John Douglas

“ Unable to withstand the attractions of the mysterious calling, he, in 1820, made his first regular appearance on the stage as Douglas in John Home's tragedy of that name. His success was immediate. His youth, his robust and manly physique, his clear, resonant voice, his fair and handsome face, won the great audience at once. ”

“ Douglas was about to speak, but Ann hurried on:
"No, Mother, don't defend them. You can't have forgotten that black day when the Nicol family arrived to spend the afternoon—John and Mackenzie, ripe for any wickedness. The house had just been spring cleaned, and was spotless, and those two boys went through it like an army with banners. It was wet, and they couldn't go out to the garden, and they scoffed at the very idea of looking at picture-books. They slid down the banisters, they tobogganed down the white enamelled stairs, they kicked the paint off the doors. ”

“ John swept her with a look, then rose and went into the living room.
Douglas followed him and, sitting down on the edge of his bed, he unbuckled his spurs. John settled himself under the lamp with his book, but he did not begin to read at once.
"Yes, Doug? that girl is a woman now and she has any woman in Lost Chief beaten for beauty and nerve."
Douglas gave his father a startled glance; then he said, with elaborate carelessness, "Rats! She's just a fighting kid!" ”

“ He was appointed regent of Scotland in March 1333. The leadership of Douglas was impetuous rather than skilful, and lost the Scots the battle of Halidon, 19 July 1333. Douglas was slain there with many of his companions, including the son and successor of Sir James Douglas. Douglas married Beatrice, daughter of Sir Alexander Lindsay of Crawford, who was afterwards the wife of Sir Robert Erskine of Erskine, and so ancestress of the Erskines, earls of Mar. Their eldest son, John, dying young, their second son, William, became first earl of Douglas [q. v.] ”

“ The look haunted Jim Douglas all day, stimulating him strangely. Here was a man, he felt, who was in the grip of Fate, but who gave back the grip so firmly that his Fate could not escape him. Gave it back frankly, freely, as one man might grip another's hand in friendship. And then he smiled, thinking that John Nicholson's hand-clasp would go a long way in giving anyone a help over a hard stile. ”

“ The little Douglas is fiery, peppery, full of brag and fight and show, with movements so quick and keen they almost sting the onlooker, and the harlequin gyrating show he makes of himself turns one giddy to see. The gray is shy, and oftentimes stealthy in his movements, as if half expecting an enemy in every tree and bush, and back of every log, wishing only to be let alone apparently, and manifesting no desire to be seen or admired or feared. ”

“ Later, in a debate with John J. Hardin, his rival in Congress as in the Illinois legislature, he contrasted the Whig and Democratic positions on the questions of the day with so much force and skill that the speech was used as the principal Democratic document in the presidential campaign of 1844.
In Congress, distinction does not always, or usually, imply power; but Douglas was consummately fit for the sort of struggling by which things are in fact accomplished at Washington. Whatever the matter in hand, his mind always moved with lightning rapidity to positive views. ”

“ The elections in the autumn of 1859 were enough to show that the North was no longer disposed to forbearance with slavery. Douglas went as far as any man [Pg 132] in reason could go in denouncing John Brown and those who were thought to have set him on; and he supported a new plan for getting Cuba. But Davis, on the very eve of the Democratic convention at Charleston, was pressing upon the Senate a series of resolutions setting forth the extreme demand of the South concerning the Territories. He was as bitter toward Douglas as he was toward the Republicans. ”

“ Douglas,—It must now be something like fifteen years since Mr. John Lane, who was then compiling a bibliography of George Meredith, asked me to consent to his compiling a bibliography of my articles in the ‘Athenæum’ and elsewhere, and although I emphatically declined to sanction such a bibliography, he on several occasions did me the honour to renew his request. I told him, as I have told one or two other generous friends, that although I had put into these articles the best criticism and the best thought at my command, I considered them too formless to have other than an ephemeral life. ”

“ As an Ohio representative said, they desired "a West for their sons and daughters where they would be free from family influences, from associated wealth and from those thousand things which in the old settled country have the tendency of keeping down the efforts and enterprises of young people." The hearts of those who, like Douglas, had carved out their fortunes in the new States, responded to that sentiment in a way which neither a John Quincy Adams nor a Winthrop could understand. ”

“ William (1635–1694) , created earl of Selkirk in 1646, became 3rd duke of Hamilton after his marriage (1656) with Anne, duchess of Hamilton in her own right. By the failure of heirs in the elder branches of the family the dukes of Hamilton (q.v.) became heirs-male of the house of Douglas.
James Douglas, 2nd Marquess of Douglas (1646–1700) , succeeded his grandfather in 1660. His eldest son, John, by courtesy earl of Angus, raised a regiment of 1200 men, first known as the Angus regiment, later as the Cameronians (26th Foot) . He was killed at its head at Steinkirk in 1692. ”

“ Lincoln always regarded his famous rival. But we think that few men have ever lived who were more free from those degrading passions than Abraham Lincoln, and the personal reprobation with which he always visited the public acts of Douglas arose from his sincere conviction that, able as Douglas was, and in many respects admirable in character, he was essentially without fixed political morals. They had met for the first time in 1834 at Vandalia, where Douglas was busy in getting the circuit attorneyship away from John J. Hardin. ”

“ Almost from the beginning it was highly probable that the Republicans would win, and it was substantially certain that none of their competitors could do so. The only contrary chance was that no election might be made by the people, and that it might be thrown into Congress. Douglas with his wonted spirit made a vigorous fight, traveling to and fro, speaking constantly in the North and a few times in the South, but defiant rather than conciliatory in tone. He did not show one whit the less energy because it was obvious that he waged a contest without hope. ”

“ So gentle, confiding, and busily cheery and happy, he takes one’s heart and keeps his place among the best-loved of the mountain darlings. A diligent collector of seeds, nuts, and berries, of course he is well fed, though never in the least dumpy with fat. On the contrary, he looks like a mere fluff of fur, weighing but little more than a field mouse, and of his frisky, birdlike liveliness without haste there is no end. Douglas can bark with his mouth closed, but little quad always opens his when he talks or sings. ”

“ He goes his ways bold as a lion, up and down and across, round and round, the happiest, merriest of all the hairy tribe, and at the same time tremendously earnest and solemn, sunshine incarnate, making every tree tingle with his electric toes. If you prick him, you cannot think he will bleed. He seems above the chance and change that beset common mortals, though in busily gathering burs and nuts he shows that he has to work for a living, like the rest of us. I never found a dead Douglas. ”

“ You don't need to go to Hall to dinner unless you like."
He got up from the sofa and went and stood before the fire, keeping his head very much in the air and his hands in his pockets. He was feeling that home was a singularly warm, kind place, and that the great world was cold and full of strangers; so he whistled "D'ye ken John Peel?" and squared his shoulders, and did not in the least deceive his sister Jean.
"Peter, me faithful hound," said the Mhor, hugging the patient dog. "What would you like to play at?" ”

“ In 1858, ability, courage, activity, ambition, the prestige of success, and a plausible moderation in party politics combined to make Douglas the most conspicuous individual in the public view. There was no other way whereby any other man could so surely attract the close and interested attention of the whole people as by meeting Douglas in direct personal competition. If Douglas had not held the position which he did, or if, holding it, he had lived in another State than Illinois, Lincoln might never have been President of the United States. ”

“ As for the charge West had made against Douglas, that was merely another of the calumnies circulated about him since he had begun to be successful in Washington. Why was it that one man could not prosper without exciting the hatred and the envy of so many other men? Douglas, she felt sure, had never done anything to injure anyone. His success had been won by his own abilities and industry. He had worked harder than any other man in Washington. ”

“ For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property.... Now as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. ”

“ Douglas was a genuinely popular leader. He had the power to inspire a pure personal enthusiasm. He had aroused such hero-worship as may be possible in modern times and in American polities. Beyond this, however, the Lecompton controversy, and his open persecution by the Buchanan Administration, made his leadership and his candidacy a necessity to the Northern Democrats. ”

“ Now, what is Judge Douglas's popular sovereignty? It is as a principle no other than that, if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object....
If you will read the copyright essay, you will discover that Judge Douglas himself says, a controversy between the American Colonies and the Government of Great Britain began on the slavery question in 1699, and continued from that time until the Revolution; and, while he did not say so, we all know that it has continued with more or less violence ever since the Revolution.... ”

“ Douglas, as author of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, as a formidable Presidential aspirant, and now again as leader of the anti-Lecompton Democrats, could, of course, have no rival in his party for his own Senatorial seat. Lincoln, who had in 1854 gracefully yielded his justly won Senatorial honors to Trumbull, and who alone bearded Douglas in his own State throughout the whole anti-Nebraska struggle, with anything like a show of equal political courage and intellectual strength, was as inevitably the leader and choice of the Republicans. ”

“ But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." Later at Charleston he reiterated much of this in almost identical language, and then in his turn took his fling at Douglas: "I am not in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.... I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. ”

“ It was the Douglas doctrine, squatter sovereignty, and "unfriendly legislation," rather than the _man_, which they had come to oppose, and were determined to put down. Any other individual holding these heresies would have been equally obnoxious. They had no candidate of their own; they worshiped no single leader; but they followed a principle with unfaltering devotion. They clung unswervingly not only to the property theory, but advanced boldly to its logical sequence--Congressional protection to slavery in the Territories. ”

“ In that body Douglas's adherents will press his doctrines to a decision. If the States-Rights men keep out of that convention, that decision must inevitably be against the South, and that either in direct favor of the Douglas doctrine, or by the indorsement of the Cincinnati platform, under which Douglas claims shelter for his principles." "The States-Rights men should present in that convention their demands for a decision, and they will obtain an indorsement of their demands, or a denial of these demands. If indorsed, we shall have greater hope of triumph within the Union. ”

“ Douglas's violent denunciation of "abolitionists" and "abolitionismn" appealed with singular power to Whigs from slave States. The party was without a national leader; Clay had died two years before, and Douglas made skillful quotations from the great statesman's speeches to bolster up his new propagandism. In Congress only a little handful of Southern Whigs opposed the repeal, and even these did not dare place their opposition on antislavery grounds. And especially the familiar voice and example of the neighboring Missouri Whigs were given unhesitatingly to the support of the Douglas scheme. ”