The adage “Politics makes strange bedfellows” is adapted from a William Shakespeare play, “The Tempest”: “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”
Illinois politicians Abraham Lincoln and Steven Douglas were intense political rivals for 20 years, and author Edward Robert McClelland provides a front row seat to their legendary encounters in his impassioned book, “Chorus of the Union: How Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas Set Aside Their Rivalry to Save the Nation.”
When Opposites Attract
Abraham Lincoln and Steven Douglas couldn’t have been more different. Lincoln had little formal education, Douglas was well educated. Lincoln was self-deprecating and unassuming, Douglas was bombastic and fiery. While Lincoln had a high-pitched and grating voice, Douglas had a resonant, bass voice. Lincoln was tall and gaunt, and Douglas was short and barrel chested. Even their temperaments were opposites: Lincoln was often melancholy and introverted, while Douglas was jovial and an extrovert.Politically, Lincoln and Douglas blended like oil and water. It was the issue of slavery where the two were at loggerheads their entire careers. Douglas’s passionate advocacy for a transcontinental railroad coupled with his clear desire for the presidency left him appeasing slavery supporters throughout much of his political career. On the other hand, Lincoln viewed slavery through a moral lens, brooding over the rights of blacks but simultaneously reluctant to antagonize Southerners by forcing them to give up their slaves.
“I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any abolitionist,” Lincoln declared in an 1858 speech when running against Douglas for a U.S. Senate seat. He went on to point out in that Chicago speech that if the Founders had intended slavery to expand and flourish, why did they ban it in the Northwest Territories? Why had they set 1808 as the end of the African Slave Trade?
Douglas believed that each state and territory ought to regulate its own institutions, a concept known as popular sovereignty. Mr. McClelland notes that Northern Democrats like Douglas forbade slavery in their own states, but feared that freeing the slaves in the Southern states would flood the Northern states with cheap labor, undercutting many of constituents’ wages.
Shadowing the ‘Little Giant’ and Seven Famous Debates
Mr. McClelland’s painstaking research breathes life into the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates between August and October of 1858. The author takes the reader behind the scenes of that intense Senate campaign where Republican candidate Lincoln and Democrat incumbent Douglas traveled over 4,000 miles around Illinois arguing about slavery, abolitionism, and what role the federal government should have over states and territories like New Mexico, Kansas, and Nebraska.Douglas possessed a significant advantage over the humble railroad lawyer from Springfield, Illinois, as both an incumbent and nationally recognized figure. The author shows readers in an early chapter how Lincoln “shadowed” Douglas around Illinois before debates, siphoning off the larger audiences his opponent attracted to present his more moderate approach towards slavery.
United They Stood
Douglas was a shrewd tactician who played the game of politics like a chess master. However, he was also a realist and a patriot. When he saw that the presidency had eluded his grasp and watched his longtime nemesis confronting a hostile challenge from the South at the outset of his presidency, Douglas offered to do what he could to help preserve the Union.“We must fight for our country and forget all differences,” the author writes of Douglas’s response when questioned what could be done after the attack on Fort Sumter. “There can be but two parties—the party of patriots or traitors. We belong to the first.”
In another anecdote, Mr. McClelland quotes Douglas when asked if he would support Lincoln’s war policy: “I deprecate war, but if it must come I am with my country and for my country, under all circumstances, and in every contingency. Individual policy must be subordinated to public safety.”
Douglas’s response was published in many newspapers, fulfilling his promise to support Lincoln despite their political differences.
Unfortunately, Douglas’s support for Lincoln was short-lived. The 48-year-old politician’s constant campaigning, hard drinking, and impassioned oratory caught up with him physically, and he died less than two months after the South seceded, expiring on June 3, 1861.
Many books have been written about Lincoln, but few on Stephen Douglas. Mr. McClelland should be applauded for his vivid portrayal of the Illinois legend who remains a Little Giant in the annals of American political history.
