Stephen A. Douglas
Illinois Little Giant who authored the Kansas-Nebraska Act and debated Lincoln in 1858.
Overview
Douglas arrived in the Senate at 34 and served from 1847 until his death in 1861. He steered the Compromise of 1850 to passage by breaking it into separate bills, then authored the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, applying popular sovereignty to the territories and repealing the Missouri Compromise line, which ignited bloody conflict in Kansas and reshaped the party system. His 1858 re-election debates with Abraham Lincoln made both men famous. Douglas won that seat but lost the 1860 presidency to Lincoln, then backed the Union before dying weeks into the Civil War.
Related Topics
Henry Clay
Elected Speaker on his first day in the House in 1811, Clay transformed the office into a position of real power, stacking committ...
Daniel Webster
Webster served New Hampshire and then Massachusetts in both chambers across four decades, from 1827 to 1841 and 1845 to 1850 in th...
John C. Calhoun
Calhoun served as representative, Secretary of War, Vice President under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, Senator from 1832 t...
John Quincy Adams
Defeated for re-election in 1828, Adams shocked observers by winning election to the House in 1830, where he served from 1831 unti...