Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1879-03-12
STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS.
"reminiscences of the "LittIe Giant of
the West--The Most Remarkable POlit-
icaI Leader Of Modern Times.
FOrneV'S Progress.

Not longer than q common sized wO-
man iii mems clothes was Stephen A.
Douglas when | first shook him by the
hand IN the rotunda of the old capitol,
SO years ago. He was Just 80 years old,
and [ do not think he was bigger than
nv attenuated old friend, Alexander
H. Stephens, of Georgia, who in his 9th
year, is not much larger than the ce!e-
brated Tom Thumb. And yet, in 1913,
when [ first met Stephen A. Douglas,
he had gone through adventures enough
to float novel by Charles Reade, or to
put to blush some of the London stories
by Charles Dickens. Born at Brandon,
Vermont, he lost his father while an
infant, and became an apprentice to a
village cabinetmaker, to support his des-
titute mother. People who talk about
the miseries Of the mechanics in these
days, have no idea what Yankee, or
even a Pennsylvania apprentice, 80 or
40 years ago, or even an ordinary
house-servant, had to undergo. Up at
dawn in winter, eating breakfast by can
delight, doing all sorts of chores in the
cold, the same now not even done by
the paupers in our benevolent institu-
tons, under the overfed policy which
coddles the inmates and enriches ma
irons and directors; the old time APP
prentice was SIS bad off as the southern
slave. But when Stephen A. Douglas
was learning how to make primitive
furniture in Vermont he was in training
for greater vocation. He could not
have been more than 13 and he worked
so hard at his trade that he lost his
health, and he was several years a stu
dent Of law in Canandaigua, New York,
where his mother removed; and then
he could not have been eighteen, for |
find that while he was still a student he
''emigrated" to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1881,
when he was only nineteen. Cleveland,
which is now a lovely metropolis, was
then a miserable hamlet on Lake Erie,
and the little STRIPPING, evidently dis
gusted, pushing on to still smaller
State, Jacksonville, Illinois. Here he
kept school, clerked for an auctioneer.
and still read law. At 81 he was ad-
mitted to the bar, leaped at once into
a good practice, and was elected Attor-
ney-General of the State. Honors crow
ded on the precocious boy. In 1910 he
was elected Secretary of the State, and
in 1S41 Judge of the Supreme Court of
the State, when he was only 81. Ill
health forced him to decline this last
office, out in 1913 he was chosen to the
National House Of Representatives in
his 3Oth year. There were then seven
members of the house from Illinois,
there are 10 now. Douglas passed
through all the honors his adopted
State could give him, rose to the Senate
of the United States in 1S47, and served
till 1861. On the Sd of June of that
year, he died in his 18th year at
Chicago.
I call that putting long experience
into short space, or, to use an old
simile, forcing quart into pint. 1t
is worth while, at the present time, to
pause and make note how much this
one brief and busy life has moulded
and mastered the destinies of empires.
He was the absolute creator of school.
There were others who appreciated and
cultivated the future of western Ameri.
ca; but there was no one man who so
fully understood it as Douglas. Benton,
Allen, Linn and few more did much,
especially Benton, whose great picture
and prophecy of the future of Oregon,
in 1916, seemed to indicate that he had
caught the inspiration of the coming
time. Douglas alone had the good
sense to grasp the political or party is
sue when Kansas profered the oppor-
tunity. Of all his contemporaries of
any distinction only one survives-Wil-
liam Allen, of Ohio He was born in
1906, in North Carolina, and is still Ev-
ing near Chillicothe, Chic; but although
Douglas has been dead over seventeen
years, his name far out-weighs the
fame of his old colleague. The secret
is easily traced. Slavery and the pre-
JUDGES that grew out of slavery, have
dWarted sections and statesmen. The
experience is exceptionless, and Doug
las and Allen prove it. AS Douglas
grew in years he grew in size; he broad
ened, but did not heighten; land when he
rose to speak the first impression was
not agreeable, but he soon won his way,
and never lost what he won.
He had a great following.
Older and ADLER men willingly
yielded to his influence. In making
friends he was always ready to sacrifice
himself. Leading in all the great move
ments, bold to rashness, far-sighted and
prophetic, one weakness was insepara-
BILE from such methods. He cared too
little for the practical objects of life.
He enriched thousands and never stop
ped to provide ways and means for his
own welfare; and it must be said, if he
had, his boundless influence would have
been shorn. 1t was his utter disregard
of self that made even selfish men trust
him, and naturally attracted to him the
enthusiastic and patriotic elements of
the country north and south. He died
in Chicago in tie flush of his heroic sac
rifces, and / spoke his eulogy in July
Of 1861, at the Smithsonian Institute,
Washington, D. c., in the presence of
Mr.. Lincoln and his cabinet, and
great audience, the .illustrious Profess
or Joseph Henry in the chair.
The civil war had just begun. Most
of the great actors on the government
side were present, Stevens, Stanton,
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