Part 1 (1/2)

Stephen Arnold Douglas

by William Garrott Brown

CHAPTER I

YOUTH AND THE WEST

The ten years of American history from 1850 to 1860 have a fascination second only to that of the four years which followed Indeed, unless one has a taste for reat war itself is reat debate that led up to it; whether even Gettysburg and Chickaa, the March to the Sea, the Wilderness, Appo interest than the dra party, the swift rise and the equally swift sub party, the birth of the Republican party, the disruption and overthrow of the long-doh which the country came at last to see that only the sword couldcontroversy between the North and the South

The first years of the decade were roup of statesroup Calhoun's last speech in the Senate was read at the beginning of the debate over those measures which finally took shape as the Compromise of 1850 The Compromise was the last instance of the leadershi+p of Clay The famous Seventh of March speech in defense of it was Webster's last notable oration These voices stilled, nant theme Davis and Toombs and Stephens and other well-trained Southern statesressively; Seward and Suressive anti-slavery sentiment; Cass and Buchanan maintained for a time their places as leaders in the school of compromise But from the death of Clay to the presidential election of 1860 the most resonant voice of thelas It is scarcely toothe whole period the centre of the stage was his, and his thepart In 1861, the curtain fell upon hiain for another scene, he was gone so completely that nowadays it is hard for us to understand what a place he had Three biographers writing near the time of his death were mainly concerned to explain how he carapher writing now htly esteemed by that posterity to which they confidently co once heard him speak, ont forthose swelling tones in which he rolled out his defense of popular sovereignty, and it is not ilas owes to the marvelous imitator of sounds a considerable part of such fa historical students, however seriously his deserts are questioned, there is no question of the importance of his career

He was born April 23, 1813, at Brandon, Verlas and Sarah Fisk, his wife His father, a successful physician, was doubtless of Scotch descent; but the founder of the Douglas family in America was married in Northamptonshi+re He landed on Cape Ann in 1639-40, but in 1660 he las's mother was an Arnold of Rhode Island, descended froer Willia of the colony Sarah Fisk's mother was also an Arnold, and of the saland stock, and alas died suddenly of apoplexy in July, 1813; it is said that he held the infant Stephen in his arms when he was stricken Hismade her home with a bachelor brother on a farm near Brandon, and the boy's early years were passed in an environraphy--the simplicity, the poverty, the industry, and the serious-land He was delicate, with a little bit of a body and a very large head, but quick-witted and precocious, and until he was fifteen years of age his elders periate education and a professional career

But by that time the uncle was married, and an heir was born to him

Stephen was therefore made to understand that the expense of his education could be met only from his mother's limited means He promptly resolved to learn a trade, walked fourteentown of Middlebury, and apprenticed hi two years, and afterwards, even when he had risen so high thathe should try his hand atcabinets of men, he protested that those two years were by far the happiest of his life, and that he would never willingly have exchanged his place in the Middlebury workshop for any other place whatsoever As it was, he left it because he was not strong enough for that sort of work

The following year he pursued his studies at the acadeain, and he ith her to the houa, New York, and finished his schooling at the Canandaigua Academy, which appears to have been an excellent one Meanwhile, he also read law, and showed great proficiency both in his classical and his legal studies Nothis schoolboy life It is known, however, that he had a way ofhis fellows like him, so that they of their own accord put him forward, and that he had a lively interest in politics It is said that even so early as the caanized a band of his playmates to make war on the ”coffin handbills” ith the Adaht to besmirch the military faua, four years later, he espoused the sa his fellows by his readiness and the extent of his information In the life of another ns of prolas was so soon immersed in real politics, and rose to distinction with such astounding swiftness, that his perforinning, and not merely a premonition, of his career He was only twenty, when, in June, 1833, he set forth to enter upon it

Save that he was going West, he does not seem to have had any destination clearly in mind He carried letters to certain persons in Cleveland, and stopped there to see them, and solawyer of the toho persuaded him to remain and read law in his office until a year should elapse and he could be admitted to the Ohio bar However, in less than a week he fell ill of a fever which did not leave hih e he was too slight and delicate for Western hardshi+ps, urged hiain turned ard, resolved in his own o back without the evidences of success in his life It is doubtful if a all the thousands who in those days were constantly faring ard, froinia and the Carolinas, there ever was a youth more resolutely and boldly addressed to opportunity than he Poor, broken in health, almost diminutive in physical stature, and quite unknown, he made his way first to Cincinnati, then to Louisville, then to St Louis, in search of work Co almost to the end of his resources, he reasoned that it would be best for hiht; and guided merely by a book of travel he had read he fixed on a tohich, as it happened, bore the na noenty years and six months old, he arrived at Jacksonville, Illinois, with a suet of his, from the recollections of certain es and on river stea picture of A boy was never disood-humored

He found no work at Jacksonville, and walked to Winchester, sixteen et work as a teacher The nexta crowd assee, he pushed his way to the centre and learned that there was to be an auction of the wares of a merchant who had recently died The auctioneer was in need of a clerk to keep the record of the sales, and the place was offered to the young stranger He took it, served three days, earned six dollars, athered for the sale, and got a chance in the talk about politics to display those qualities which he never failed to display when opportunity offered--the utood-natured courtesy, and keen political instinct A school was arranged for him, and within a week he had forty pupils entered for three months A lawyer of the place befriended his to law and politics When the three months were ended, he went back to Jacksonville and opened an office March 4, 1834, he was licensed to practice, and from that time he rose faster than anythat he rose on the lines along whichtoward pro that Illinois was exceptionally full, as later years were to prove, of young , too, that there had already drifted to New Sale Kentuckian destined to such eminence that the Illinois of those years is oftenest studied now for light on him, and is most amply revealed to us in the books about hilas rose so fast it is not necessary, in order to understand hohy he rose, to study the conditions and men he had to deal with so carefully as they have done who seek to explain for us the slower progress of that strange career hich his is indissolubly associated Jacksonville, which was to be his home for a few years, was a san, one of the tealthiest and most populous counties in the State A few years earlier, that whole region had been a frontier, but the first roughness was noorn away True, the whole northern half of Illinois was practically unsettled, and Chicago was but three years old, and not yet ieneral character of the central counties was already fixed, and what folloas of the nature of growth rather than change Certain sfield, were to become cities, and certain others, like New Saleh , and manufactures were chiefly of the domestic sort But in theyouth the country was already Western, and no longer wild Western Hunting shi+rts and one out of fashi+on Thebeyond the Mississippi, and the field was open to the enterprising, the speculative, the ambitious

Enterprise and speculation were in the air, and ambition, if it took a political turn, must perforce take account of them The whole country was prosperous, and Illinois was possessed with the fever of develophout the West and the South If one exahanies during the second administration of President Jackson, by far the ory of bills will be found to deal with internal improvements, particularly railroads and canals Money, however, was needed for these things, and Illinois, like all new countries, had to look backward to older communities for capital President Jackson had but lately made his final assault upon the National Bank, the principal dispenser of capital, by the removal of the deposits, and public opinion was las opened his law office and began to discuss public questions with his neighbors While he still lived at Winchester, he had helped to get subscribers for a Democratic newspaper at Jacksonville, and he soon called upon the editor, as first surprised at his visitor's youthful appearance and then, as he hith of his mind, the develope of the political history of his country”

Boy as he looked, and boy as he was, for he had not yet passed his twenty-first birthday, Douglas actually got the leadershi+p of the Jackson party in that neighborhood before he had lived there a month An enthusiastic supporter of the President's policy on the bank question, he talked about theto the Western and Southern custom, the country people flocked into town, that he was put forward toof Democrats which he and his friend, the editor, had contrived to bring about There was a great crowd Josiah Lamborn, an orator of solas replied in an hour's speech, discomfited Lamborn, and so swept his audience that they seized upon him and bore him on their shoulders out of the room and around the public square He was the ”Little Giant” from that day, and the speech became a Democratic tradition Of course, in after years, the men who could say they heard it could not be expected to admit that he ever made a better speech in his life

Within a year, he was so well known that he was chosen to the office of public prosecutor, or district attorney, of the first judicial circuit, the most important in Illinois, and his successful candidacy for the place is all the islature, and not by his neighbors of the circuit Moreover, his competitor, John J Hardin, was one of the fore, and that by this tis and Jackson men on offices as well as measures, so that the contest was a party as well as a personal affair; but from auctioneer's clerk to district attorney was a promotion hardly to be won in a year by a youth of qualities less than extraordinary

The election was in February, 1835, and Douglas held the office the better part of two years A justice of the supreislature's choice, that the stripling could not fill the place because he was no lawyer and had no law books

Nevertheless, he was an efficient prosecutor No record of his service is available, but there was a tradition in later years that not one of his indictments was quashed Certainly, his work in the courts of the district increased his reputation and strengthened his hold on his own party In the spring of 1836, the Dean held a convention to nominate candidates for the six seats in the house of representatives to which the county was entitled This was a novel proceeding, for the system of conventions to nominate for office was not yet developed; the first of the national party conventions was held in preparation for the presidential calas was a leader in the movement, and as a result of it he hi county, but the solid front of the Des that they also abandoned the old plan of letting any number of candidates take the field and united upon a ticket with Hardin at its head No man on the Democratic ticket was a match for Hardin One of the candidates ithdrawn, therefore, and Douglas took his place, and he and Hardin canvassed the county together in a series of joint debates

Mainly through his championshi+p, the convention plan was approved, and the Dereater than the weakest Delas was continued in the legislature, where they took their seats in December, 1836

In that same house of representatives were John A McClernand, James shi+elds, William A Richardson, and otherrepresentative froainly length of body, for his habit of reasoning in parables which were now scriptural and now vulgar to the point of obscenity, and for a quaint and rare honesty He was four years older than the new las, many years later, declared that he was drawn to Lincoln by a strong syle in life Lincoln, at his first sight of Douglas, during the contest with Hardin for the attorneyshi+p, pronounced hiest me the leaders When the governor'sseverely on the President's course with the Bank, brought on a discussion of national party questions, he and Hardin seem to have won the chief honors of the debate He was appointed chairman of the Committee on Petitions, to which numerous applications for divorce were referred, and introduced a resolution which passed and which put an end to divorces by act of the legislature On the great question of the hour, the question of developht to attempt no improvement which it could not afford to construct and to own He favored a few specific enterprises and theof careful surveys and estimates before any others should be taken up But it was the very height of ”flush tiislature added millions to the vast sums in which the State was already committed to the support of canals, railroads, river improvements, and banks It was but a feeeks froreat financial panic of 1837, which crushed every one of the state-aided banks, stopped the railroad building and river dredging, and finally left Illinois burdened with an enorislature in the summer, occasioned by the depression and hard times which had followed so hard upon the flush tilas was not there to tax his associates with their unwisdom He had taken another step in his unexa froister of public lands at Springfield, the growing town in Sangaislature had just made the capital of the State, and where, within a few years, shi+elds, McClernand, Lincoln, and other rising young las and Lincoln knew each other well, for they lived together several years in an at study of one's fellows, for utter disregard of all superficial _criteria_ of character and conventional standards of conduct, there is but one sort of life to be compared with the life of a Southern or Western town, and that is the life of students in a boarding-school or a se In such communities there is little division into classes, as of rich and poor, educated and illiterate, well and obscurely born On the steps of the court-house, in the post-office while the dailystore on Sundays, in lawyers' offices, on the curbstone,--wherever a group of men is assembled,--there is the freest talk on every possible subject; and the lives of men are open to their fellows as they cannot be in cities by reason of the mass or in country districts by reason of the solitude and the shyness which solitude breeds Against Douglas there was the presuoes southward or ard has to live down, that he would in some measure hold himself aloof from his fellows But the prejudice was quickly dispelled No man entered more readily into close personal relations homsoever he encountered In all our accounts of him he is represented as surrounded with intinity and seriousness of purpose, we nevertheless hear of hi a recess of the court; dancing from end to end of a dinner-table with the volatile shi+elds--the same on laurels in the Mexican War, a seat in the United States Senate, and the closest approach anybody ever won to victory in battle over Stonewall Jackson; and engaging, despite his height of five feet and his weight of a hundred pounds, in personal encounters with Stuart, Lincoln's athletic law partner, and a corpulent attorney naood-huroup of uncommonly resourceful men, and he passed them all in the race for advancee as it seems, was his successful rival in a love affair, but otherwise Douglas left Lincoln far behind Buoyant, good-natured, never easily abashed, his maturity and _savoir faire_ were accentuated by the smallness of his stature His blue eyes and his dark, abundant hair heightened his physical charm of boyishness; his virile , and his well-forave him an aspect of intellectual power He had a truly Napoleonic trick of attaching men to his fortunes He was a born leader, beyond question; and he himself does not seeonized over the choice of a path and the responsibilities of leadershi+p Principles he had--the principles of Jefferson and Jackson as he understood them These, apparently, he held sufficient for every probleency of political life

He believed in party organization quite as firmly as he believed in party principles, and in the su up the h which the Illinois Deoverned themselves ever since He defended Van Buren's plan of a sub-treasury when many even of those who had supported Jackson's financial measures wavered in the face of the disfavor into which hard tih the Springfield congressional district, even before the panic, had shown a Whig majority of 3000, he accepted the Deress to be filled at the election in August, 1838, and threw himself with the utest in the whole country, for it included all the northern counties of the State His opponent was John T Stuart, Lincoln's law partner, and for fivethe whole of the great region they aspired to represent The northern counties had been filling up with irants, and more than 36,000 votes were cast Many ballots were thrown out on technicalities; s After weeks of uncertainty, Stuart was declared elected by a majority of five The las, who at the tiressmen