LIFE AND SPEECHES

OF

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

THE object of the author of this book is to present to the people of the United States a truthful delineation of the character and qualities of the greatest American statesman now living.

The public life of Mr. Douglas naturally divides itself into five periods. The first, from his entrance into Congress in 1843, to the close of the war against Mexico, in 1848. Second, from the close of the Mexican War to the passage of the Compromise measures of 1850. Third, from the passage of the Compromise of 1850, to the passage of the Nebraska Bill in 1854. Fourth, from the passage of the Nebraska Bill, to the third election of Mr. Douglas to the Senate, in the fall of 1858. Fifth, from the commencement of his third Senato rial term, in March, 1859, to the meeting of the Charleston Convention in April, 1860.

During the first period, Mr. Douglas appears among the most active and influential friends of the re-annexation of

Texas to the United States, and causes to be run through Texas the Missouri Compromise line of 36° 30'; and when the war with Mexico breaks out, he is found among the ablest supporters of the administration, and one of the foremost of our statesmen in upholding the honor of our flag and in prosecuting the war with a vigor and prudence that led to an honorable and satisfactory peace. In this period, too, Mr. Douglas is seen endeavoring to carry out in good faith the principles of the Missouri Compromise, by extending the line of 36° 30' westward through our acquisitions from Mexico to the Pacific Ocean; in which attempt he was frustrated by northern Freesoilers.

GREAT MEASURES OF MR. DOUGLAS.

The second period was one of the most important in the whole life of Mr. Douglas. He is seen at this time, shaping and molding for the territories of the United States, those institutions of government upon which his fame as a statesman rests, and upon which depend the happiness of millions of American citizens, and the prosperity of a dozen new States. In treating of this period of the life of Mr. Douglas, I have shown that he is the real author of the Compromise measures of 1850, so generally attributed to Henry. Clay. In this period, too, we see Mr. Douglas coming home to his constituents, and in the presence of an infuriated mob, proclaiming the propriety and expediency of those measures with such matchless eloquence, that the voices of faction and fanaticism were hushed, and the citizens of Chicago passed resolutions declaring their adherence to those very measures which they had the day before denounced.

Toward the close of the third period, we see Mr. Douglas bringing forward the details of his great plan for the government of the territories, in the shape of the Kansas and

Nebraska bills; explaining and elucidating the principles upon which they are based, and urging their adoption by Congress. And when these measures were passed, we see him coming home to a constituency that refused to hear him vindicate their justice and propriety.

During the fourth period, we see the evils that resulted in Kansas, from attempts to evade or disregard the principles of the Nebraska Bill. We see the President of the United States exerting the whole strength of his administration in attempting to force a constitution repugnant to their wishes on the people of Kansas; and Mr. Douglas energetically and with all his might resisting the tyrannical proceeding, and vindicating the right of the people of the territories in all time to come, to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way. When the British also, in 1858, attacked no less than thirty-three of our vessels in the space of four weeks, and when the Senate were about to pass the customary resolutions, declaring that such acts were very annoying tc the United States, and ought not to be committed, we see Mr. Douglas urging upon Congress the instant adoption of such energetic measures on our part as should compel Great Britain not only to cease such outrages in future, but also to make reparation for those she had committed.

THE RETURN FROM ELBA."

During this period also, we see the great campaign in the autumn of 1858, the election of a senator from Illinois for the next six years, the gallant stand made by Mr. Douglas, and the unscrupulous efforts made by federal officials and Abolitionists to crush him. Like Napoleon on his return from Elba, Mr. Douglas, on his return to Illinois, inspired his numerous friends with unbounded enthusiasm. We see the momentous struggle between Mr. Douglas and the

Democratic party on the one side, and the allied forces of the Republicans, Abolitionists, and office-holders on the other. We see the battles and skirmishes of the campaign; in every engagement, we see the utter discomfiture of the unholy alliance, and the triumph of the right-and always, in the forefront of the battle, we hear the clarion voice of the great leader of the democracy. Finally, we see his victory over all his enemies, and witness his triumphant return to the Senate, bearing high aloft the glorious banner of the Democracy, unstained and untarnished.

During the last period, we see the hostility of the Executive manifested in the removal of Mr. Douglas from the chairmanship of the Committee on Territories; the war of the pamphlets; the Senate proceedings following the horrible plot of John Brown; and the ridiculous attempt on the part of a few senators to make a platform for the Charleston Convention entirely incompatible with the known principles of Mr. Douglas. We see the uprising of the people all over the nation in favor of Mr. Douglas for the Presidency, the proceedings of the several State conventions, and their unanimity in designating Mr. Douglas as their chcice above all other men. Finally, we see the meeting of the Charleston Convention; and we may reasonably hope to see the nomination of Judge Douglas for the Presidency, and his triumphant election.

PERSONAL APPEARANCE.

The Rev. Wm. H. Milburn, the blind preacher, in his interesting book, "Ten Years of Preacher Life," gives the following graphic sketch of his impressions of Mr. Douglas:

"The first time I saw Mr. Douglas was in June, 1888, standing on the gallery of the Market House, which some of my readers may recollect as situate in the middle of the square of Jacksonville. He and Colonel John J. Hardin were engaged in canvassing Morgan County for Congress. He

was upon the threshold of that great world in which he has since played so prominent a part, and was engaged in making one of his earliest stump speeches. I stood and listened to him, surrounded by a motley crowd of backwood farmers and hunters, dressed in homespun or deerskin, my boyish breast glowing with exultant joy, as he, only ten years my senior, battled so bravely for the doctrines of his party with the veteran and accomplished Hardin. True, I had been educated in political sentiments opposite to his own, but there was something captivating in his manly straightforwardness and uncompromising statement of his political principles. He even then showed signs of that dexterity in debate, and vehement, impressive declamation, of which he has since become such a master. He gave the crowd the color of his own mood as he interpreted their thoughts and directed their sensibilities. His first-hand knowledge of the people, and his power to speak to them in their own language, employing arguments suited to their comprehension, sometimes clinching a series of reasons by a frontier metaphor which refused to be forgotten, and his determined courage, which never shrank from any form of difficulty or danger, made him one of the most effective stump-orators I have ever heard. "Less than four years before, he had walked into the town of Winchester, sixteen miles southwest of Jacksonville, an entire stranger, with thirty-seven and a half cents in his pocket, his all of earthly fortune. His first employment was as clerk of a 'Vandu,' as the natives call a sheriff's sale. He then seized the birch of the pedagogue, and sought by its aid and by patient drilling, to initiate a handful of half-wild boys into the sublime mysteries of Lindley Murray. His evenings were divided between reading newspapers, studying Blackstone, and talking politics. He, before long, by virtue of his indomitable energy, acquired enough of legal lore to pass an examination, and 'to stick up his shingle,' as they call putting up a lawyer's sign. And now began a series of official employments, by which he has mounted within five and twenty years, from the obscurity of a village pedagogue on the borders of civilization, to his present illustrious and commanding position. In the twelve or thirteen years that had elapsed from the time of his entering the State, a friendless, penniless youth, he has served his fellow-citizens in almost every official capacity, and entered the highest position within their power to confer.

"No man, since the days of Andrew Jackson, has gained a stronger hold upon the confidence and attachment of his adherents, or exercised a more dominating authority over the masses of his party than Judge Douglas. Whether upon the stump, in the caucus, or the Senate, his power and success in debate are prodigious. His instincts stand him in the stead of imagination, and amount to genius.