Stephen Douglas Quotes

His [Stephen Douglas] argument is as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.

We care not a fig for Whig or Democrat: they are both alike to us; but we shall go for our friends, our TRIED FRIENDS … DOUGLAS is a Master Spirit, and his friends are our friends—we are willing to cast our banners on the air, and fight by his side in the cause of humanity, and equal rights—the cause of liberty and the law

Those villainous reporters [Stephen] Douglas has with him.

At the [U. S.] House [of Representatives], Stephen Douglas, of Illinois, the author of the majority report from the Committee of Elections, had taken the floor last evening, and now raved out his hour in abusive invective upon the members who had pointed out its slanders, and upon the Whig party. His face was convulsed, his gesticulations frantic, and he lashed himself into such a heat that if his body had been made of combustible matter it would have burnt out. In the midst of his roaring, to save himself from choking, he stripped off and cast away his cravat, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and had the air and aspect of a half-naked pugilist. And this man comes from a judicial bench, and passes for an eloquent orator!

One thing which Stephen A. Douglas was temperamentally incapable of doing was admitting he was wrong. He always believed that 'popular sovereignty' - the core doctrine of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill - was the right solution to the slavery controversy; and even though it had failed to solve much of anything in Kansas and Nebraska, he stubbornly insisted that this was because it had never been adequately tested.

He [Stephen Douglas] is blowing out the moral lights around us, when he contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them

If you can throw the Ohio delegation to Lincoln, Chase can have anything he wants.

We have the glorious tidings to proclaim, that Lincoln and Hamlin are our next President and Vice President, by overwhelming majorities. They have carried every Free State this side of the Rocky Mountains, except, perhaps, New Jersey, where the vote is close. Douglas will probably carry "nary one!