What Lincoln Said When Stephen A. Douglas Died...

Описание: June 3, 1861. Stephen A. Douglas — Lincoln's greatest political rival — died in a Chicago hotel room at age 48. He had spent his last seven weeks traveling across the Midwest, at Lincoln's request, rallying Democrats to support a president he had spent his entire career trying to destroy. When the telegram arrived at the White House, Lincoln ordered the Executive Mansion draped in black. No protocol required it. Douglas wasn't a former president. He wasn't even a Republican. He was a sitting Democratic senator who had beaten Lincoln for the Senate in 1858, courted the same woman Lincoln married, and run against him for the presidency in 1860. This video covers the full documented story: twenty-five years of rivalry in Illinois courtrooms and legislatures, the seven Lincoln-Douglas debates, the split Democratic convention of 1860, Douglas holding Lincoln's hat at the inauguration, the two-hour White House meeting after Fort Sumter, Douglas's final speeches, his death, and exactly what Lincoln did when he heard the news — and why he did it.

Everything in this video is drawn from documented primary and historical sources. No speculation. No dramatization.

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Disclaimer: Based on documented primary sources including the Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress (Series 1, General Correspondence), the White House Historical Association, the U.S. Senate Historical Office, Douglas biographer Damon Wells (Stephen Douglas: The Last Years, 1857–1861, University of Texas Press), Roy P. Basler ed. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), and contemporaneous newspaper coverage. For educational purposes.