Stephen A. Douglas

Rating:
Summary: Complete political biography of Clay's successor
Review: A five-star political narrative history of the leading statesman of the nation after the passing of Henry Clay, but a four-star biography as it barely touches the subject's domestic life. However, the author has painstakingly accounted for almost every political act of Douglas, who the reader discovers was the only possible savior of the Union in 1860. His electoral failure was the failure of the nation to understand what the disastrous consequences would be - a total civil war willingly initiated by abolition and secession extremists. Although as racist and expansionist as most of his contemporaries, his political motives were of the purest democracy (as he understood it). His constant attempts to get the nation's attention away from slavery and back on nation-building were futile was were his attempts to find a compromise on the eve of war. His anguish at seeing his beloved nation and party fall apart brought on his untimely death which left a 25-year void in the leadership of the Democratic Party. A great read for antebellum political junkies!

Rating:
Summary: THE DEFINITIVE STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS
Review: Johannsen's work will stand forever, it seems, as the authoritative study of Stephen Arnold Douglas, the man who almost alone carried the Jacksonian banner of democracy and union through the decade of American disintegration leading up to the Civil War. The views of Jackson and Douglas, in broad strokes, still today inform political thought in this country and around the world as recognizable elements of their philosophy turn up in "The Third Way" movement of moderation and political pragmatism that is sweeping the globe. A critical figure in American history and present, Douglas receives fine treatment at the hands of Prof. Johannsen, and is seen as much more than the anti-Lincoln that so many ill-informed people believe him to be. Indeed, Lincoln was little more than a gadfly, an anomaly for much of his career. His election was a fluke. Douglas' entire life bespeaks his status as the everlasting statesman that he was and Johannsen is a master at showing this.