How would have a President Stephen A. Douglas have handled secession differently?

Stephen A. Douglas was a strong supporter of the "manifest destiny" idea. Unlike Lincoln, he supported the Mexican-American War. He envisioned a transcontinental railroad and wanted western territories to become states. He wanted the United States to stretch from sea to sea. He was a very strong supporter of the Union and urged Democrats to support the war effort. He went to see Lincoln when Lincoln arrived in Washington DC. The men had a long private interview. He wore himself out traveling and speaking on behalf of saving the Union.
In support of what you have just related @wbull1, I believe Douglas had a very strong commitment to the United States. That being said, I would not believe he would allow the south to slip away. What plans and ideas he may have entertained nobody can really say, for the loss of his health after the election was too soon for him to do more than agree. Had he lived, he may have been a helpful partisan at mending the relations among the northern people, and relieving the pressure put on Lincoln.
 
Douglas was pro-Union and would have gone to war to preserve the Union. The cause wasn't abolition for the North, it was Union.

The only question is whether the fire eaters considered Douglas apostate enough to leave the Union, or rather convince enough other people to leave the Union.
 
Southerners reacted to their fears and fantasies of what he was like, with very little actual information about him.

I doubt there was anything he would have been willing to say that would have done any good. The Southern press would have found a way to use anything to he said to stoke fear of the Black Republican Menace.
 
The only question is whether the fire eaters considered Douglas apostate enough to leave the Union, or rather convince enough other people to leave the Union.

One of the reasons the South, especially the Fireeaters, feared a Republican president was this was the patronage era aka spoils system. Every appointed office in the country could potentially be filled by a Republican. Since there were practically no Republicans in the South, this meant not only a hostile party holding these offices but damnyankees from up North! Who knows what trouble they would stir up? How were the Southerners supposed to suppress abolitionist mail if the postmasters in the South were all Northerners AND Republicans?

Stephen Douglas was anti-slavery (to Southern minds) and Northerner, but he was a Democrat. He would have appointed Southern Democrats to Southern appointed positions and his cabinet would have included Southern Democrats too. He would have let the South go about their business in the South as they had under Pierce and Buchanan. He was unsavory, but safe. Some of the Fireeaters would have pitched a fit, but I could see Douglas actively trying to defuse the situation by something like offering Breckenridge the position of Secretary of State.
 
What was known about him was largely from the Lincoln Douglas debates which had been covered. And his position was against any form of possible expansion. He was opposed to Douglas popular sovereignty not because it meant new states would be free as you suggested earlier, but because it meant more slave states would be possible.

Douglas was for anexxation of Cuba, suppose you think popular sovereignty on an island of sugar plantations would lean free?
 
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What was known about him was largely from the Lincoln Douglas debates which had been covered. And his position was against any form of possible expansion. He was opposed to Douglas popular sovereignty not because it meant new states would be free as you suggested earlier, but because it meant more slave states would be possible.

Douglas was for anexxation of Cuba, suppose you think popular sovereignty on an island of sugar plantations would lean free?


As I have said before. I do not believe Douglas was anti-slavery. It is irrelevant to my argument that, since he was in favor of expanding the United States from sea to sea, he would have opposed secession vehemently. You suppose that southern rejection of Douglas as not sufficiently pro-slavery would have disappeared had he been elected. Bleeding Kansas already showed how pro-slavery men would fight to keep any anti-slavery state from being admitted. Douglas had already rejected the fake pro-slavery state Constitution submitted by pro-slavery forces. Southern Democrats rejected Douglas as a candidate ensuring the party would lose. Douglas had worked with Republicans to oppose the bogus Kansas state Constitutions. Popular sovereignty was anti-thetical to southern views. In my opinion, Douglas's election would have been the catalyst for secession.
 
To suggest Douglas would have equally lead to secession despite the lack of anti Douglas rhetoric (or anti Bell or anti Breckenridge rhetoric for that matter) making any such claims is based on what then?......I agree 100% Douglas wasn't anti slavery, would say most moderate democrats agreed with your statement he wasn't also......why there would have little mood to secede over Douglas.

Again the fire eaters were a minority who couldn't do anything without the moderates coming on board. It took someone outside the party, and more anti slavery then Douglas (or any other Democrat) to unite the democrats for seccesion

yet again if the fire eaters were upset over a Douglas election, which I'm not saying they might not have been......they still didn't represent the majority of either southern democrats or constitutes, to lead state conventions to secede required a wider coalition with moderate democrats, who weren't united against moderates, there would have been no broad coalition of the party against an insider, it required an outsider
 
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To suggest Douglas would have equally lead to secession despite the lack of anti Douglas rhetoric (or anti Bell or anti Breckenridge rhetoric for that matter) making any such claims is based on what then?......I agree 100% Douglas wasn't anti slavery, would say most moderate democrats agreed with your statement he wasn't also......why there would have little mood to secede over Douglas.

Again the fire eaters were a minority who couldn't do anything without the moderates coming on board. It took someone outside the party, and more anti slavery then Douglas (or any other Democrat) to unite the democrats for seccesion

yet again if the fire eaters were upset over a Douglas election, which I'm not saying they might not have been......they still didn't represent the majority of either southern democrats or constitutes, to lead state conventions to secede required a wider coalition with moderate democrats, who weren't united against moderates, there would have been no broad coalition of the party against an insider, it required an outsider

We just disagree.
 
Fire eaters needed Lincoln;s election for secession, so they blocked Douglas nomination, as unated democrat;s candidate
 
I'm not sure that South Carolina would have seceded if Douglas, rather than Lincoln, had won the 1860 election. More likely, the southern states would be taking a wait and see attitude as to how they perceived a Douglas administration's position on protecting slaveholders interests. After all, the immediate cause of secession was the position of the Republican party on not extending slavery to the territories, which was perceived by the south as a definite threat to the overall practice of slavery.
 
I think the war would have happened regardless of who the President was. The question is had Douglas won the Presidency and still died when he did how would have Herschel V. Johnson handled the entire situation? What if John Bell had won the Presidency how would have things been?
 
"Popular Sovereignty" seems to us today to be more sympathetic to the South, but it was deemed not sympathetic enough by the South at the time.

However popular sovereignity wouldn't be contrary to Dred Scott at all. Theres an important distinction, popular soverignity would allow a state to decide when it asks for statehood...…..prohibiting slavery from the territories was an attempt to preclude the possibility of a slave territory asking for statehood as a slave state altogether, the territories wouldn't have the opportunity to see if slavery was suitable or advantageous to the territory at all, even though it was a legal practice in the US.

I think there is a distinction being missed here. Popular Sovereignty as initially derived was not viewed unfavorably by the South in general, as it initially arose out of the 1850 Compromises allowing Territories to decide at statehood.

The problems arose out of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the subsequent Dred Scott ruling that followed. The Court essentially declared the old Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and that slavery was protected in all the Territories, even above the old Missouri line. This “protection” aspect of Dred Scott becomes important.

And this is where the non-intervention doctrine entered the scene. If Dred Scott declared slavery protected in the Territories until Statehood, who or what will enforce that supposed protection?

Douglas said that Congress should play no role in either protecting or hindering slavery in the Territories.

This was troublesome to the South -and understandably so. Money and investments gravitate toward stability. Without assurances that slave property would be treated and protected equally in the Territories as other property, who would take the risk of moving vast and valuable property into the Territories?

Douglas frustrated this with his Freeport Doctrine, or what the South would call “Squatter Sovereignty.”

Under this policy, a Territorial Legislature could do indirectly what the Constitution and laws will not permit it to do directly. In other words, if a Territory really did not want slavery, then it could resort to unfriendly territorial legislation that could essentially prohibit or severely limit slavery in the Territories long before it ever sought Statehood.

This is the “popular sovereignty” of Douglas that the South opposed bitterly. It had changed from the 1850 concept. To them, it essentially operated to remove the rights of Southern citizens in the Territories as guaranteed by Dred Scott or the Constitution.

Douglas would not back off this non-intervention interpretation of Dred Scott or “squatter sovereignty” at the Charleston Convention. To Southern delegates, this policy simply denied citizens of the United States equal rights and equal protection in the Territories and so they seceded from the National Convention in protest.

The Republicans were explicit, they did not want slavery in the Territories and they proclaimed it loudly from the mountain tops. From a Southerner’s perspective, Douglas was just being sneaky about the whole thing, trying to hustle them into voting for something that would essentially do the same thing as the Republicans wanted.
 
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