(born April 23, 1813, Brandon, Vt., U.S.—died June 3, 1861, Chicago, Ill.) U.S. politician. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (1843–47) and Senate (1847–61), where he strongly supported the Union and national expansion. To settle the bitter dispute over the extension of slavery to the territories, he developed the policy of popular sovereignty.
He was influential in the passage of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Short and heavyset, he was dubbed “the Little Giant” for his oratorical skill. In 1858 he engaged in a number of widely publicized debates with Abraham Lincoln in a close contest for the Senate seat in Illinois (&see; Lincoln-Douglas Debates). The Democrats nominated Douglas for president in 1860, but a splinter group of Southerners nominated John C. Breckinridge, which divided the Democratic vote and gave the presidency to Lincoln. In 1861 he undertook a mission for Lincoln to gain support for the Union among the Southern border states and in the Northwest. His untimely death of typhoid was partly a result of these exertions.
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