Needed: One Courageous Republican Senator Willing to Risk His Political Life to Stop Trump

Remembering the Stand of Senator Stephen A. Douglas Against President James Buchanan

Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the Little Giant

Friends, this article is adapted from my book Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Religion and the Politics of Race in the Civil War Era and Beyond, which is available on most online platforms or by ordering from your local bookstore. You can also receive a copy by becoming an annual subscriber or Founding Member.

If you could imagine, the late 1850s the United States was even more volatile and dangerous than today. Many Americans regardless of their place on our political spectrum have no idea of the story that I tell tonight. We are so accustomed to politicians who surrender the moral high ground even when it takes little effort to defend the law and Constitution that we have forgotten the often unlikely and unlikable politicians unafraid to stand against Presidents of their political party.

Moral cowardice seems to be the norm in both parties today. What Democratic Senator had the courage to march into the Oval Office that he needed to stand aside when he he showed cognitive issues obviously related to a deteriorating neurological condition in late 2023 or early 2024 when the Democrats had a chance to have a fair primary to find a better candidate? What Republican Senator led the fight in Donald Trump’s second impeachment to risk their political career to convict him? Mitch McConnell knew Trump was guilty and admitted it, but passed the buck, enabling Trump to escape justice for him encouraging and provoking the insurrection of 6 January 2021? What Democratic Senator went to Bill Clinton during his impeachment in 1998 to tell him to step aside? The last time we saw that kind of political courage was when Barry Goldwater went to the White House to tell Richard Nixon to resign or be convicted of his crimes during the Watergate crisis. Goldwater was an arch conservative. He ran a racist campaign attracting the Southern Democrats who eventually became the base of the modern GOP against Lyndon Johnson in 1964, but he had the political gravitas and courage to demand Nixon resign. Goldwater saw Nixon’s actions as the true high crimes and misdemeanors that required the Senate convict him when the impeachment charges were delivered to the Senate.

Apart from Goldwater there has been only one Senator from a political party whose President occupied the White House to be so bold and courageous to take his political future on opposing that President. That was the Democratic Senator from Illinois who in 1858 did so against President James A. Buchanan over the issue of the illegal and unconstitutional attempt to admit the Kansas Territory as a slave state against the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act which he crafted on the basis of the popular sovereignty of people living in a territory to request admission as either a Free or Slave State. That is the story I tell tonight.

In 1857 Kansas was politically divided with two competing legislatures, each of which claimed to be the voice of the people. The population of Kansas was heavily anti-slavery and many citizens felt disenfranchised by the official legislature, which was “a pro-slavery body elected by fraud in 1855.” [1] This body met in the city of Lecompton. In 1857 the Lecompton legislature sensed the opportunity to have Kansas admitted to the Union as a Slave State. It elected slavery supporters as members of a constitutional convention to draft a constitution which would be submitted to Congress for admission to the Union as a Slave State.

Free State partisans feared that that if they participated in the election that they would be “gerrymandered, and simply counted out by stuffed ballots,” and sat out the election. As a result it was “a quiet election, with many proslavery candidates unopposed and only 2,200 out of 9,000 registered voters going to the polls, a large majority of extreme proslavery men won election as delegates to the constitutional convention in September.” [2] But the result of the election was untenable, for just “Two thousand voters in a territory with 24,000 eligible for the franchise had elected a body of delegates whom no one seriously regarded as representative of the majority opinion in Kansas.” [3]

The Lecompton legislature passed the proslavery constitution, but it was vetoed by the outgoing governor, John W. Geary. Geary who accused “the pro-slavery legislature of attempting to stampede a rush to statehood on pro-slavery terms,” but his veto was overridden. The draft constitution contained several provisions that most of the population found unacceptable. It protected owners of “the 200 slaves in Kansas, banned free blacks from the state, and prohibited any amendments to the constitution for seven years.” [4] The newly appointed governor of the territory, Robert J. Walker opposed the measure and denounced it “as a vile fraud, a bare counterfeit.” [5] Walker demanded a new, fair, referendum, which the newly elected president James Buchanan, also backed. In response many Southerners in Congress “threatened to secede unless the administration fired Walker and backed down on the referendum issue.” [6] The threat of secession by Southerners in support of the radical minority in Lecompton led to chaos in the Democratic Party which controlled the House, the Senate and held the Presidency.

James Buchanan, rode into office on the votes of the South in 1856 was now pressured by Southern legislators to change his position on the Lecompton Constitution. Buchanan s cabinet, which was heavily Southern and supported expansion also used its influence to pressure the President. In response to their pressure, Buchanan reversed his previous stance in regard to Kansas and endorsed the bill. This provoked a new outcry, this time from members of the Democratic Party. Many Northern Democrats were outraged by the reversal and the threats of secession made by their Southern Democrat counterparts. Most of the Northern Democrats were willing to accept and even defend slavery where it existed, but they were opposed to the expansion of slavery in the territories. They felt betrayed by their president’s actions and rose in opposition to the bill that would admit Kansas as a Slave State. After decades of compromise they finally found the will to stand against a bill to expand slavery.

Their leader was the formidable Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas who stood just 5’ 4” was known as the Little Giant. He skillfully crafted the Kansas-Nebraska Act using the principle of popular sovereignty, which insisted that a majority of any territories citizens had to approve a draft constitution to Congress to have their territory admitted to the Union as a Free or Slave State. Douglas led these Democrats in their fight against Buchanan’s acceptance and endorsement of Lecompton. Douglas’s previous actions to support the rights of Slave States had made him a hero in much of the South and his stature in both the North and the South made him the front runner to win the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1860.

But Douglas, who had worked so hard to build compromises that would hold the Union together from 1850 on could not countenance the actions and tactics of the Southern members of his party. Douglas was a political realist and not an ideologue. He was very sympathetic to slave holders and no supporter of emancipation, in fact Douglas was a racist who was convinced “of the inferiority of the Negro, and he had a habit of stating it with brutal bluntness, “I do not believe that the Negro is any kin of mine at all…. I believe that this government of ours was founded, and wisely founded upon white basis. It was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity, to be executed and managed by white men.” [7] But despite his own beliefs Douglas understood the danger that the pro-slavery extremists supporting Lecompton were to his party and the Union. He knew that if the bill was passed that it would destroy the unity of the Democratic Party and possibly the Union itself.

Douglas was outraged and when he saw the news that in the Washington Union that Buchanan flipped on Kansas and decided to support Lecompton. Douglas wrote:

“This left no doubt were the old bastard stood. “Can you believe his Goddamned arrogance?” I told a friend. “I run the Committee on Territories. He should have consulted me before approving the Lecompton fraud. He’ll pay for that. By God, sir, I made Mr. James Buchanan, and by God, sir, I’ll unmake him.” [8]

Buchanan and Douglas set began one of the greatest political battles in American history. Upon learning of Buchanan’s decision the Little Giant threw caution to the wind. He stormed to the White House “to confront Buchanan on the “trickery and juggling of the Lecompton constitution.” He warned the president of that his actions in support of the Lecompton party would “destroy the Democratic party in the North,” and we warned that “if Buchanan insisted on going through with it, Douglas swore to oppose him in Congress.” [9]

It was an epic confrontation. Douglas recalled, “The Lecompton constitution, I told Buchanan bluntly, was a blatant fraud on the people of Kansas and the process of democracy, I warned him not to recommend acceptance of it. With his head titled forward in that bizarre habit of his, he said that he intended to endorse the constitution and send it to Congress. “If you do,” I thundered, “I’ll denounce it the moment that it is read.” His face turned red with anger. “I’ll make Lecompton a party test,” he said. “I expect every democratic Senator to support it.” I will not, sir!” [10] Buchanan then cut Douglas off.

Angry and offended by Douglas’s opposition, Buchanan issued his own threat to Douglas saying, “I desire you to remember that no Democrat ever yet differed from an administration of his own choice without being crushed….Beware of the fate of Tallmadge and Rives,” two senators who had gone into political oblivion after crossing Andrew Jackson.” Douglas was undeterred and fought back, Douglas riposted: “Mr. President, I wish to remind you that General Jackson is dead, sir.”[11] It was an unprecedented action by a sitting Senator, to confront a President of one’s own party and threaten to oppose him in Congress. But the battle was not over.

Following his confrontation with Buchanan Douglas was even more determined to defeat the Lecompton party. In righteous anger Douglas “took his political life into his own hands and assailed the Lecompton Constitution on the floor of the Senate as a mockery of the popular sovereignty principle.” [12] Buchanan’s allies in Congress fought back and the two sides sometimes came into physical confrontation with each other in the chambers of Congress. When Buchanan’s supporters pushed for Lecompton’s approval and the admission of Kansas as a Slave State, Douglas fired back, warning “You do,” I said, “and it will lead directly to civil war!” I warned the anti-Lecompton Democrats of the North that the President intended to put the knife to the throat of every man who dared to think for himself on this question and carry out principles in good faith. “God forbid,” I said “that I ever surrender my right to differ from a President of the United States for my own choice. I am not a tool of any President!” [13]

Under Douglas the Northern Democrats joined with Republicans for the first time to defeat a measure to expand or defend slavery regarding the admission of Kansas as a Slave State. Douglas recalled the battle:

“After the Christmas recess, the Administration unleashed its heavy horsemen: Davis, Slidell, Hunter, Toombs, and Hammond, all southerners. They damned me as a traitor and demanded that I be stripped of my chairmanship of the Committee on Territories and read out of the Democratic party. Let the fucking bastards threaten, proscribe, and do their worst, I told my followers; it would not cause any honest man to falter. If my course divided the Democratic party, it would not be my fault. We were engaged in a great struggle for principle, I said, and we would defy the Administration to the bitter end.” [14]

Southern members of Congress fought back and as the battle continued their acrimony towards Douglas grew and their rhetoric against the Little Giant became more heated. He was “at the head of the Black column…stained with the dishonor of treachery without parallel…patent double dealing…detestable heresies…filth of his defiant recreancy…a Dead Cock in the Pit…away with him to the tomb which he is digging for his political corpse.” [15]

But Douglas was undeterred by the threats to his career, he knew that he was in the right. Even though he agreed with the philosophy of his opponents regarding slavery as an institution, he realized that appeasing the South was not an option in regard to Lecompton. He wrote:

“My forces in the House fought a brilliant delaying action while I worked to win over wavering Democrats. When we introduced a substitute bill, Buchanan called a dozen congressmen to the White House and exhorted them not to forsake the administration. He was cursing and in tears. He had reason to be: on April first, a coalition of ninety-two Republicans, twenty-two anti-Lecompton Democrats, and six Know-Nothings sent Lecompton down to defeat by passing the substitute bill. This bill provided for a popular vote on the Lecompton constitution and for a new convention if the people rejected that document, as they surely would.” [16]

The substitute bill was passed by the House was approved by the Senate as well. The Senate and sent it back to Kansas for a popular vote. When the Lecompton Constitution was resubmitted to the people of Kansas, “to the hideous embarrassment of Buchanan, the voters of Kansas turned on August 30^th and rejected Lecompton by a vote of 11,812 to 1,926.” [17] Douglas wrote “The agony is over,” cried one of my aides, “and thank God that the right has triumphed. Poor old Buck! Poor old Buck had just had his face rubbed in shit. By our “indomitable courage, “ as another aide put it, we’d whipped this “powerful and proscriptive” Administration and forced the Black Republicans to support a substitute measure which fully embodied the great principles of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.” [18]

Pro-slavery Southerners were outraged and Buchanan used every measure that he could to crush the anti-Lecompton Democrats, but he had lost “one of the most vicious struggles in the history of Congress, Southern Democrats had seriously damaged the patience of their Northern counterparts, and Buchannan loyalists in the North were unseated wholesale by upstart Republicans in the 1858 congressional elections.” [19] Buchanan’s Presidency was discredited, his party divided, its majority in congress lost, and the South moving closer to secession. Southerners considered Douglas a traitor and accused him of betraying them. “A South Carolinian lamented that “this defection of Douglas has done more than all else to shake my confidence in Northern men on the slavery issue, for I have long regarded him as one of our safest and most reliable friends.” [20]

The fight over Lecompton was a watershed. It served to illuminate how“minuscule minorities’ initial concerns ballooned into unmanageable majoritarian crises. The tiny fraction of Missouri slaveholders who lived near the Kansas border, comprising a tinier fraction of the South and a still tinier fraction of the Union, had demanded their chance to protect the southern hinterlands.” [21]The crisis that they provoked drew in the majority of Southern Democrats who came to their aid in Congress and provoked Northerners to condemn the Southern minority, which they believed was disenfranchising the majority in order to expand slavery to new territories.

The issue of Lecompton galvanized the political parties of the North and split the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions. This doomed it as a national party for the foreseeable future. It was also the first time that a coalition Northern Democrats sided with anti-slavery forces. Through the efforts of “Republicans and anti-Lecompton Douglas Democrats, Congress had barely turned back a gigantic Slave Power Conspiracy to bend white men’s majoritarianism to slavemaster’s dictatorial needs, first in Kansas, then in Congress.” [22]

The political impact of the Lecompton crisis on the Democratic Party was an unmitigated disaster. The party suffered a major election defeat in the 1858 mid-term elections and lost its majorities in the House and the Senate, in a sense this Lincoln’s words that it “became increasingly a house divided against itself.” [23] Douglas’s courageous opposition to Lecompton would be chief among the 1860 split in the Democratic Party, Southern Democrats turned with a vengeance on the man who had been their favorite in the 1856 democratic primary. This doomed his candidacy for President and ensured the election of Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans, a man that he had defeated for Senate in that critical summer of 1858.

I hope that my readers can see the parallels between 1858 and today when a radical minority relying on voter suppression and gerrymandering absolutely controls the Republican Party of today which is little different than the Democrats of that time. They hold the majorities in the House and Senate as well as have a President even more corrupt than James Buchanan who is consistently rated as the worst President in American history. In the latest surveys, Donald Trump is on the verge of being rated lower than Buchanan.

But now, Americans regardless of their political affiliation need to comprehend the danger facing our country, in particular the Republicans who have it in their power to stop Trump’s attacks on the law and the Constitution. It only takes the moral and political of one Republican Senator to risk his or her political career, and possible life today to make a stand on principle like Stephen A. Douglas.

The cost for Douglas was great. He lost the election of 1860 due to the division of the Democratic Party. When Southerners seceded and rebelled against the Union opening fire on Fort Sumter, Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers to fight the rebellion. Douglas stood by him, agreeing with Lincoln’s decision but stated that he would have called for more. It was the end of compromise. He told Lincoln:

“I heartily approve of your proclamation calling up 75,000 militia,” I told him. “Except that I would make it 200,000. You don’t know the dishonest purposes of these southern men as well as I do.” After a review of the strategic situation with the President Douglas continued, “Mr. President,” I said. “Let me speak plainly. I remain unalterably opposed to your Administration on purely its political issues. Yet I’m prepared to sustain you in the exercise of all your constitutional functions to preserve the Union, maintain the government, and defend the capital. A firm policy and prompt action are necessary. The capital of our country is in danger, and must be defended at all hazards, and at any expense of men and money. I speak of the present and future without reference to the past.

He shook my hand, hard. “We need more patriots like you, Douglas,” he said as he walked me to the door.

“I depreciate war,” I said in parting, “but if it must come, I’m with my country and for my country, under all circumstances and in every contingency.” [24]

Is there one such Republican Senator today?

I ask my readers to sent this article by mail to their Senators and Representatives regardless of party. Trump must be stopped legally and the best way for that to happen is to have the Senators of his party make a principled stand for the law and Constitution. I have my doubts that any will, but there must be a handful who with enough pressure from their constituents to lead such a charge. Likewise, if you are a subscriber please restack it on Substack, or share it on other social media platforms or by email with those you know. This is about our liberty, the Constitution and the rule of law.

Notes

[1] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.81

[2] Ibid. Potter The Impending Crisis p.300

[3] Ibid. Potter The Impending Crisis p.314

[4] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.115

[5] Ibid. McPherson The Battle Cry of Freedom p.165

[6] Ibid. McPherson The Battle Cry of Freedom p.164

[7] Ibid. Potter The Impending Crisis p.340

[8] Ibid, Oates The Approaching Fury p.208

[9] Ibid. McPherson The Battle Cry of Freedom p.166

[10] Ibid, Oates The Approaching Fury p.208

[11] Ibid. McPherson The Battle Cry of Freedom p.166

[12] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.115

[13] Ibid, Oates The Approaching Fury p.210

[14] Ibid, Oates The Approaching Fury pp.212-213

[15] Ibid. McPherson The Battle Cry of Freedom p.168

[16] Ibid, Oates The Approaching Fury pp.215-216

[17] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.116

[18] Ibid, Oates The Approaching Fury p.216

[19] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.116

[20] Ibid. McPherson The Battle Cry of Freedom p.167

[21] Ibid. Freehling, The Road to Disunion Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant 1854-1861 p.140

[22] Ibid. Freehling, The Road to Disunion Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant 1854-1861 p.142

[23] Fehrenbacher, Don E. Kansas, Republicanism, and the Crisis of the Union in The Civil War and Reconstruction Documents and Essays Third Edition edited by Michael Perman and Amy Murrell Taylor Wadsworth Cengage Learning Boston MA 2011 p.94

[24] Ibid. Oates The Approaching Fury pp.421-422