Kansas-Nebraska Act

About the Author

Stephen Arnold Douglas was born on April 23, 1813, in Brandon, Vermont. After his father's untimely death and his mother's remarriage, young Douglas was taken to Canandaigua, New York. There he obtained his only formal education. Upon completion of his studies, Douglas headed west to the Illinois frontier, where he assumed a post as a teacher. Eager to make a name for himself, the five-foot, four-inch Douglas taught himself law and became active in local Democratic politics. His efforts bore immediate fruit, and within one year of his arrival, the young man became a state's attorney and, soon thereafter, a member of the Illinois state legislature and a justice on the Illinois Supreme Court.

In 1843 Douglas was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Four years later he assumed a seat in the Senate. Douglas, dubbed the “Little Giant” for his oratory skills and legislative acumen, led the battle for the Compromise of 1850 after poor health sidelined its author, Henry Clay. In 1854 Douglas drafted the Kansas-Nebraska bill in order to promote the construction of a northern-based transcontinental railroad. The bill's substitution of popular sovereignty for the Missouri Compromise's ban on slavery in the area initiated intense sectional tensions and doomed Douglas's presidential aspirations.

After losing the Democratic Party's nomination in 1856, Douglas returned to Illinois in 1858 to campaign against the Republican Abraham Lincoln for his Senate seat. A series of highly publicized debates between the two men highlighted the divisive nature of the slavery question. While Douglas won the election, his critique of the recent Dred Scott ruling undermined his presidential standing among southern voters. Nonetheless, Douglas succeeded in winning the nomination of the northern wing of a hopelessly divided Democratic Party in 1860 only to lose the general election to his Republican competitor (and Illinois political rival) Abraham Lincoln. As the nation slid into civil war, Douglas actively sided with the northern cause. Unfortunately, however, the Union lost his powerful voice on June 3, 1861, when he died of typhoid fever.