Stephen A. Douglas | Page 2

CALL OF THE WEST

CHAPTER I
FROM THE GREEN MOUNTAINS TO THE PRAIRIES
The dramatic moments in the colonizing of coastal New England have
passed into song, story, and sober chronicle; but the farther migration
of the English people, from tide-water to interior, has been too prosaic
a theme for poets and too diverse a movement for historians. Yet when
all the factors in our national history shall be given their full value,
none will seem more potent than the great racial drift from the New
England frontier into the heart of the continent. The New Englanders
who formed a broad belt from Vermont and New York across the
Northwest to Kansas, were a social and political force of incalculable
power, in the era which ended with the Civil War. The New Englander
of the Middle West, however, ceased to be altogether a Yankee. The
lake and prairie plains bred a spirit which contrasted strongly with the
smug provincialism of rock-ribbed and sterile New England. The
exultation born of wide, unbroken, horizon lines and broad, teeming,
prairie landscapes, found expression in the often-quoted saying,
"Vermont is the most glorious spot on the face of this globe for a man
to be born in, provided he emigrates when he is very young." The
career of Stephen Arnold Douglas is intelligible only as it is viewed
against the background of a New England boyhood, a young manhood
passed on the prairies of Illinois, and a wedded life pervaded by the
gentle culture of Southern womanhood.
In America, observed De Tocqueville two generations ago, democracy
disposes every man to forget his ancestors. When the Hon. Stephen A.
Douglas was once asked to prepare an account of his career for a
biographical history of Congress, he chose to omit all but the barest
reference to his forefathers.[1] Possibly he preferred to leave the family
tree naked, that his unaided rise to eminence might the more impress
the chance reader. Yet the records of the Douglass family are not
uninteresting.[2] The first of the name to cross the ocean was William
Douglass, who was born in Scotland and who wedded Mary Ann,

daughter of Thomas Marble of Northampton. Just when this couple left
Old England is not known, but the birth of a son is recorded in Boston,
in the year 1645. Soon after this event they removed to New London,
preferring, it would seem, to try their luck in an outlying settlement, for
this region was part of the Pequot country. Somewhat more than a
hundred years later, Benajah Douglass, a descendant of this pair and
grandfather of the subject of this sketch, pushed still farther into the
interior, and settled in Rensselaer County, in the province of New York.
The marriage of Benajah Douglass to Martha Arnold, a descendant of
Governor William Arnold of Rhode Island, has an interest for those
who are disposed to find Celtic qualities in the grandson, for the
Arnolds were of Welsh stock, and may be supposed to have revived the
strain in the Douglass blood.
Tradition has made Benajah Douglass a soldier in the war of the
Revolution, but authentic records go no farther back than the year 1795,
when he removed with his family to Brandon, Vermont. There he
purchased a farm of about four hundred acres, which he must have
cultivated with some degree of skill, since it seems to have yielded an
ample competency. He is described as a man of genial, buoyant
disposition, with much self-confidence. He was five times chosen
selectman of Brandon; and five times he was elected to represent the
town in the General Assembly. The physical qualities of the grandson
may well have been a family inheritance, since of Benajah we read that
he was of medium height, with large head and body, short neck, and
short limbs.[3]
The portrait of Benajah's son is far less distinct. He was a graduate of
Middlebury College and a physician by profession. He married Sally
Fisk, the daughter of a well-to-do farmer in Brandon, by whom he had
two children, the younger of whom was Stephen Arnold Douglass, born
April 23, 1813. The promising career of the young doctor was cut short
by a sudden stroke, which overtook him as he held his infant son in his
arms. The plain, little one-and-a-half story house, in which the boy first
saw the light, suggests that the young physician had been unable to
provide for more than the bare necessities of his family.[4]

Soon after the death of Dr. Douglass, his widow removed to the farm
which she and her unmarried brother had inherited from her father. The
children grew to love this bachelor uncle with almost filial affection.
Too young to take thought for the morrow, they led the wholesome,
natural life of country