Stephen A. Douglas

Examples of Stephen A. Douglas in the following topics:

• The Kansas-Nebraska Act

  • The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, however, drafted by Democrat Stephen A.
  • Douglas (IL), repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and mandated that popular sovereignty would determine any new territory's slave or free status.
  • However, with the support of President Pierce, Douglas pushed the act through Congress, albeit with rigidly delineated sectional votes.
  • Franklin Pierce also grips the giant's beard as Stephen A.
  • Douglas shoves a black man down his throat.

• The Lecompton Constitution

  • In 1857, settlers in Kansas were faced with voting on a constitution that outlined a government for the territory.
  • Meanwhile, despite the controversial Dred Scott decision, Stephen Douglas and many other Northern Democrats continued their support of popular sovereignty as the final authority on the admission of slavery into new territories, while Republicans denounced any measure that would allow for the expansion of slavery.
  • In 1858, in an effort to win Northern support for the popular sovereignty argument, Douglas entered into a series of debates with Abraham Lincoln who was challenging him for the Illinois congressional seat.
  • Stephen A.
  • Douglas broke with the Democratic Party leadership over the Lecompton Constitution.

• Lincoln and Republican Victory in 1860

  • Northern Democrats nominated Stephen A.
  • Douglas of Illinois for president, but Southern Democrats responded by convening separately and nominating John C.
  • The Republicans also promised to support tariffs that protected Northern industry, a Homestead Act granting free farmland in the West to settlers, and the funding of a transcontinental railroad.
  • Douglas was the only candidate to win electoral votes in both the North and the South (in New Jersey and Missouri), but he finished last in the Electoral College.
  • Both John Bell of Tennessee (the Constitutional Union Party candidate) and Douglas had campaigned on a platform stating that they could save the Union from secession, warning Americans that a vote for Lincoln was a vote for disunion.

• Conclusion: The Increasing Inevitability of War

  • Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, won the 1852 election, serving as a testament to the sectional and organizational weaknesses in the Whig party.
  • In 1857, settlers in Kansas were faced with voting on a constitution that outlined a government for the territory.
  • In 1858, in an effort to win Northern support for the popular sovereignty argument, incumbent Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas entered into a series of debates with Abraham Lincoln, who was challenging him for the Illinois congressional seat.
  • The main theme of all seven Lincoln-Douglas debates was slavery and its expansion into the territories.
  • Northern Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas whose campaign emphasized compromise in order to prevent disunion.

• Jackson and the Democratic Party

  • The new Democratic Party became a coalition of farmers, city-dwelling laborers, and Irish Catholics.
  • The 1840s and 1850s were the heyday of a new faction of young Democrats called "Young America."
  • Led by Stephen Douglas, James K.
  • They tied internal improvements to free trade while accepting moderate tariffs as a necessary source of government revenue.
  • They supported the Independent Treasury (the Jacksonian alternative to the Second Bank of the United States) not as a scheme to quash the special privileges of the Whig monied elite, but as a device to spread prosperity to all Americans.

• The Emergence of Abraham Lincoln

  • The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858 were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, and the incumbent Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas.
  • By refusing to enact slave codes, Douglas claimed, territories could remain "free" in everything but a technical sense.
  • Indeed many historians argue that while Lincoln was opposed to the expansion of slavery, he occupied a moderate position on the subject, primarily concerned about how the institution interfered with the republican principles of the Founding Fathers rather than taking a moral stance against it.
  • On election day, Democrats won a narrow majority of seats in the Illinois General Assembly, despite getting slightly less than half the votes.
  • The legislature then re-elected Douglas.

• Bleeding Kansas

  • The resulting Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, drafted by Democrat Stephen Douglas (IL), repealed the Compromise of 1820 (which had previously closed Kansas to slaveowners) and put the Compromise of 1850 to the test.
  • The initial purpose of the Kansas–Nebraska Act was to open up many thousands of new farms and facilitate the development of a Transcontinental Railroad in the Midwest Douglas and other representatives hoped that by tagging on the popular sovereignty mandate, they could evade having to confront the slave issue in the organization of the Kansas-Nebraska territory.
  • In a matter of months, armed guerrillas were fighting each other on the Missouri-Kansas border, and the territory was faced with a near-anarchic situation.
  • For Southerners, Brooks was a hero.
  • Explain why Bleeding Kansas is considered a precursor to the Civil War

• From Gradualism to Abolition

  • Antislavery as a principle entailed far more than simple limitations on the extent of the institution of slavery.
  • However, because slavery was such a divisive national issue and largely handled on the state level instead of federally, many Northerners advocated for a policy of gradual and compensated emancipation as a means of placating proslavery Southerners.
  • Indeed, many Northern leaders married into slave-owning Southern families without any moral qualms, including Stephen Douglas (the Democratic nominee for president in 1860), John C.
  • A prominent example of this is Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly.
  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a success in the North, selling more than 300,000 copies in the first nine months of its publication, and more than a million copies by 1853.

• Whigs and Democrats

  • A primary conflict between Democrats and Whigs revolved around California's admission to the union as a free state, which would upset the sectional balance of power between free and slave states in Congress.
  • Northern Democrats, such as Stephen Douglas, believed that the slavery issue should be decided by popular sovereignty.
  • Calhoun, however, insisted that slavery was— and should remain—a national institution.
  • As a result, the Democrats became almost entirely a Southern party platform, alienating any existing Northern supporters who were largely antislavery.
  • "An Available Candidate: The One Qualification for a Whig President."

• The Second Party System

  • A turning point in American political history occurred in 1828,when Andrew Jackson was elected over the incumbent John Quincy Adams.
  • While democratic practices had been in ascendance since 1800, the year also saw the further unfolding of a democratic spirit in the United States.
  • For the first time, politics assumed a central role in voters' lives.
  • Polk, Lewis Cass, and Stephen Douglas are among the best known Democratic figures of this period.
  • In particular, the Whigs supported the supremacy of Congress over the presidency and favored a program of modernization and economic protectionism.