Stephen Douglas

Stephen Arnold Douglas (April 23, 1813 - June 3, 1861) was a politician in the United States in the period leading up to the American Civil War. A Democrat, Douglas's career closely coincided with that of Abraham Lincoln (a Whig, later a Republican), and the two were lifelong rivals. They ran against one another in elections for a wide variety of elected offices and even competed for the hand of Mary Todd.

In 1860, Douglas lost the Presidential election to Lincoln when the Southern wing of the Democratic Party refused to support him as the national nominee in punishment for his rejection of Scott v Stanford and split the Democratic vote along regional lines with the Southern Democrats choosing Vice President John Breckinridge.

Douglas urged the South to accept the result of the election and denounced secession as criminal. He promised to support Lincoln during the American Civil War, ensuring that the war would be a bipartisan effort.

Douglas died of typhoid  on June 3, 1861, about a month and a half after the Civil War began. As this is before the point of divergence in most Turtledove timelines relating to that war, he does not appear in any of the author's stories, but is mentioned frequently in significant contexts.

Stephen Douglas in Joe Steele
When the 1932 Democratic convention saw a deadlock between New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt and California Representative Joe Steele, Charlie Sullivan was reminded that the two-thirds rule had fractured the Democratic Party in 1860 when Stephen Douglas couldn't get over that hump.

Stephen Douglas in Southern Victory
In later generations, many Americans believed Stephen Douglas to have been a reasonable man who could have prevented the War of Secession had he won the 1860 election. However, this position is extremely problematic given the political conditions of the time and Douglas's own record for acquiescing to Southern interests.

Douglas was not so well-regarded among his contemporaries. For instance, when Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were debating Lincoln's intent to revise the platform of the Republican Party, Lincoln quipped that after all these years he was once again in "a Lincoln-Douglass debate," in reference to his long-ago 1858 Senatorial debate against his rival in which he forced Douglas to choose between maintaining his advocacy in popular sovereignty and supporting the Supreme Court's recent Scot v Sanford decision, thus ensuring that his upcoming Presidential run would fracture the Democratic Party along regional lines and open the door for a Republican victory.

For his part, Douglass testily informed Lincoln that he did not appreciate being compared to Douglas.

One Ohio family named their son Stephen Douglas Martin after the Little Giant whom they admired.

Stephen Douglas in "Lee at the Alamo"
In the face of Benjamin McCulloch's appeals to Robert E. Lee's Southern identity to support the right of Texas to secede from the Union before the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President, Lee privately reflected that he would have preferred for any of Lincoln's three opponents (Stephen Douglas, John Breckinridge, or John Bell) to have won the election. Nevertheless, he was determined to perform his duty to the United States government no matter who headed it.

Literary note
None of the three losing candidates' names are used in this story.

Stephen Douglas in The Disunited States of America
Stephen Douglas was a prominent figure in an alternate where the United States fell apart during the early 1800s. When Beckie Royer suggested that Justin Monroe acted as if he'd never heard of the rounders player George Herman, Ted Snodgrass cited Stephen Douglas as a person, like Herman, that everyone had heard of.

Literary comment
As no details are given, it is not clear whether this Stephen Douglas has any connection to the historical Little Giant. He is included in this article for convenience.

Stephen Douglas in The Two Georges
During Stephen Douglas' tenure as Governor-General of the North American Union, the NAU expanded its borders past the Rocky Mountains. Colonel Thomas Bushell of the Royal American Mounted Police considered Douglas to be "short" and "roly-poly." In 1995, his portrait was one of a number of former Governors-General hung in America's Number 10, the Governor-General's residence in Victoria.