Stephen A. Douglas

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Douglas, Stephen A. (1813–1861), U.S. senator, presidential candidate. Arriving in Illinois as a young man from his native Vermont, Stephen A. Douglas practiced law and played a key role in building the state Democratic party. Serving in the U.S. House of Representatives (1843–1847) and the Senate (1847–1861), he attained a party leadership role and a command of the legislative process unsurpassed in his generation. Called “the Little Giant” for his short height and towering reputation, he worked indefatigably to promote his region's interests, especially geographic expansion and railroad construction. Reluctantly addressing the issue of slavery in the territories, Douglas adopted the formula known as “popular sovereignty”—that is, leaving the issue to local control—as he engineered passage of the Compromise of 1850.

If Douglas adopted popular sovereignty as an expedient, he embraced it thereafter as a principle, with ironic effects. His application of the doctrine in the Kansas‐Nebraska Act (1854), which abandoned the geographic restraints on slavery written into the Missouri Compromise (1820), led directly to the creation of the Republican party. His use of the doctrine to block Kansas's admission as a slave state alienated the South and hastened the sectional split of the Democratic party. His defense of popular sovereignty in his famous debates with Abraham Lincoln in the 1858 Illinois senatorial race, while securing his reelection, served mainly to boost the fame of his Republican rival. Douglas won the presidential nomination of the northern Democrats in 1860, but was defeated by Lincoln and the Republicans, which in turn triggered secession. Although Douglas venerated the Union, he figured prominently in many of the events leading to its disruption.
See also Antebellum Era; Civil War: Causes; Federal Government, Legislative Branch: House of Representatives; Federal Government, Legislative Branch: Senate; Lincoln‐Douglas Debates; Railroads.

Bibliography

Robert W. Johannsen , Stephen A. Douglas, 1973.

George B. Forgie