About Stephen A. Douglas
Stephen Arnold Douglas was an American politician and lawyer from Illinois. As a U.S. senator, he was one of two nominees of the divided Democratic Party to run for president in the 1860 presidential election, representative of the Northern Democrats, and lost to Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln. Douglas had previously defeated Lincoln in the 1858 United States Senate election in Illinois, known for the pivotal Lincoln–Douglas debates. Earlier, Douglas was one of the brokers of the Compromise of 1850, which sought to avert a sectional crisis. To further deal with the volatile issue of extending slavery into the territories, Douglas became the foremost advocate of popular sovereignty, which held that each territory should be allowed to determine whether to permit slavery within its borders. This attempt to address the issue was rejected by both pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates. Standing 5 feet 4 inches (1.63 m) tall, Douglas was nicknamed the "Little Giant" because he was short in physical stature but a forceful and dominant figure in politics. Quitt, the younger Douglas would drop the second "s" from his name in 1846, the year after the publication of Frederick Douglass's first autobiography; it is unknown if these two events were connected. Douglas became an ally of President James K. Douglas moved back in with his mother and enrolled as a student at Brandon Academy, whose debate club he became a member of.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.