Stephen Douglas

Stephen Douglas (1813-1861), American politician, noted for his debates with Abraham Lincoln. Stephen Arnold Douglas 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 (1841-1843).

Douglas was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served from 1843 until 1847. He became an outstanding spokesman for a policy of national expansion. Douglas was soon nicknamed the Little Giant, for his small stature but great ability as an orator and legislator. He advocated the annexation of Texas, supported the war with Mexico, and opposed compromise with Britain in the Oregon dispute. He became chairman of the Committee on Territories in the House, and, when elected to the U.S. Senate in 1847 by the state legislature, Douglas was chosen head of the Senate Committee on Territories. In this capacity he was in charge of legislation by which Minnesota, Oregon, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, Kansas, and Nebraska were constituted as territories and Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, California, and Oregon were admitted to the Union as states. He opposed ratification of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and advocated the annexation of Cuba. With Henry Clay, senator from Kentucky, he was mainly responsible for the Compromise Measures of 1850. Douglas, however, brought about the reopening of the entire slavery question in 1854 by incorporating in the Kansas-Nebraska Act (the bills that established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska) the principle of “popular sovereignty,” which provided that the inhabitants of these territories might decide whether slavery should be permitted within their borders.

In 1858, while campaigning for the election of friendly candidates for the state senate to ensure his selection for a third term as U.S. senator from Illinois, Douglas was opposed by Lincoln, and the two candidates met in a momentous series of debates on the slavery issue. Douglas was reelected, but the Lincoln candidates gained more popular votes, and Lincoln emerged with a national reputation. In 1860 Douglas and Lincoln were opponents for the presidential election. Douglas had won the Democratic nomination, but Southern Democratic delegates seceded and nominated the incumbent vice president, John Cabell Breckinridge, thus splitting the party vote. Douglas lost the election, winning 12 electoral and 1,375,157 popular votes to 180 electoral and 1,866,352 popular votes for Lincoln. When the American Civil War broke out, Douglas gave Lincoln loyal support. He contracted typhoid fever while on a mission in the midwestern and border states to rally popular backing for the Union cause, and he died in Chicago on June 3, 1861.