Chorus of the Union: How Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas Set Aside Their Rivalry to Save the Nation

by Edward Robert McClelland

An impassioned and timely exploration of Abraham Lincoln's long-time rivalry—and eventual alliance—with Stephen Douglas.

Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas are a misunderstood duo. History remembers them as antagonists, and for most of the years the two men knew each other, they were. In the 1830s, they debated politics around the stove in the back of Joshua Speed’s store in Springfield, Illinois. In the 1850s, they disagreed over the Kansas-Nebraska Act and debated slavery as opponents for a Senate seat. In 1860, they both ran for president.

Lincoln and Douglas ended as allies, though, against the greatest threat—slavery—that our country has ever faced. When Douglas realized he was going to lose the 1860 election, he stopped campaigning for himself and went South to persuade the slave states to accept Lincoln as president. After that effort failed, and the newly formed Confederate States of America bombed Fort Sumter, Douglas met with Lincoln to discuss raising an army.

The story of how Lincoln and Douglas put aside their rivalry to work together for the preservation of the Union has important lessons for our time. We have just been through a presidential election where the loser refused to concede defeat, with violent consequences. Not only did Douglas accept his loss, he spent the final days of his campaign barnstorming the country to build support for his opponent’s impending victory, setting aside his long-held desire for the presidency for the higher principle of national unity.

Also, by focusing on the importance of Illinois to Lincoln’s political development, Chorus of the Union will challenge the notion that he was an indispensable “great man.” Lincoln was the right person to lead the country through the Civil War, but he became president because he was from the right place. Living in Illinois provided Lincoln the opportunity to confront Douglas over the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The debates with Douglas during the 1858 Senate campaign brought him the fame and prestige to contend for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860. Lincoln's moderate views on slavery, which he developed in the swing region of a swing state, made him the ideal candidate for an election that had sweeping historical consequences.

Genres: History, Civil War, Politics, American History, Biography, Nonfiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published June 4, 2024

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a story about the rivalry and relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, this is very good - a well-written, accessible, well-researched narrative that follows them from their 1858 Senate campaign to the early days of Lincoln’s presidency.

But I wanted to read the book that’s described in the subtitle, about “How Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas Set Aside Their Rivalry to Save the Nation.” And this book isn’t really about that. So while McClelland has delivered a very good book, I had to knock my rating down a couple of pegs because I thought the book didn’t really deliver on its promise.

The idea for the book first appeared in the form of a 2021 article that McClelland wrote for the Washington Post, in which he praised Douglas as a “gracious loser” in the 1860 presidential race, who not only accepted the election results, but publicly urged others to do the same. This, McClelland contrasted with Donald Trump (and the article was published the morning of January 6th, before the attack on the U.S. Capitol had even happened yet).

While the book is not as overtly political as the article and avoids comparisons to the present day, it’s still pretty clear why this book was written, and why now.

There’s certainly a lot more to Douglas’s story than just being a “gracious loser,” though. And McClelland does very well in fleshing him out for a general audience who may know more about Lincoln than his political rival. He also doesn’t hesitate to point out some of Lincoln’s less admirable comments about race that he made during the Senate contest, though he shorthands it a bit heavy-handedly by observing that “Lincoln was antislavery, but he was also anti-Black.”

While the book begins in 1858, Douglas’s background is clearly and concisely summarized. Both the 1858 and 1860 campaigns are often told in a Lincoln-centric way, but this is a more Douglas-focused account, where his campaign speeches and his fight for his party’s presidential nomination are given full consideration and not treated as mere sideshows to what Lincoln was doing.

The longest chapter, as you might expect, and perhaps the best chapter in the book is on the Lincoln-Douglas debates. I’ve read many accounts of the debates, and it’s easy for some authors to get bogged down transcribing long quotes from each candidate without really turning the debates into an actual narrative. But McClelland succeeds in doing so, in a well-written and well-summarized chapter that includes plenty of relevant quotes from the debates while also placing them in context, showing how each candidate developed their arguments over time and catered to different crowds. Douglas is given an even greater focus in the 1860 presidential race, in which Lincoln didn’t campaign or speak publicly, but Douglas did.

Up to this point, my only real complaint is that McClelland repeats a couple of minor anecdotes and descriptions at times (he explains twice why Lincoln insisted on addressing Douglas as “Judge,” for example, and twice explains how the region of Illinois called “Egypt” got its nickname).

So why the middling rating for the book then? ⅔ of the way in, I was still waiting to learn things I didn’t know about how Douglas “set aside his rivalry” with Lincoln “to save the nation.” Stories about Douglas opposing secession, supporting the Union cause and graciously holding Lincoln's hat during his inauguration speech are fairly well known and appear in most any Lincoln biography or narrative about the start of the Civil War. So I expected more in a book-length, Douglas-centric narrative of the era.

The first hint at the book’s stated focus doesn’t come until late in the presidential campaign, during a Douglas speech in which he said secession would not be justified if Lincoln were to win. Once it became clear he'd lose the presidency, McClelland writes that Douglas concluded “there was nothing to campaign for now but the Union,” so he spent the last couple of weeks traveling the south warning against secession, in the belief that “there was only one thing worse than a Lincoln presidency - a broken Union.”

It’s not until the book’s very last chapter that Douglas meets with Lincoln and lends his support to the Union war effort. So the book is essentially a very long windup to a very short look at how the two “set aside their rivalry to save the nation.”

But did they really? It’s not McClelland’s fault that the men’s rivalry effectively ended in November 1860 and Douglas was dead seven months later. So of course their rapprochement is going to happen late in a book about their rivalry, since it covered a very short period of time. But my concern is only partly about the length of space given to their alleged conciliation - it’s also about whether McClelland is making far too much of it, and trying to make far too neat a story out of Douglas as “gracious loser.”

What Douglas and Lincoln agreed on - and where Douglas pledged to support his rival - was in preserving the Union. But their methods differed drastically. While Lincoln never wavered in his approach toward stopping the spread of slavery and not appeasing the South, Douglas continued looking for an offramp, supporting the Crittenden Compromise during the “secession winter,” proposing some compromises of his own, and trying to maneuver and manipulate Lincoln into pursuing a policy of peacefully preserving the Union, at whatever cost.

The Democratic party had already splintered during the 1860 campaign, so Douglas was not unique among Democrats in supporting Lincoln as commander-in-chief while opposing him in nearly every other way. Besides, Douglas had already shown that he was willing to cross party lines when it served his interests, as when he broke with President Buchanan and sided with Republicans in trying to block Kansas statehood based on the 1857 Lecompton Constitution. When southern states began seceding following Lincoln’s election, Douglas felt betrayed by the South that he had tried so hard to placate, so supporting the Lincoln administration’s war aims said as much about Douglas’s relationship with Southern rivals like Jefferson Davis as it did about his relationship with Lincoln.

So the notion that accepting his election loss and siding with Lincoln against the Confederacy was a gracious, magnanimous move on Douglas’s part, came across to me as entirely too simplistic an observation around which to base an entire book. And if McClelland was determined to make that argument, he could have more fully developed it, instead of only getting around to introducing it in the final chapter, and then quickly bringing the book to a close with Douglas’s death.

McClelland’s 2021 Washington Post article was quite good. But I feel like expanding it into a book, and stripping out the references to our modern political climate, weakened rather than strengthened his thesis. He may have set out to give book-length treatment to Douglas’s transformation from partisan to partner, but that’s not really what the book ended up being.

What it is, is a very readable and enjoyable narrative about the Lincoln-Douglas rivalry, complete with one of the better treatments of the Lincoln-Douglas debates that I’ve read. If that’s how the book was pitched, maybe I would have been happier with the result. But when a very good book as written doesn’t match the very good book that was promised, I have to rate it accordingly. For a book as well-written and pleasant to read as this was, it’s a shame that it had to turn out rather disappointing as well.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was definitely the best book I've read so far this year. The author makes the argument that Stephen Douglas was a great patriot as well as a politician. The book follows the journey both Lincoln and Douglas take in the months leading up to the outbreak of war. After reading this book, I kind of feel sorry for Douglas; he never lived to the end of the war and therefore didn't see his bipartisanship flourish in a restored Union. Overall, a worthy effort and well worth the time spent.

[David Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written book, but not about what the subtitled suggests it would be about. The first two-thirds is standard reporting of Lincoln and Douglas as political rivals in Illinois. Only in the last third does it get to how they "set aside their rivalry," and even then, it barely covers that. Only in the last few weeks in Washington does Douglas really even confer with Lincoln before heading back to Illinois to help keep them in the Union. Douglas is somewhat magnanimous at the end, but even in the secession winter he is blaming Lincoln and the Republicans for not kowtowing sufficiently to Southern demands. This despite seven deep South states already having seceded (and after the formed the Confederacy weeks before Lincoln was even inaugurated). Douglas clearly believed in the Union and fought for it, but hardly did he and Lincoln work in tandem to "save the Union." So, again, the book is well written and enjoyable if you ignore what it is supposed to be about, but never really gets to being what it is sold as.

David J. Kent
Author, Lincoln: The Fire of Genius
Immediate Past President, Lincoln Group of DC

[Tim Franks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very intriguing look at the vastly unknown partnership that Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln had at the beginning of the Civil War. Learned a lot of things here, very engaging style for reading.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before the last month or so, my awareness of Stephen Douglas was that he had sparred against Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln-Douglas debates. I did not realize until reading 1858 that these debates were not part of the 1860 presidential election, but were instead part of a Senate race. Douglas would win, but their very public debates gave Lincoln a larger stage — and they would be part of the wind that bore him towards Washington, along with Douglas’ inability to keep his increasingly polarized party on the same track. When Douglas learned that Lincoln had beaten him in the presidential race, he said — “I must go South.” Not because he wished to join the southern democrats in seceding, but to try to argue them out of it. In retrospect, that seems like a doomed mission: the South arrived at its Democratic convention spoiling for a split with their northern brothers — first in the party, and then in the union. “Three cheers for the Independent Southern Republic!”, they cried as they walked out of the convention hall and paraded down the street into another hotel. Chorus of the Union is a deep dive into Lincoln and Douglas’ history, and how (two-thirds of the way in) Douglas put his own politics aside in a last-ditch effort to prevent the breakup of the union and the possibility of civil war.

Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln both made their political fortunes in Illinois, but were not native sons of the west; Douglas came west from Vermont, and Lincoln’s family from Kentucky — but they were part of a third generation in American politicians, and followed closely on the heels of prominent westerners like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. The two knew each other from their young adult days, debating politics in the back rooms of stores — but one sought political office and won great acclaim, while the other served for a time to return to working as a lawyer. Interestingly, it was the one who made the other’s career. Lawyer Lincoln, raised by anti-slavery Baptists and deeply bothered by his few encounters with slave parties being transported along the river, was resolutely against the institution, and when Douglas championed an act — the Kansas-Nebraska act — that would effectively allow for its continued expansion, he rejoined politics as an active campaigner. The two would run against one another in 1860, but Douglas would be running against the disintegrating factions of his own party to boot. “The Democracy” had split first into northern and southern parties, and then into still other groups, to the effect that Lincoln would ultimately win despite only claiming 39% of the popular vote. After Douglas realized his candidacy was lost, he journeyed into the South hoping to argue against secession — and, McClelland marks, he took that danger far more seriously than the Republicans themselves. Lincoln and Douglas had made their careers in Illinois, a place that was divided itself between commercial and agricultural interests: Illinois’s southern third was commonly called Egypt for its rich river deltas that had attracted plantation culture early in its history. Both men were used to having to balance competing interests — but Douglas, unlike Lincoln, knew how ornery southerners could be.

The resulting third goes a long way to redeeming Douglas, I think. For most of the book, it is extremely easy to sort the two men into two very different buckets. Lincoln is the pragmatic idealist who hates slavery on moral grounds, is determinedly hopeful that it will die, but acknowledges that it cannot be done within the grounds of political reality. Douglas, however, is politics first: he may dislike slavery in an abstract way, but didn’t truly care about it one way or another. His focus was on maintaining the Democratic party — or The Democracy, as it was often known at this time — despite the fire and fury of abolitionists and secessionists alike. After the election, that shifted naturally to a fervent desire to maintain the Union. Douglas in this moment is not playing politics; he is traveling, arguing, and contending for his country, in a way that pushes him nearer to self-sacrifice than readers have yet seen. In his visits South, he denounced Lincoln and all the Republican party stood for, but maintained that the election of any one man could not justify the destruction of the Union. The Constitution itself, the powers of the States, would diminish Lincoln’s ability to act even if he entered office with a mission against the South. The South’s chances of preserving its interests are greater inside the Union than out, he said — and this proved to be true, since Northern states passed a great many laws (from intense protective tariffs and infrastructure bills to playing around with fiat currency) that would have never passed a Congress in which Southern states had a voice. Amusingly, while in Nashville Douglas crossed paths with the arch-fire eater Yancey, who had just been visiting the North to dissuade them from voting Lincoln! Douglas ventured even into Montgomery, Alabama, Yancey’s stomping grounds and the first home of the southern Confederacy: there, his carriage was pelted with eggs, though he did give a speech before departing downriver to Selma. He returned to Washington to help argue for legislation that might pacify the fears of the South, though nothing was able to be passed before Congress’s session ended. After the war began in earnest, Douglas traveled through the north, admonishing his fellow citizens to rally around the president — and in the summer of 1861, his health spent in his impassioned pleas to Americans north and south, he died in his hotel room while still on the mission.

This was quite the book. I’d gotten into it because I was intrigued by the notion of Douglas standing by his former opponent. This is not that unusual in politics — John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay both backed Jackson against the French when they were being obnoxious deadbeats, and those dons hated Old Hickory — but given the stakes involved I wanted to read more about it. Having read a few other books in this subject in the last few months made the revisit somewhat laborious at first — especially the level of detail that McClelland gets into with the Debates — but seeing Douglas really come into his own in the last third made the march worth it. This is also as close as I’ve gotten (so far) to a proper biography of Lincoln, though one will follow this, and it made me more appreciative of Lincoln’s gift for humor — though his constant jokes about Douglas’ height make him seem a little mean-spirited at times. What I liked most about it beyond Douglas rising to the occasion beyond the pettiness of party politics was getting a rare look into political goings-on during the “secession winter” in which the US government as it stood, and Lincoln’s slowly-forming team, pondered what course to take following South Carolina & company’s decision to start singing a new descant. This is slightly wonkish at times, but serious students of the period will delight in the detail, and more casual ones can still endure given McClelland’s accessible writing style.

[Mr. Book · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can also see this review, along with others I have written, at my blog, Mr. Book's Book Reviews.

Mr. Book just finished Chorus Of The Union: How Abraham Lincoln And Stephan Douglas Set Aside Their Rivalry To Save The Union, by Edward Robert McClelland.

The first half of the book did a very good job focusing on the Lincoln-Douglas debates before moving on to both of their paths to the 1860 nominations and then the presidential campaign. The book then covers the aftermath of the election before concluding with Douglas’ death shortly after Lincoln was sworn in.

One of the great features of history books is all of the little tidbits that are contained. One great example from this book is a quote from Douglas that I don’t remember ever seeing before. He was so against either the House electing Breckinridge in a contingent election that he told a congressman “the election shall go into the House; before it shall go into the House, I will throw it to Lincoln.”

By late October 1860, Douglas realized that Lincoln was going to be elected so he headed to the south to campaign. But, not for Lincoln, but instead to try to get southerners to accept a Lincoln presidency. The author has a very good answer as to his motives: “Why did Douglas spend the last two weeks of the campaign in states he had no chance of winning? For one thing, he took the threat of secession far more seriously than the Republicans.” Douglas was also sure that, if Lincoln was elected, he’d be a “powerless” President, who would be thwarted by Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. In the author’s words, “If Lincoln got into any mischief, if he violated any man’s Constitutional rights [the author really means if he violates slave-owners rights], the Democrats should be ready to punish him to the full extent the Constitution allowed. That, not secession, was the proper response to President Lincoln.”

This book was a very enjoyable and informative book about the relationship between Lincoln and Douglas. It wasn’t really merely about them putting their differences aside, as the title had implied. But, considering how good it was, I didn’t mind that.

I give this book an A. Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews, and Goodreads.

Mr. Book finished reading this on August 28, 2024.

[Urey Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting account, essentially the political activities of Stephen Douglas and, to a lesser extent, Lincoln primarily covering the period from the late 1850’s through 1860 and the onset of hostilities at Ft. Sumter. The author is a journeyman writer, focused on the chronological political activities of the two men, and their associates. The text is interesting, but not compelling. Speeches are synopsized...used more as contextual markers of the political concerns of the respective two men, which does not do them justice. Lincoln’s orations are far deeper and more significant than that gives them credit for being. But then, Lincoln is the historical antagonist here contesting with Douglas, the author’s protagonist of this book. Thus he fails to understand, or illustrate, Lincoln’s evolution of thought and principle, and the very real social, cultural, and political constraints under which he was operating.

Douglass was the preeminent national political figure of his day, and merits attention. He certainly motivated, and focused, Lincoln and thus was a significant factor in Lincoln’s elevation to the Presidency... not his intention, for sure. All said, there are better books about Lincoln-Douglas and the onset of war:

Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War by Douglas R. Egerton

Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates by Harry V. Jaffa

If you only have time to read one, make it the Egerton book!!

[Ernest Spoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book gave me a newfound understanding of Stephen "the Little Giant" Douglas. My earlier impression of Douglas was, like a later son of Illinois Ronald Reagan, an amiable bumbler out of touch with events though a gifted orator. I was wrong. If Douglas was anything it was he held to the belief that the right compromise, as Bill Clinton attempted, would eventually cool passions enough to pull the nation back from the edge of conflagration. Only after Lincoln's election did he come to the realization that politicians of the slave states were only biding their time for an excuse to secede.

Abraham Lincoln plays a lesser role in the narrative. Interestingly the rivalry between Douglas and he was more one sided than I heretofore believed. While cordial with one another, Lincoln held Douglas in slightly lesser regard. Could that be because Lincoln, the self-taught, rustic polymath, was slightly envious? After all Lincoln never bested Douglas in any election until the 1860 Presidential contest.

[Joann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated learning more in depth about the Lincoln-Douglas debates and their political views at such a difficult time in United States history. At times I found the book overly involved but since the debates were the main topic, all the details were necessary. The final fourth of the book was the most interesting, demonstrating how Douglas and Lincoln worked together to avoid a national tragedy. What an overwhelming moment it must have been for Lincoln when he raised his hand and said he would defend the constitution. I cannot imagine it.

[Lou Chodosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title is misleading; 3/4 of book is about their debates; last 75 pages discusses Douglas and his fight to save the Union. Those pages are interesting. I would read this, and if you want to know details of their debates , this book is for you. Otherwise , just read the last 75 pages .

[Adam Redfern · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting to see how speeches at political rallies were during this crucial turning point in American history.

Lincoln remains a superior orator throughout most of history.