The Little Giant

A few years ago I visited a little nondescrpt, somewhat rundown house on the main road running through Brandon, Vermont. It wasn't a house that meant anything special to most people, and it was only marked by a somewhat obscure sign. But it meant a great deal to me. It was where a great man was born--one of the greaest of the 19th century--my century. And if he hadn't been born we would never have had Abraham Lincoln.

I am more than gratified to learn that the house, where Stephen A. Douglas came into this world on April 23, 1813, had at long last been spruced up, given a visitor center, and dedicated to giving Douglas, the redoutable "Little Giant," his due. He was to become for a quarter of a century Lincoln's great rival in Illinois politics. From their dramatic rivalry the Union-dividing issue of slavery was defined and the greatest man of that century--one of the greatest of any century--was to emerge.

For most of that rivalry Douglas was the front-runner. He was the first to become a national figure, and a power in American politics--for a time the most powerful. His biggest drawback--he was wrong-headed about that great issue. He believed the problem of slavery should be resolved by the simple democratic principal of "popular sovereignty"--letting each territory decided for itself, by popular assent, whether or not to become a slave or free state when it entered the Union. Douglas did not care whether slavery was voted up or down as long as the people of the territory agreed about it. This was doubtless the right way to resolve most problems. But as Lincoln eloquently pointed out,slavery was different--a special case, a special evil, a moral wrong. It could not, must not, be dealt with in that fashion. It must be fought. And he fought it with all of his intelligence and eloqence.

In the end Lincoln's position--the great and true one, won out. And he rode it to the presidency. Although Douglas stood far above him in the national ken for most of the years of their rivalry, it was Lincoln who became the great one, and Douglas the also-ran. And the house on the main road in Brandon stood for years ignored and neglected--the fate of also-rans. But it was only because Lincoln emerged as Douglas's great rival that the nation come to know Lincoln at all--and to elect him president

The point is--if there had been no Douglas, the great foil for Lincoln's greater greatness, Lincoln would never have emerged from political obscurity.. The country owes the Little Giant at least a nod of lasting respect. Turning the little house where he was born into a commeration of his memory is fitting and long overdue.