STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS

Born in Vermont, 1813. Went to Illinois, 1834. Member of the Illinois legislature, 1836-1838. Judge of the supreme court of Illinois, 1841-1843. Member of House of Representatives, 1843-1846. Senator, 1846-1861. Candidate for nomination for President, 1852, 1856. Candidate for President, 1860. Strongest supporter of the doctrine of "Popular Sovereignty." Author of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 1854. Opponent of admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution, 1858. Series of debates with Lincoln, 1858. Died, 1860.

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CHAPTER VII

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

OUGLAS belonged to the same genera

tion as Sumner, Seward, Chase, and Lincoln. Like them he is best known by the part he took in the great slavery struggle; but, unlike them, he was an opponent of the agitation of the subject, and bitterly opposed to the abolitionists. Douglas was born in New England, and educated in its limits. At the age of twenty he gave up his ambition for a college course, although he was well prepared in the classics and mathematics, and turned to the study of law. He, like nearly all this group of great men, came from the ranks of the middle class, and from the farm.

Before he was twenty-one he started west, and at length arrived in Illinois with less than one dollar in his pocket. However, in less than ten years he was one of the leaders of the Democratic party in the state, with a reputation that already extended beyond its borders.

The following extracts illustrate some phases of his life; but, as in the cases of the other men of whom we have studied, the picture is too brief to give more than an outline of his career and labors.

Douglas defends the act of Jackson in suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus, at New Orleans, in the war of 1812, in these words:

They have been pleased to stigmatize this act of justice to the distinguished patriot and hero as a humbug --a party trick-a political movement, intended to operate upon the next Presidential election. These imputations are as unfounded as they are uncourteous, and I hurl them back upon any man who is capable of harboring,

such a sentiment.

A question involving the right of a country to use the means necessary to its defense is too vitally important to be yielded without an inquiry into the nature and source of the fatal restriction which is to deprive a nation of the power of self-preservation. The proposition contended for by the Opposition is, that the general in command, to whose protection are committed the country, and the lives, property and liberties of the citizens within his district, may not declare martial law when it is ascertained that its exercise, and it alone, can save all from total destruction. For one, I maintain that in the exercise of this power, General Jackson did not violate the Constitution, nor assume to himself any authority which was not fully authorized and legalized by his position, his duty and the unavoidable necessity of the case. He had a right to declare martial law when it was ascertained and acknowledged that nothing but martial law would enable him to defend the city and the country.

It does not imply the right to suspend the laws and civil tribunals at pleasure. The right grows out of the necessity; and when the necessity fails, the right ceases. There are exigencies in the history of nations as well as individuals when necessity becomes the paramount law to which all other considerations must yield. It is that first great law of nature, which authorizes a man to defend his life, . . . by every means in his power. . . Does the man live who will have the hardihood to question his patriotism, his honesty, the purity of his motives in every act he performed, and every power he exercised on that trying occasion? While none dare impeach his motives, they tell us he assumed almost unlimited power.

I commend him for it; the exigency required it. I admire that elevation of soul which rises above all personal consideration, and, regardless of consequences,

stakes life, and honor, and glory upon the issue, when the salvation of the country depends upon the result.— Speech of Douglas, Jan. 7, 1844, Cong. Globe, Cited in Sheahan's Life of Douglas, pp. 61, 62, 63, 69.

The Mexican War:

My object (said he) is to vindicate our government and country from the aspersions and calumnies which have been cast upon them in connection with the causes which have led to the existing war with Mexico. I prefer to meet and repel those charges at once, and to demonstrate, so far as my feeble abilities will enable me to do so, that our government has not been in the wrong, and Mexico in the right, in the origin and progress of the pending controversy. They profess great anxiety for the triumph of our arms, but they denounce the war-the cause in which our country is engaged-as "unholy, unrighteous, and damnable".

Not only have we never done an act of an unfriendly character toward Mexico, but I confidently assert that, from the very moment of the existence of the republic, we have allowed to pass unimproved no opportunity of doing Mexico an act of kindness. I will not now enumerate the acts of that character. . . . If this

government choose to forget them, I will not recall them. While such has been our course to Mexico, it is with pain I am forced to say that the open violation of the rights of American citizens by the authorities of Mexico have been greater for the last fifteen years than those of all the governments of Christendom united; and yet we have left the redress of all these multiplied and accumulated wrongs to friendly negotiations, without having ever intimated a disposition to resort to force.

They express great sympathy for Mexico; profess to regard her an injured and persecuted nation— the victim of American injustice and aggression. They have no sympathy for the widows and orphans whose husbands and fathers have been robbed and murdered by the Mexican authorities; no sympathy with our countrymen who have dragged out miserable lives within the walls of her dungeons, without crime and without trial; no indignation at the outrages upon

our commerce and shipping, and the insults to our national flag; no resentment at the violation of treaties and the invasion of our territory.

I

wil now proceed to examine the arguments by which the gentleman from Ohio, pretends to justify their foreign sympathies. They assume that the Rio del Norte was not the boundary line between Texas and Mexico.

I must, therefore, be permitted to adhere to my original position that the treaty of peace and the boundaries [agreed upon] between Santa Ana and the Texan government in May, 1836, was binding on the Mexican nation, it having been executed by the government de facto for the time being.

. Mr. Adams. Has not the treaty with Santa Ana been since discarded by the Mexican government?

Mr. Douglas. I presume it has, for I am not aware of any treaty or compact which that government ever entered into that she did not afterwards either violate or repudiate.

I am not now to be diverted from the real point in controversy by a discussion of the question whether the Rio del Norte was the boundary to its source. My present object is to repel the calumnies which have been urged against our government, to place our country in the right and the enemy in the wrong, before the civilized world, according to the truth and justice of the case. I have exposed these calumnies by refer

ence to the acts and admissions of our accusers. I have shown that Texas always claimed the Rio del Norte as her boundary during the existence of the republic, and that Mexico on several occasions recog-' nized it as such in the most solemn and direct manner.

All is wrong in their eyes. Their country is always wrong, and its enemies right. It has ever been so. It was so in the last war with Great Britain. Then it was unbecoming a moral and religious people to rejoice at the success of American arms. We were wrong, in their estimation, in the French Indemnity case, in the Frorida war, in all the Indian wars, and now in the Mexican war. I despair of ever seeing my country again in the right, if they [the Whigs] are to