June 3, 1861- The Death of Stephen A. Douglas

Stephen Douglas defeated Abraham Lincoln in the 1858 Illinois Senate race made famous by the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates. He was known as the “Little Giant” because although he was short in stature, he was a dominant political figure. Douglas was one of two nominees of the Democratic Party for President in 1860. The party fractured into Northern and Southern factions with John C. Breckinridge the nominee of the Southern faction, which led to the election of Abraham Lincoln.

**The Wigwam**– **photograph by Alexander Hessler**

After the election Douglas supported Lincoln in opposing secession. On his return to Illinois from Washington he delivered several speeches in support of the government. On May 1 he made his last public speech in Chicago at the Wigwam, the wooden hall that was once on the southeast corner of Lake Street and Wacker Drive where Lincoln was nominated for President by the Republican Party. There he said “Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war; only patriots or traitors”. On his death bed he wrote a message to his sons at college “Tell them to obey the laws and support the constitution of the United States.” He died in his suite at the Chicago Tremont House at the age of 48 from typhoid fever.

Recently the state of Illinois removed his statue from the state capital in Springfield. Reasons for this are addressed in the following links by Reg Ankrom and another by Curtis Black. Although Douglas did not own slaves himself, they technically belonged to his wife (inherited from her father), he collected a 20-30% administration fee from managing her estate, which he then used to finance his political campaigns. More importantly, the compromises he supported and authored before the war such as the Kansas-Nebraska Act and its principal of “popular sovereignty”, and the Fugitive Slave Law, all to gain support for making Chicago the hub of the transcontinental railroad, make him one of history’s most infamous advocates of slavery.

The Douglas Tomb State Historic Site is located at 636 East 35th Street in Chicago. The site was closed on all of the several attempts I made to try and visit it so I took these pictures through the fence.