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It didn't take long for freshman Congressman Stephen A. Douglas to see the truth of Senator Thomas Hart Benton's warning: slavery attached itself to every measure that came before the U.S. Congress. Douglas wanted to expand the nation into an ocean-bound republic. Yet slavery and the violent conflicts it stirred always interfered, as it did in 1844 with his first bill to organize Nebraska. In 1848, when America acquired 550,000 square miles after the Mexican War, the fight began over whether the territory would be free or slave. Henry Clay, a slave owner who favored gradual emancipation, packaged territorial bills from Douglas's committee with four others. But Clay's "Omnibus Bill" failed. Exhausted, he left the Senate, leaving Douglas in control. Within two weeks, Douglas won passage of all eight bills, and President Millard Fillmore signed the Compromise of 1850. It was Douglas's greatest legislative achievement. This book, a sequel to the author's Stephen A. Douglas: The Political Apprenticeship, 1833-1843, fully details Douglas's early congressional career. The text chronicles how Douglas moved the issue of slavery from Congress to the ballot box.
BIOG Johannsen's 1983 biography won the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians. Though most know Douglas for his famous debates with Abraham Lincoln, Johannsen reveals him to be one of the most powerful and formidable politicians of his time. This edition contains a new introduction.-
This thematic biography demonstrates how Stephen Douglas's path from a conflicted youth in Vermont to dim prospects in New York to overnight stardom in Illinois led to his identification with the Democratic Party and his belief that the federal government should respect the diversity of states and territories. His relationships with his mother, sister, teachers, brothers-in-law, other men and two wives are explored in depth. When he conducted the first cross-country campaign by a presidential candidate in American history, few among the hundreds of thousands that saw him in 1860 knew that his wife and he had just lost their infant daughter or that Douglas controlled a large Mississippi slave plantation. His story illuminates the gap between democracy then and today. The book draws on a variety of previously unexamined sources.
Chronicles the 1850s appeals of Western territories to join the Union as slave or free states, profiling period balances in the Senate, Henry Clay's attempts at compromise, and the border crisis between New Mexico and Texas.
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Today Stephen A. Douglas is mostly remembered as the man who debated Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln-Douglas debates during the Senate election in 1858, but when this biography of Douglas was written ahead of the 1860 presidential election, Douglas was still arguably the most prominent politician in America. Like most campaign literature, this is a glowing account of Douglas' life and work, and something most people today would be unfamiliar with. It's a particularly interesting read for anyone interested in Lincoln, the Civil War, the issue of slavery, and those who want to better understand the mindset of 19th century Americans.
From the two-time winner of the prestigious Lincoln Prize, a stirring and surprising account of the debates that made Lincoln a national figure and defined the slavery issue that would bring the country to war. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln was known as a successful Illinois lawyer who had achieved some prominence in state politics as a leader in the new Republican Party. Two years later, he was elected president and was on his way to becoming the greatest chief executive in American history. What carried this one-term congressman from obscurity to fame was the campaign he mounted for the United States Senate against the country’s most formidable politician, Stephen A. Douglas, in the summer an...
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