Stephen A. Douglas

Stephen Arnold Douglas ( born April 23 1813 in Brandon, Rutland County, Vermont, † June 3, 1861 in Chicago, Illinois ) was an American politician and presidential candidate in 1860, He also represented the State of Illinois in both chambers of Congress..

Life

His father, a doctor, died in the year when Stephen Douglas was born. He grew up to the age of 14 with his uncle before this married and he had to make from now on for his own livelihood itself. Douglas began an apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker in Middlebury and then studied law.

In 1833 he settled in Winchester ( Illinois) and opened a school, which allowed him the means to continue his legal studies began there. In March 1834 he was admitted to the bar and got a job as a trustee of the Supreme Court of Illinois. From 1835, he worked as a prosecutor. From 1836 to 1837 he sat in the House of Representatives from Illinois; Furthermore, he worked for the Land Office in Springfield.

Took place after a first unsuccessful candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1838, shortly after the appointment to the government of Illinois as Secretary of State; moreover, he was elected judge of the Supreme Court of the State. In 1842 he then won the election for members of Congress, and he belonged to the House of Representatives on 4 March 1843 to 3 March 1847. He resigned after the draw it had succeeded in the U.S. Senate, where he served in the sequence until his death. As an energetic and fiery speaker, he took in the Senate an influential position. He pursued the conquest of Texas and the Mexican-American War, England also impressed upon the rights of the United States on the Oregongebiet with great determination claims and was Chairman and Rapporteur of a committee that worked to expand the territory of the United States of America to the west and new admit states into the Union. Due to its small body size and his energetic appearance he was nicknamed Little Giant.

On the question about slavery decided standing on the side of the southern states and the Democratic Party, he applied in 1852 for the Democratic presidential nomination, but Franklin Pierce had to concede defeat. In January 1854, he laid before Congress the Kansas - Nebraska Act, has been proposed in to create the two new states of Kansas and Nebraska, where the decision of the question of slavery of the people should be left. The Kansas - Nebraska Act went through in a modified form, and after fierce debates on 31 May. James Buchanan, he was defeated as a presidential candidate of the Democrats in 1856, tried to impose a constitution, through which slavery was introduced against the will of the majority of the people of Kansas. Douglas, who was basically a defender of the autonomy of the individual States, criticized this plan and lost by the Democrats in the South of sympathy, but won the Northern States, whose help he could use well in the upcoming elections in 1860.

1860 Douglas appeared for the third time as a presidential candidate. At the Democratic National Convention in Charleston Although the majority spoke out for him, but refused the representatives of the South, exasperated by his behavior in the Kansasfrage, the majority vote of their recognition and left the meeting. Although now the Democratic delegates from the northern states in Baltimore Douglas almost unanimously nominated as a candidate of the party that the southern states remained but the present opposition and presented with John C. Breckinridge their own candidate, thus the votes of Democrats and splintered the Republican victory was caused. Although Douglas was defeated in the presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, but he stopped at the fall of the southern states loyal to the Union. From Lincoln he was appointed shortly before his death to major general in the army. Douglas died on 3 June 1861 in Chicago from typhoid fever.

See also: → Lincoln -Douglas debates # literature

Honor

According to Stephen A. Douglas several counties were named in the U.S.:

• Douglas County ( Washington)
• Douglas County ( Oregon)
• Douglas County ( Colorado)

The cities of Douglas, Ga. and Douglas in Wyoming were named in his honor.