A man who played many
parts, filled many positions, and filled them well, Cass's name deserves
to be more widely remembered than it is.
In those days, a strange, pompous and ineffective figure was flitting
across the stage, impressing men with a respect and significance which
it did not possess, its name, Stephen A. Douglas, nicknamed "The Little
Giant," but giant in little else than power to create disturbance.
Perhaps no other man ever possessed that power in quite the same degree;
nor possessed in a greater degree that fascination of personality which
makes friends and gains adherents.
Consumed by a gnawing desire of the presidency, beaten for the
nomination in 1852, destroying the serenity of the land two years later
by contending that Congress had no right to limit slavery in the
territories, in the vain hope of winning southern support, but finding
himself instead dubbed traitor and Judas Iscariot, receiving thirty
pieces of silver from a club of Ohio women, travelling from Boston to
Chicago "by the light of his own effigies," which yelling crowds were
burning at the stake, and finally hooted off the stage in his own city,
certainly it would seem that Douglas's public career was over forever.
But he managed to live down his blunder and to regain much of his old
strength by reason of his winning personality; yet made another blunder
when he agreed to meet Abraham Lincoln in debate--and one which cost him
the presidency.
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