Prepared by Brett Fishburne (bfish@atlantech.net)
The Life of Stephen A. Douglas
by William Gardner
Preface.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum, (of the dead speak nothing but good),is the rule which governed the friends of Stephen A. Douglas afterhis death. "Of political foes speak nothing but ill," is the rulewhich has guided much of our discussion of him for forty years.The time has now arrived when we can study him dispassionatelyand judge him justly, when we can take his measure, if not withscientific accuracy, at least with fairness and honesty.
Where party spirit is as despotic as it is among us, it is difficultfor any man who spends his life amid the storms of politics to getjustice until the passions of his generation have been forgotten.Even then he is generally misjudged—canonized as a saint,with extravagant eulogy, by those who inherit his party name, andbranded as a traitor or a demagogue by those who wear the liveryof opposition.
Douglas has perhaps suffered more from this method of dealing withour political heroes than any other American statesman of the firstclass. He died at the opening of the Civil War. It proved to bea revolution which wrought deep changes in the character of thepeople. It was the beginning of a new era in our national life.We are in constant danger of missing the real worth of men in theseante-bellum years because their modes of thought and feeling werenot those of this generation.
The Civil War, with its storm of passion, banished from our mindsthe great men and gigantic struggles of the preceding decade. Weturned with scornful impatience from the pitiful and abortivecompromises of those times, the puerile attempts to cure by futileplasters the cancer that was eating the vitals of the nation. Wehastily concluded that men who belonged to the party of JeffersonDavis and Judah P. Benjamin during those critical years were ofdoubtful loyalty and questionable patriotism, that men who battledwith Lincoln, Seward and Chase could hardly be true-heartedlovers of their country. Douglas died too soon to make clear to apassion-stirred world that he was as warmly attached to the Union,as intensely loyal, as devotedly patriotic, as Lincoln himself.
The grave questions arising from the War, which disturbed our politicsfor twenty years, the great economic questions which have agitatedus for the past fifteen years, bear slight relation to those darkproblems with which Douglas and his contemporaries grappled. Hewas on the wrong side of many struggles preliminary to the War.He was not a profound student of political economy, hence is notan authority for any party in the perplexing questions of recenttimes. The result is that the greatest political leader of themost momentous decade of our history is less known to us than anysecond-rate hero of the Revolution.
It is not of much importance now to any one whether Douglas is lovedor hated, admired or despised. It is of some importance that hebe understood.
I have derived this narrative mainly from original sources. Thebiography written during his life-time by his friend Sheahan, andthat published two years after his death by his admirer, Flint,are chiefly drawn on for the brief account of his early life.The history of his career in Congress has been gathered from theCongressional record; the account of Conventions from contemporaryreports, and the Debates with Lincoln from the authorized publication.
I have not consciously taken any liberty with any text quoted,except to omit superfluous words, which omissions are indicated byast