Stephen A. Douglas by Allen Johnson

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| Transcriber's Note: |
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|Original spellings and inconsistent hyphenation have been kept,|
|including the earlier spelling variant Douglass. |
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STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS:

A STUDY IN AMERICAN POLITICS

By ALLEN JOHNSON

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN BOWDOIN COLLEGE;
SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN IOWA COLLEGE

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1908

_All rights reserved_

* * * * *

COPYRIGHT 1908

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published February 1908

THE MASON-HENRY PRESS SYRACUSE, N.Y.

* * * * *

To

PROFESSOR JESSE MACY

whose wisdom and kindliness have inspired
a generation of students

PREFACE

To describe the career of a man who is now chiefly remembered as the
rival of Abraham Lincoln, must seem to many minds a superfluous, if
not invidious, undertaking. The present generation is prone to forget
that when the rivals met in joint debate fifty years ago, on the
prairies of Illinois, it was Senator Douglas, and not Mr. Lincoln, who
was the cynosure of all observing eyes. Time has steadily lessened the
prestige of the great Democratic leader, and just as steadily enhanced
the fame of his Republican opponent.

The following pages have been written, not as a vindication, but as an
interpretation of a personality whose life spans the controversial
epoch before the Civil War. It is due to the chance reader to state
that the writer was born in a New England home, and bred in an
anti-slavery atmosphere where the political creed of Douglas could not
thrive. If this book reveals a somewhat less sectional outlook than
this personal allusion suggests, the credit must be given to those
generous friends in the great Middle West, who have helped the writer
to interpret the spirit of that region which gave both Douglas and
Lincoln to the nation.

The material for this study has been brought together from many
sources. Through the kindness of Mrs. James W. Patton of Springfield,
Illinois, I have had access to a valuable collection of letters
written by Douglas to her father, Charles H. Lanphier, Esq., editor of
the Illinois _State Register_. Judge Robert M. Douglas of North
Carolina has permitted me to use an autobiographical sketch of his
father, as well as other papers in the possession of the family. Among
those who have lightened my labors, either by copies of letters penned
by Douglas or by personal recollections, I would mention with
particular gratitude the late Mrs. L.K. Lippincott ("Grace
Greenwood"); Mr. J.H. Roberts and Stephen A. Douglas, Esq. of Chicago;
Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller and the late Hon. Robert E. Hitt of
Washington. With his wonted generosity, Mr. James F. Rhodes has given
me the benefit of his wide acquaintance with the newspapers of the
period, which have been an invaluable aid in the interpretation of
Douglas's career. Finally, by personal acquaintance and conversation
with men who knew him, I have endeavored to catch the spirit of those
who made up the great mass of his constituents.

Brunswick, Maine,

November, 1907.

CONTENTS

BOOK I. THE CALL OF THE WEST

CHAPTER I
FROM THE GREEN MOUNTAINS TO THE PRAIRIES 3

CHAPTER II
THE RISE OF THE POLITICIAN 18

CHAPTER III
LAW AND POLITICS 51

CHAPTER IV
UNDER THE AEGIS OF ANDREW JACKSON 68

CHAPTER V
MANIFEST DESTINY 84

CHAPTER VI
WAR AND POLITICS 109

CHAPTER VII
THE MEXICAN CESSION 127

BOOK II. THE DOCTRINE OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY

CHAPTER VIII
SENATOR AND CONSTITUENCY 145

CHAPTER IX
MEASURES OF ADJUSTMENT 166

CHAPTER X
YOUNG AMERICA 191

CHAPTER XI
THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT 220

CHAPTER XII
BLACK REPUBLICANISM 260

CHAPTER XIII
THE TESTING OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY 281

BOOK III. THE IMPENDING CRISIS

CHAPTER XIV
THE PERSONAL EQUATION 309

CHAPTER XV
THE REVOLT OF DOUGLAS 324

CHAPTER XVI
THE JOINT DEBATES WITH LINCOLN 348

CHAPTER XVII
THE AFTERMATH 393

CHAPTER XVIII
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1860 412

CHAPTER XIX
THE MERGING OF THE PARTISAN IN THE PATRIOT 442

CHAPTER XX
THE SUMMONS 475

BOOK I

THE CALL OF THE WEST

CHAPTER I

FROM THE GREEN MOUNTAINS TO THE PRAIRIES

The dramatic moments in the colonizing of coastal New England have
passed into song, story, and sober chronicle; but the farther
migration of the English people, from tide-water to interior, has been
too prosaic a theme for poets and too diverse a movement for
historians. Yet when all the factors in our national history shall be
given their full value, none will seem more potent than the great
racial drift from the New England frontier into the heart of the
continent. The New Englanders who formed a broad belt from Vermont and
New York across the Northwest to Kansas, were a social and political
force of incalculable power, in the era which ended with the Civil
War. The New Englander of the Middle West, however, ceased to be
altogether a Yankee. The lake and prairie plains bred a spirit which
contrasted strongly with the smug provincialism of rock-ribbed and
sterile New England. The exultation born of wide, unbroken, horizon
lines and broad, teeming, prairie landscapes, found expression in the
often-quoted saying, "Vermont is the most glorious spot on the face of
this globe for a man to be born in, _provided_ he emigrates when he is
very young." The career of Stephen Arnold Douglas is intelligible only
as it is viewed against the background of a New England boyhood, a
young manhood passed on the prairies of Illinois, and a wedded life
pervaded by the gentle culture of Southern womanhood.

In America, observed De Tocqueville two generations ago, democracy
disposes every man to forget his ancestors. When the Hon. Stephen A.
Douglas was once asked to prepare an account of his career for a
biographical history of Congress, he chose to omit all but the barest
reference to his forefathers.[1] Possibly he preferred to leave the
family tree naked, that his unaided rise to eminence might the more
impress the chance reader. Yet the records of the Douglass family are
not uninteresting.[2] The first of the name to cross the ocean was
William Douglass, who was born in Scotland and who wedded Mary Ann,
daughter of Thomas Marble of Northampton. Just when this couple left
Old England is not known, but the birth of a son is recorded in
Boston, in the year 1645. Soon after this event they removed to New
London, preferring, it would seem, to try their luck in an outlying
settlement, for this region was part of the Pequot country. Somewhat
more than a hundred years later, Benajah Douglass, a descendant of
this pair and grandfather of the subject of this sketch, pushed still
farther into the interior, and settled in Rensselaer County, in the
province of New York. The marriage of Benajah Douglass to Martha
Arnold, a descendant of Governor William Arnold of Rhode Island, has
an interest for those who are disposed to find Celtic qualities in the
grandson, for the Arnolds were of Welsh stock, and may be supposed to
have revived the strain in the Douglass blood.

Tradition has made Benajah Douglass a soldier in the war of the
Revolution, but authentic records go no farther back than the year
1795, when he removed with his family to Brandon, Vermont. There he
purchased a farm of about four hundred acres, which he must have
cultivated with some degree of skill, since it seems to have yielded
an ample competency. He is described as a man of genial, buoyant
disposition, with much self-confidence. He was five times chosen
selectman of Brandon; and five times he was elected to represent the
town in the General Assembly. The physical qualities of the grandson
may well have been a family inheritance, since of Benajah we read that
he was of medium height, with large head and body, short neck, and
short limbs.[3]

The portrait of Benajah's son is far less distinct. He was a graduate
of Middlebury College and a physician by profession. He married Sally
Fisk, the daughter of a well-to-do farmer in Brandon, by whom he had
two children, the younger of whom was Stephen Arnold Douglass, born
April 23, 1813. The promising career of the young doctor was cut short
by a sudden stroke, which overtook him as he held his infant son in
his arms. The plain, little one-and-a-half story house, in which the
boy first saw the light, suggests that the young physician had been
unable to provide for more than the bare necessities of his family.[4]

Soon after the death of Dr. Douglass, his widow removed to the farm
which she and her unmarried brother had inherited from her father. The
children grew to love this bachelor uncle with almost filial
affection. Too young to take thought for the morrow, they led the
wholesome, natural life of country children. Stephen went to the
district school on the Brandon turnpike, and had no reason to bemoan
the fate which left him largely dependent upon his uncle's generosity.
An old school-mate recalls young Douglass through the haze of years,
as a robust, healthy boy, with generous instincts though tenacious of
his rights.[5] After school hours work and play alternated. The
regular farm chores were not the least part in the youngster's
education; he learned to be industrious and not to despise honest
labor.[6]

This bare outline of a commonplace boyhood must be filled in with many
details drawn from environment. Stephen fell heir to a wealth of
inspiring local traditions. The fresh mountain breezes had also once
blown full upon the anxious faces of heroes and patriots; the quiet
valleys had once echoed with the noise of battle; this land of the
Green Mountains was the Wilderness of colonial days, the frontier for
restless New Englanders, where with good axe and stout heart they had
carved their home plots out of the virgin forest. Many a legend of
adventure, of border warfare, and of personal heroism, was still
current among the Green Mountain folk. Where was the Vermont lad who
did not fight over again the battles of Bennington, Ticonderoga, and
Plattsburg?

Other influences were scarcely less formative in the life of the
growing boy. Vermont was also the land of the town meeting. Whatever
may be said of the efficiency of town government, it was and is a
school of democracy. In Vermont it was the natural political
expression of social forces. How else, indeed, could the general will
find fit expression, except through the attrition of many minds? And
who could know better the needs of the community than the commonalty?
Not that men reasoned about the philosophy of their political
institutions: they simply accepted them. And young Douglass grew up in
an atmosphere friendly to local self-government of an extreme type.

Stephen was nearing his fourteenth birthday, when an event occurred
which interrupted the even current of his life. His uncle, who was
commonly regarded as a confirmed old bachelor, confounded the village
gossips by bringing home a young bride. The birth of a son and heir
was the nephew's undoing. While the uncle regarded Stephen with
undiminished affection, he was now much more emphatically _in loco
parentis_. An indefinable something had come between them. The subtle
change in relationship was brought home to both when Stephen proposed
that he should go to the academy in Brandon, to prepare for college.
That he was to go to college, he seems to have taken for granted.
There was a moment of embarrassment, and then the uncle told the lad,
frankly but kindly, that he could not provide for his further
education. With considerable show of affection, he advised him to give
up the notion of going to college and to remain on the farm, where he
would have an assured competence. In after years the grown man related
this incident with a tinge of bitterness, averring that there had been
an understanding in the family that he was to attend college.[7]
Momentary disappointment he may have felt, to be sure, but he could
hardly have been led to believe that he could draw indefinitely upon
his uncle's bounty.

Piqued and somewhat resentful, Stephen made up his mind to live no
longer under his uncle's roof. He would show his spirit by proving
that he was abundantly able to take care of himself. Much against the
wishes of his mother, who knew him to be mastered by a boyish whim, he
apprenticed himself to Nahum Parker, a cabinet-maker in Middlebury.[8]
He put on his apron, went to work sawing table legs from two-inch
planks, and, delighted with the novelty of the occupation and
exhilarated by his newly found sense of freedom, believed himself on
the highway to happiness and prosperity. He found plenty of companions
with whom he spent his idle hours, young fellows who had a taste for
politics and who rapidly kindled in the newcomer a consuming
admiration for Andrew Jackson. He now began to read with avidity such
political works as came to hand. Discussion with his new friends and
with his employer, who was an ardent supporter of Adams and Clay,
whetted his appetite for more reading and study. In after years he was
wont to say that these were the happiest days of his life.[9]

Toward the end of the year, he became dissatisfied with his employer
because he was forced to perform "some menial services in the
house."[10] He wished his employer to know that he was not a household
servant, but an apprentice. Further difficulties arose, which
terminated his apprenticeship in Middlebury. Returning to Brandon, he
entered the shop of Deacon Caleb Knowlton, also a cabinet-maker; but
in less than a year he quit this employer on the plea of
ill-health.[11] It is quite likely that the confinement and severe
manual labor may have overtaxed the strength of the growing boy; but
it is equally clear that he had lost his taste for cabinet work. He
never again expressed a wish to follow a trade. He again took up his
abode with his mother; and, the means now coming to hand from some
source, he enrolled as a student in Brandon Academy, with the avowed
purpose of preparing for a professional career.[12] It was a wise
choice. Vermont may have lost a skilled handworker--there are those
who vouch for the excellence of his handiwork[13]--but the Union
gained a joiner of first-rate ability.

Wedding bells rang in another change in his fortunes. The marriage of
his sister to a young New Yorker from Ontario County, was followed by
the marriage of his mother to the father, Gehazi Granger. Both couples
took up their residence on the Granger estate, and thither also went
Stephen, with perhaps a sense of loneliness in his boyish heart.[14]
He was then but seventeen. This removal to New York State proved to be
his first step along a path which Vermonters were wearing toward the
West.

Happily, his academic course was not long interrupted by this
migration, for Canandaigua Academy, which offered unusual advantages,
was within easy reach from his new home. Under the wise instruction of
Professor Henry Howe, he began the study of Latin and Greek; and by
his own account made "considerable improvement," though there is
little evidence in his later life of any acquaintance with the
classics. He took an active part in the doings of the literary
societies of the academy, distinguishing himself by his readiness in
debate. His Democratic proclivities were still strong; and he became
an ardent defender of Democracy against the rising tide of
Anti-Masonry, which was threatening to sweep New York from its
political moorings. Tradition says that young Douglass mingled much
with local politicians, learning not a little about the arts and
devices by which the Albany Regency controlled the Democratic
organization in the State. In this school of practical politics he was
beyond a peradventure an apt pupil.

A characteristic story is told of Douglass during these school days at
Canandaigua.[15] A youngster who occupied a particularly desirable
seat at table had been ousted by another lad, who claimed a better
right to the place. Some one suggested that the claimants should have
the case argued by counsel before a board of arbitration. The
dispossessed boy lost his case, because of the superior skill with
which Douglass presented the claims of his client. "It was the first
assertion of the doctrine of squatter sovereignty," said the defeated
claimant, recalling the incident years afterward, when both he and
Douglas were in politics.

Douglass was now maturing rapidly. His ideals were clearer; his native
tastes more pronounced. It is not improbable that already he looked
forward to politics as a career. At all events he took the proximate
step toward that goal by beginning the study of law in the office of
local attorneys, at the same time continuing his studies begun in the
academy. What marked him off from his comrades even at this period was
his lively acquisitiveness. He seemed to learn quite as much by
indirection as by persevering application to books.[16]

In the spring of 1833, the same unrest that sent the first Douglass
across the sea to the new world, seized the young man. Against the
remonstrances of his mother and his relatives, he started for the
great West which then spelled opportunity to so many young men. He was
only twenty years old, and he had not yet finished his academic
course; but with the impatience of ambition he was reluctant to spend
four more years in study before he could gain admission to the bar. In
the newer States of the West conditions were easier. Moreover, he was
no longer willing to be a burden to his mother, whose resources were
limited. And so, with purposes only half formed and with only enough
money for his immediate needs, he began, not so much a journey, as a
drift in a westerly direction, for he had no particular destination in
view.[17]

After a short stay in Buffalo and a visit to Niagara Falls and the
battle ground of Chippewa, the boy took a steamboat to Cleveland,
where happily he found a friend in Sherlock J. Andrews, Esquire, a
successful attorney and a man of kindly impulses. Finding the city
attractive and the requirements for the Ohio bar less rigorous,
Douglass determined to drop anchor in this pleasant port. Mr. Andrews
encouraged him in this purpose, offering the use of his office and
law library. In a single year Douglass hoped to gain admission to the
bar. With characteristic energy, he began his studies. Fate ruled,
however, that his career should not be linked with the Western
Reserve. Within a few days he was prostrated by that foe which then
lurked in the marshes and lowlands of the West--foe more dreaded than
the redman--malarial typhoid. For four weary months he kept his bed,
hovering between life and death, until the heat of summer was spent
and the first frosts of October came to revive him. Urgent appeals now
came to him to return home; but pride kept him from yielding. After
paying all his bills, he still had forty dollars left. He resolved to
push on farther into the interior.[18]

He was far from well when he took the canal boat from Cleveland to
Portsmouth on the Ohio river; but he was now in a reckless and
adventurous mood. He would test his luck by pressing on to Cincinnati.
He had no well-defined purpose: he was in a listless mood, which was
no doubt partly the result of physical exhaustion. From Cincinnati he
drifted on to Louisville, and then to St. Louis. His small funds were
now almost all spent. He must soon find occupation or starve. His
first endeavor was to find a law office where he could earn enough by
copying and other work to pay his expenses while he continued his law
studies. No such opening fell in his way and he had no letters of
introduction here to smooth his path. He was now convinced that he
must seek some small country town. Hearing that Jacksonville,
Illinois, was a thriving settlement, he resolved to try his luck in
this quarter. With much the same desperation with which a gambler
plays his last stake, he took passage on a river boat up the Illinois,
and set foot upon the soil of the great prairie State.[19]

A primitive stage coach plied between the river and Jacksonville. Too
fatigued to walk the intervening distance, Douglass mounted the
lumbering vehicle and ruefully paid his fare. From this point of
vantage he took in the prairie landscape. Morgan County was then but
sparsely populated. Timber fringed the creeks and the river bottoms,
while the prairie grass grew rank over soil of unsuspected fertility.
Most dwellings were rude structures made of rough-hewn logs and
designed as makeshifts. Wildcats and wolves prowled through the timber
lands in winter, and game of all sorts abounded.[20] As the stage
swung lazily along, the lad had ample time to let the first impression
of the prairie landscape sink deep. In the timber, the trees were
festooned with bitter-sweet and with vines bearing wild grapes; in the
open country, nothing but unmeasured stretches of waving grass caught
the eye.[21] To one born and bred among the hills, this broad horizon
and unbroken landscape must have been a revelation. Weak as he was,
Douglass drew in the fresh autumnal air with zest, and unconsciously
borrowed from the face of nature a sense of unbounded capacity. Years
afterward, when he was famous, he testified, "I found my mind
liberalized and my opinions enlarged, when I got on these broad
prairies, with only the heavens to bound my vision, instead of having
them circumscribed by the little ridges that surrounded the valley
where I was born."[22] But of all this he was unconscious, when he
alighted from the stage in Jacksonville. He was simply a wayworn lad,
without a friend in the town and with only one dollar and twenty-five
cents in his pocket.[23]

Jacksonville was then hardly more than a crowded village of log cabins
on the outposts of civilized Illinois.[24] Comfort was not among the
first concerns of those who had come to subdue the wilderness. Comfort
implied leisure to enjoy, and leisure was like Heaven,--to be attained
only after a wearisome earthly pilgrimage. Jacksonville had been
scourged by the cholera during the summer; and those who had escaped
the disease had fled the town for fear of it.[25] By this time,
however, the epidemic had spent itself, and the refugees had returned.
All told, the town had a population of about one thousand souls, among
whom were no less than eleven lawyers, or at least those who called
themselves such.[26]

A day's lodging at the Tavern ate up the remainder of the wanderer's
funds, so that he was forced to sell a few school books that he had
brought with him. Meanwhile he left no stone unturned to find
employment to his liking. One of his first acquaintances was Murray
McConnell, a lawyer, who advised him to go to Pekin, farther up the
Illinois River, and open a law office. The young man replied that he
had no license to practice law and no law books. He was assured that
a license was a matter of no consequence, since anyone could practice
before a justice of the peace, and he could procure one at his
leisure. As for books, McConnell, with true Western generosity,
offered to loan such as would be of immediate use. So again Douglass
took up his travels. At Meredosia, the nearest landing on the river,
he waited a week for the boat upstream. There was no other available
route to Pekin. Then came the exasperating intelligence, that the only
boat which plied between these points had blown up at Alton. After
settling accounts with the tavern-keeper, he found that he had but
fifty cents left.[27]

There was now but one thing to do, since hard manual labor was out of
the question: he would teach school. But where? Meredosia was a
forlorn, thriftless place, and he had no money to travel. Fortunately,
a kind-hearted farmer befriended him, lodging him at his house over
night and taking him next morning to Exeter, where there was a
prospect of securing a school. Disappointment again awaited him; but
Winchester, ten miles away, was said to need a teacher. Taking his
coat on his arm--he had left his trunk at Meredosia--he set off on
foot for Winchester.[28]

Accident, happily turned to his profit, served to introduce him to the
townspeople of Winchester. The morning after his arrival, he found a
crowd in the public square and learned that an auction sale of
personal effects was about to take place. Everyone from the
administrator of the estate to the village idler, was eager for the
sale to begin. But a clerk to keep record of the sales and to draw the
notes was wanting. The eye of the administrator fell upon Douglass;
something in the youth's appearance gave assurance that he could
"cipher.". The impatient bystanders "'lowed that he might do," so he
was given a trial. Douglass proved fully equal to the task, and in two
days was in possession of five dollars for his pains.[29]

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