Stephen Arnold Douglas was bornb on a farm near Brandon, Vermont, in 1813. At 20, hoping to become a lawyer, he moved to Illinois and was admitted to the bar at
Jacksonville. He became a district attorney and later a state legislator and judge of the Illinois Supreme Court. He went to the
United States House of Representatives in 1843 and entered the
United States Senate in 1847.
Douglas took the position that although Slavery might be a bad thing, it was not a reason to sacrifice the Union. He provided leadership for the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854.
When Douglas ran for re-election in 1858, his opponent was the then-little-known Abraham Lincoln. Their debates were known as the Lincoln-Douglas debates and became famous for the way the made clear the issues rending the nation.
Douglas won the senate race in 1858 and was nominated by the Democratic Party for President of the United States in 1860. However, Southern Democrats refused to support him. Two months after the fall of Fort Sumter, he died and was buried in Chicago.
