Stephen A. Douglas :: essays research papers

Stephen A. Douglas was born in Brandon, Vermont on April 23, 1813. His father, a young physician of high standing, died suddenly when Stephen was dickens months old, and the widow with her two children retired to a rear near Brandon. This is where Stephen lived with her until he was fifteen years old. He attended school during the three winter months and working on the farm the remainder of the year. He wanted to earn his own living so he went to Middlebury and became an apprentice in the cabinetmaking business. This trade he followed for or so eighteen months, when he was forced to stop his work because of impaired health, aft(prenominal) this he attended the honorary society at Brandon for about a year. In the autumn of 1830 he moved to New York State and attended the academy at Canandaigua where he began his study of law. Realizing that his mother wouldnt be futile to support him through his courses, he was de limitined to go to the west, and on June 24, 1833, he set out for Cleveland, Ohio, where he was dangerously ill with fever for quadruple months. He then visited Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and Jacksonville, Illinois, but failed to receive any employment. Feeling Discouraged, he walked to Winchester. Here he found employment as clerk to an sell 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 remote 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 secretary of state of Illinois, and in the interest February elected a judge of the Supreme 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 over 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 honker for organizing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which Douglas reported in January 1854 reopened the whole slavery dispute and caused great public excitement, as it repealed the part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which excluded slavery from the regions of the Louisiana purchase north of the Mason-Dixon line, and declared the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 grunge free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, strung-out only to the Constitution of the United States.