Stephen A. Douglas, (Not So) Master Legislator

A lot of our exposure to the personage of Stephen A. Douglas, the junior senator from Illinois at the time of the Civil War, comes from his debates with eventual President Abraham Lincoln, the minutes of which were celebrated by abolitionists in the North and others who were becoming increasingly concerned with the militancy of pro-slavery forces and their incursions into Northern territories.

According to the former Governor of Illinois, Thomas Ford, Douglas had been trying to become a senator for many years, but he always found that he was against what people were for, and for what people were against, despite time and again trying to align his views with whatever was popular at the time. Douglas' rather crass defense of leaving slavery alone was only one in a long line of doing whatever was necessary to bring enough constituencies together to get him to Washington, an effort so often frustrated that the diminutive Senator was something of a legislative Wile E. Coyote.

According to Ford, one constituency which Douglas actively courted was Mormons, and he was willing to promise Brigham Young just about anything to convince a bloc of White voters who would reliably vote whatever their leader told them to move to Illinois. He left Mormon leaders, unfortunately, with the impression that they would be allowed to rule their corner of Illinois without any interference from the state or locals. Douglas then promptly lost election to the Senate, when he rushed to be for debt repudiation, only to find that foreign investors, who held the Illinois bonds that were being repudiated, had decided to get involved in Illinois politics and help elect a Senator that would look after their best interests.

Mormons at this time, believe it or not, were a rowdy bunch. They were known for carrying on dancing and drinking late into the night, and had a tendency to allow into their orbit brigands and criminals. Mormons were accused by settlers in nearby Missouri of harboring horse rustlers, and those Missouri settlers went to Illinois to demand that Mormon leaders release the offenders to be tried.

This was the beginning of what become known as the Mormon Wars, and, among many other things, resulted in the flight of Mormons west (although not immediately the establishment of a settlement near Salt Lake), the discovery of gold in California and the creation of an irregular Missouri cavalry that felt emboldened, when they felt necessary, to enforce their beliefs on others at the point of a gun. Douglas' naked ambition was an instrumental catalyst in all these triumphs and troubles.

So, as we consider (not really, but a modern-day Douglas, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, is legitimately proposing it, at least) returning to state legislatures electing Senators, let us remember that, unlike in direct election, running for election among peers can sometimes require a series of crass horse-trading maneuvers that cause people either to sell their souls or else wish they had. Some of these horse trades, once they've been done can, believe it or not, completely unmake a nation.

We forget how close Douglas came to being elected the 17th President of the United States and suing the Confederacy for peace! According the Eric Foner, in his book Reconstruction, Lincoln was saved by the Midwest's practical racism: it wasn't rational to presume that slavery could continue forever, so therefore, eventually, slavery would end, and whenever it ended, it was inevitable that the North would be overrun with former slaves. Lincoln and surrogates presented the idea that former slaves would be offered resettlement in Liberia, a solution they continued to push well after Lincoln's death. Lincoln's response to Douglas declaring slavery could be left alone was that slavery could have an orderly ending--one which, in an orderly manner, removed African Americans from the country.

But that's probably a story for another day.

Sources: 

Ford, Thomas. A History of Illinois. 

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction.