birth, and his mother was left with scanty means of support. At the age of 15 he apprenticed himself to a cabinet-maker and worked for two years at the latter's trade. Then, after a short term of study at the Brandon Academy, he accompanied his mother, who had married again, to a new home, near Canandaigua, N. Y., where he fin ished his schooling at an excellent academy, and where he began the study of law. He was interested deeply in political questions, even in these years, attaching himself with ardor to the new party of Democracy which General Jack son was then molding into form. In 1833 he left Canandaigua to seek a career in the West, and, after several months of ill-health and hardship, found employment for the winter in school-teaching at Winchester, Ill. In the spring of 1834 he was admitted to the Illinois bar and settled himself at Jacksonville, in that State. From that time his rapid rise to prominence was extraordinary, even among careers of ambi tion in the young West. Physically delicate and short in stature, his small body was so strikingly in contrast with the power massed in a big brain and exercised by an indomitable will that admiring Jacksonville promptly gave him the name of the "Little Giant," which clung to him through life. Almost at once he became the acknowledged leader of his party in the town. A winning personality, an elastic temper, a fearless and ardent spirit, unbounded self confidence and surpassing energy of intellect and will, were qualities that carried him always to the place of command. Within a year from his settlement at Jacksonville he was prosecut ing attorney for his district; within two years he was seated in the legislature of the State; and from his service of a session in that body he passed into the office of United States Regis ter of Public Lands, at Springfield, to which he was appointed by President Van Buren in 1837. His residence was at Springfield for the next 10 years, and there he came to acquaint ance with Abraham Lincoln, his great political antagonist of a later time, whose rise to emi nence was much slower than his own. In 1838 the bold young Jacksonian very nearly won an election to Congress in the strongly Whig dis trict to which Springfield belonged. In 1841 he was appointed to a judgeship in the Supreme Court of the State, but resigned his seat on the bench two years later, to present himself again as a candidate for Congress, and with success. At that time (1843) he had just passed his 30th year. Most newcomers in Congress, even the ablest, need time to make a position of influence for themselves; but Douglas was prominent among the Democratic representa tives of the Northwest from the first. The vigorous activity of his mind and the remark able quickness of its working made him for midable in debate, while the unhesitating' reso luteness with which he threw himself into what ever he undertook carried him always to the front of the fighting line. At the beginning of his second term in the House of Representatives he was made chairman of its Committee on Territories; and when, at the end of that term, he was elected to the Senate (1845), he re ceived the chairmanship of the same committee in that body. This gave him the direction of subjects in legislation which events were mak ing more important and more exciting than any others in the politics of the time. Texas had just been annexed; the country was on the eve of a war of conquest with Mexico and Great Britain was negotiating a fair settlement of the Oregon dispute. Should an expansion of na tional territory mean expansion of slavery, and, if so, to what extent? were the questions now rising in angry debate. They were brought into Congress by the famous resolution called the 'Wilmot proviso," which declared that no slaves should be held in any territory acquired as the result of the Mexican War. Extremists on the pro-slavery side set up the opposing doctrine that slave-holding was a constitutional right in any territory, since slaves were a species of property recognized by the Constitution of the United States. A second ground of oppo sition to the Wilmot proviso was discovered, apparently first by General Cass, who contended that the inhabitants of each Territory should admit or exclude slavery as they pleased, by their own votes. This doctrine of "popular

sovereignty," or "squatter sovereignty," as it was branded scornfully by Calhoun, commended itself to Douglas' mind. His attitude toward slavery was that of indifference to the right or wrong of the system, which he regarded con fessedly as a problem in politics, and no more. Practically, the "squatter sovereignty" doctrine triumphed in the compromise measures of 1850, which admitted California to the Union under the free-State constitution that her people had framed, and organized New Mexico and Utah as Territories with no restriction concerning slavery. Excepting Henry Clay, no one did more than Douglas in the framing of those measures and carrying them through. He was now so conspicuous among the chiefs of the Democratic party that he could aspire to its nomination for President in 1852. From the North he received strong support; Nit the less known and more pliant Franklin Pierce was preferred at the South. Douglas, not yet 40 years of age, could afford to wait. At some time within the next two years he conceived his project for a more complete and final settle ment of the slavery question than the compro mise of 1850 had brought about. This, in his view, could be accomplished by a frank and full adoption of the principle of "popular sover eignty," applied to the whole national domain. Accordingly, in 1854, he startled the country by reporting from his committee what was known in its final form as the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (which excluded slavery from the territory of the Louisiana Purchase, north of 36° 30') and leaving "the inhabitants thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way." At the North the bill raised a storm which even the bold spirit of Douglas must have watched with alarm. His own party was torn by it; that of the Whigs had already gone to pieces, and two new parties, "Know Nothing" or American, and Republican, now emerged from what seemed to be a general wreck of all in politics that belonged to the past. But Douglas, with no sign of faltering, fought a wonderful battle for his bill and carried it through. Then came the test in practice of his policy, applied in a struggle between anti slavery and pro-slavery forces to control the settlement and the constitution-making of Kan sas. The test was not favorable to the prestige of Douglas. He had heated instead of cooling the agitation of the slavery question and made it more dangerous than before. As a candidate for the presidency he was hardly so strong in 1856 as in 1852; but after Buchanan, then elected, had driven Douglas to revolt, by countenancing the fraud of the Lecompton constitution, making a farce of "popular sover eignty)) in Kansas, the manly course of the Illi nois Senator gave him more of popularity in the free States than he lost in the South. The hostility of the administration, combining with the opposition of the new Republican party, already powerful in the Northwest, could not defeat his re-election to the Senate in 1858. Over any antagonist but Lincoln he would prob ably have won a great triumph; as it was, he came wounded from his debates with that ex traordinary man. He had been forced to decla rations that offended his party in one section of the country more than they satisfied it in the other, and made him the occasion of a hopeless breach between the two. Nominated for Presi dent at last in 1860 by one wing of a divided party, he fought his last political hattle_ with all of his old obstinate valor, and went down in defeat. He was at the end of the small gift of bodily strength that he received at his birth; he had worn it out. He survived the election of Lincoln only long enough to stretch a loyal and supporting hand to his successful rival in the crisis of rebellion that ensued. His last words to his followers were: "There can be no neutrals in this war." Consult Johnson, Allen,