Stephen A. Douglas summary

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Stephen A. Douglas, (born April 23, 1813, Brandon, Vt., U.S.—died June 3, 1861, Chicago, Ill.), U.S. politician. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (1843–47) and Senate (1847–61), where he strongly supported the Union and national expansion. To settle the bitter dispute over the extension of slavery to the territories, he developed the policy of popular sovereignty. He was influential in the passage of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Short and heavyset, he was dubbed “the Little Giant” for his oratorical skill. In 1858 he engaged in a number of widely publicized debates with Abraham Lincoln in a close contest for the Senate seat in Illinois (see Lincoln-Douglas Debates). The Democrats nominated Douglas for president in 1860, but a splinter group of Southerners nominated John C. Breckinridge, which divided the Democratic vote and gave the presidency to Lincoln. In 1861 he undertook a mission for Lincoln to gain support for the Union among the Southern border states and in the Northwest. His untimely death of typhoid was partly a result of these exertions.

Democratic Party Summary

Democratic Party, in the United States, one of the two major political parties, the other being the Republican Party. The Democratic Party has changed significantly during its more than two centuries of existence. During the 19th century the party supported or tolerated slavery, and it opposed

Compromise of 1850 Summary

Compromise of 1850, in U.S. history, a series of measures proposed by the “great compromiser,” Sen. Henry Clay of Kentucky, and passed by the U.S. Congress in an effort to settle several outstanding slavery issues and to avert the threat of dissolution of the Union. The crisis arose from the

Lincoln-Douglas debates Summary

Lincoln-Douglas debates, series of seven debates between the Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas and Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Illinois senatorial campaign, largely concerning the issue of slavery extension into the territories. The slavery extension question had

government Summary

Government, the political system by which a country or community is administered and regulated. Most of the key words commonly used to describe governments—words such as monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy—are of Greek or Roman origin. They have been current for more than 2,000 years and have not