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Stephen Douglas : The Last Years, 1857–1861 by Damon Wells is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Stephen Douglas : The Last Years, 1857–1861 about?

Stephen Douglas and the old Union lived out their last years together. It was the most critical time in the life of both the Illinois senator and his country. During most of the period 1857–1861 the American nation could still choose between adjustment of its sectional differences and civil war, and the man they called the Little Giant seemed the one statesman most likely to lead the country onto a course of compromise and reconciliation. But Douglas'intense involvement with the American political scene—his great accomplishments in enacting the Compromises of 1850 and 1854, and his victory in the senatorial campaign of 1858—tended at times to disguise a growing alienation from the mainstream of American political life. By 1857 that alienation had reached acute proportions. In part, Douglas fell victim to his own virtues. He sought to be a nationalist in an age of sectionalism; he preached the value of compromise when most Americans questioned its worth. In other respects, Douglas'political failures are less excusable. His attempt to convert an apparently amoral attitude toward slavery into a principle—popular sovereignty—found him dismissed by antislavery citizens as immoral and by

Author

Damon Wells

Publisher

Austin, University of Texas Press

Published

1971

Language

EN

ISBN

9780292701182

Subjects

History, Biography, Memoir