Most of Chicago’s dead people are buried in cemeteries. One notable exception is Senator Stephen A. Douglas. The Little Giant, as the Illinois Democrat was known in his heyday of the 1850s, has quite a large tomb on a spacious private plot at 35th St. and Lake Park Avenue. Overlooking the Illinois Central railroad tracks, which Douglas wielded his considerable influence to locate near his own estate, the ornate mausoleum is one of the few sepulchers in Chicago which is not found in a grave yard. It’s a real tomb in the heart of the city, and Senator Douglas is really in there.
Both General Ulysses S. Grant and President Andrew Johnson appeared at the monument’s dedication in September of 1866, along with a host of victorious northern dignitaries. There aren’t many other sites left in Chicago where one can stand and confidently state “U. S. Grant once stood here too.” Of course Grant and Johnson are long gone, but Douglas is still there, and one may be forgiven for asking why he merits such a magnificent memorial. After all, much of his time in congress was spent fashioning compromises with slaveholding southern Democrats. Compromises that extended slavery into western territories, and helped to bring on the Civil War.
Like many politicians of his day, Douglas was a race baiting demagogue. In their famous 1858 debates, he attacked Abraham Lincoln by insinuating that Lincoln favored interracial marriage, a potent slur in that era. Douglas also endorsed, albeit rather tepidly, the infamous Dred Scott decision, which declared that blacks could never be citizens of the United States. Senator Douglas even owned slaves, although they came to him through the estate of his first wife Martha. It would appear that the Little Giant had no moral qualms about slavery. Or at the least no qualms that he would admit to publicly.
So why the big tomb on such prominent real estate, with a historic presidential dedication?
My answer is threefold. He was a Democrat who was “strong for the union”, and especially so once the southern states seceded in the wake of the 1860 presidential election. After the firing on Fort Sumter, he worked tirelessly to generate support for the war among northern Democrats. Most importantly, he had the good timing to die in June of 1861, so early in the war that his legacy is untarnished by any criticism of, or challenge to, Abraham Lincoln’s leadership. Senator Douglas burned himself out in a patriotic blaze of support for the union cause, and in the process helped to save both the union and his own reputation.
An interesting counterfactual, to me at least, is to imagine what Douglas might have done had he lived through the war. Never a fan of abolitionists, would he have criticized Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863? And as the death toll soared in what had become a “war to free the slaves”, might the ambitious senator have been tempted to challenge Lincoln’s presidency with a peace platform, in the election of 1864? Had these things happened, would he still have garnered his beautiful tomb on a bluff at the east end of 35th St., with General Grant, President Johnson, Secretary Seward and so many others, attending his internment?
