Stephen A. Douglas :: essays research papers

Stephen A. Douglas was natural in Brandon, Vermont on April 23, 1813. His father, a young physician of high standing, died shortly when Stephen was two months old, and the widow with her two children retired to a farm near Brandon. This is where Stephen lived with her until he was fifteen years old. He attended school during the three wintertime months and working on the farm the remainder of the year. He wanted to make up his own living so he went to Middlebury and became an apprentice in the joinery business. This trade he followed for about eighteen months, when he was forced to hinderance his work because of impaired health, afterward this he attended the academy at Brandon for about a year. In the autumn of 1830 he moved to new(a) York State and attended the academy at Canandaigua where he began his study of law. Realizing that his suffer wouldnt be unable to support him through his courses, he was placed to go to the west, and on June 24, 1833, he set out for Clevela nd, Ohio, where he was hazardously ill with fever for four months. He then visited Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and Jacksonville, Illinois, but failed to ask in each job. Feeling Discouraged, he walked to Winchester. Here he found employment as clerk to an auctioneer at an administrators sale, and was paid six dollars. He studied law at night, and on Saturdays practiced before justices of the peace. In March 1834, he removed to Jacksonville, obtained his license, and began the regular practice of law. Two weeks after that he addressed a large Democratic meeting in defense of General Jacksons administration. In December 1840, he was appointed secretaire of state of Illinois, and in the following February elected a judge of the lordly Court. In 1843 Judge Douglas was elected to congress by a majority of 400, and he was reelected in 1844 by 1,900, and again in 1846 by everyplace 3,000 but before the term began he was chosen U.S. senator, and took his seat in the senate on March 4, 1847. The bill for organizing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which Douglas reported in January 1854 reopened the whole slaveholding dispute and caused great popular excitement, as it repealed the part of the Missouri compromise of 1820 which excluded slavery from the regions of the Louisiana Purchase north of the Mason-Dixon line, and declared the people of any state or territory free to form and regulate their home(prenominal) institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.