STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS
AND THE
AMERICAN UNION
3. Douglas in the Senate
After three years in the House of Representatives, Douglas was eager to move on to the Senate. By 1846, his base in the Illinois state legislature was strong enough to secure his election by a vote of 100 to 45. Douglas took his seat in the Senate, and when the 30th Congress was organized in December 1847, he was made chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories.
To the irritation of some of his Senate colleagues, Douglas interpreted the charge of his committee in the broadest possible terms. Territorial matters, in his view, included every aspect of national policy for western lands, from the courts and post office to military posts and legislative powers. His goal was to ensure the most rapid and effective organization of territorial governments so that American political institutions could be solidly planted in the undeveloped western expanse.
Yet slavery made political agreement on territorial settlement increasingly difficult to secure. Northern anti-slavery activists feared that slavery would be allowed to expand west and north across the trans-Mississippi territories. Angry and defensive Southerners felt that their slave-based way of life was coming under growing attack from the federal government.
In the face of these growing antagonisms, Douglas attempted to maintain a position on slavery that was carefully balanced to avoid favoring either the North or South. The first great test of Douglas's centrist position came in the crafting of the Compromise of 1850, a patchwork of five separate pieces of legislation: California was admitted as a free state and the slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia, both victories for the North; New Mexico and Utah territories were organized without any prohibition of slavery and a rigid fugitive slave law was enacted, measures welcome to the South; Texas was also forced to give up much of its western land claims in return for ten million dollars. Although usually credited to Henry Clay, the Compromise of 1850 in fact owed more to the deft political skills Douglas employed in weeks of exhausting negotiations.
While the Compromise made Douglas a force to be reckoned with in the Senate, it unleashed a torrent of criticism across the North, including Illinois. The Chicago city council denounced the Compromise and excused police and citizens from enforcing it. Douglas rushed back to Illinois to defend the Compromise and the fugitive slave law and was able to persuade the city council to reverse itself. He also secured formal approval for his actions from the Illinois legislature. But the intensity of anger in Douglas's own state revealed the extent to which slavery was becoming a moral issue.
One reason Douglas could command the attention of even the most hostile Illinois audience was his record of diligent work on behalf of his home state and the city of Chicago. The passage of the Illinois Central Railroad bill in 1850 culminated years of speculation and planning for a rail link down the Mississippi valley. When Douglas entered the discussions, the main line of the Illinois Central was intended to run from Centralia, Illinois, south to the Gulf of Mexico. Douglas added provision for a "branch" line from Centralia to Chicago and successfully pushed the revised measure through Congress. The "branch" line soon became the main trunk line of the Illinois Central, and Chicago was well on its way to becoming the railroad hub of the nation.
By 1852, Douglas felt politically strong enough to attempt a run for the presidency. He was backed by "Young America," a movement that supported a strong nationalistic policy and called for a return to the principles of Jacksonian democracy. At the Baltimore Democratic convention in June 1852, however, Douglas came in third in the initial balloting and Franklin Pierce was eventually nominated. Though disappointed, Douglas took heart in his easy re-election by the Illinois legislature to a second term in the Senate. His first venture into presidential politics had been bracing, and he looked forward to another opportunity in four years.
STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS AND THE AMERICAN UNION