Stephen A. Douglas

Stephen A. Douglas was born in Brandon, Vermont on April 23, 1813. His father, a young physician of high standing, died suddenly when Stephen was two months old, and the widow with her two children retired to a farm near Brandon. This is where Stephen lived with her until he was fifteen years old. He attended school during the three winter months and working on the farm the remainder of the year. He wanted to earn his own living so he went to Middlebury and became an apprentice in the cabinetmaking business. This trade he followed for about eighteen months, when he was forced to stop his work because of impaired health, after this he attended the academy at Brandon for about a year.

In the autumn of 1830 he moved to New York State and attended the academy at Canandaigua where he began his study of law. Realizing that his mother wouldn't be unable to support him through his courses, he was determined to go to the west, and on June 24, 1833, he set out for Cleveland, Ohio, where he was dangerously ill with fever for four months. He then visited Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and Jacksonville, Illinois, but failed to receive any employment. Feeling Discouraged, he walked to Winchester. Here he found employment as clerk to an auctioneer at an administrator's sale, and was paid six dollars. He studied law at night, and on Saturdays practiced before justices of the peace.

In March 1834, he removed to Jacksonville, obtained his license, and began the regular practice of law. Two weeks after that he addressed a large Democratic meeting in defense of General Jackson's administration. In December 1840, he was appointed secretary of state of Illinois, and in the following February elected a judge of the Supreme Court. In 1843 Judge Douglas was elected to congress by a majority of 400, and he was reelected in 1844 by 1,900, and again in 1846 by over 3,000: but before the term began he was chosen U.S. senator, and took his seat in the senate on March 4, 1847.

The bill for organizing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which Douglas reported in January 1854 reopened the whole slavery dispute and caused great popular excitement, as it repealed the part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which excluded slavery from the regions of the Louisiana Purchase north of the Mason-Dixon line, and declared the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. The passage of this Kansas-Nebraska Bill became a personal triumph for Douglas, who showed energy, and ability for leadership.

In the 1858 Illinois campaign Douglas was to have a debate against Abraham Lincoln, which first gained Lincoln a national reputation. The Douglas-Lincoln debates drew surprisingly large crowds and detailed press coverage. Of the seven debates, the second, held at Freeport on August 27, 1858, had the most important consequences. There Lincoln asked Douglas a question exposing the inconsistency between Douglas's doctrine of popular sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott Case. Lincoln said, "Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way ... exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State constitution?" Had Douglas answered no, in line with the Dred Scott decision, he would have lost his seat in the Senate. As it was, he replied that people of a territory could exclude slavery, since that institution could not exist for a day without local police regulations and these

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