Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Jeannie Howse and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net). * * * * * +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | |Original spellings and inconsistent hyphenation have been kept,| |including the earlier spelling variant Douglass. | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS: A STUDY IN AMERICAN POLITICS By ALLEN JOHNSON PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN BOWDOIN COLLEGE; SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN IOWA COLLEGE New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1908 _All rights reserved_ * * * * * COPYRIGHT 1908 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published February 1908 THE MASON-HENRY PRESS SYRACUSE, N.Y. * * * * * To PROFESSOR JESSE MACY whose wisdom and kindliness have inspired a generation of students PREFACE To describe the career of a man who is now chiefly remembered as the rival of Abraham Lincoln, must seem to many minds a superfluous, if not invidious, undertaking. The present generation is prone to forget that when the rivals met in joint debate fifty years ago, on the prairies of Illinois, it was Senator Douglas, and not Mr. Lincoln, who was the cynosure of all observing eyes. Time has steadily lessened the prestige of the great Democratic leader, and just as steadily enhanced the fame of his Republican opponent. The following pages have been written, not as a vindication, but as an interpretation of a personality whose life spans the controversial epoch before the Civil War. It is due to the chance reader to state that the writer was born in a New England home, and bred in an anti-slavery atmosphere where the political creed of Douglas could not thrive. If this book reveals a somewhat less sectional outlook than this personal allusion suggests, the credit must be given to those generous friends in the great Middle West, who have helped the writer to interpret the spirit of that region which gave both Douglas and Lincoln to the nation.