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

The political rivalry between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas fades away as the Union’s future grows uncertain in this insightful account from historian McClelland (Young Mr. Obama). At the time of their famed 1858 Illinois Senate debates, Douglas was America’s most controversial politician, McClelland explains. His 1854 sponsorship of the Kansas-Nebraska Act had made him “the leading exponent of popular sovereignty,” an idea meant to justify the spread of slavery to new territories that had instead polarized the nation even further and drawn Lincoln back into Illinois politics to oppose Douglas. McClelland’s account of the debates highlights how Douglas “tied logic into knots” to prove popular sovereignty was an organizing principle of American democracy—indeed, the book’s great strength is its revealing portrait of Douglas, whose maddening contradictions and “both sides-isms” made him enemies in every quarter, including among fellow Democrats. During the 1860 Democratic convention, when the party devolved into chaos as Southern delegates set up competing conventions in an effort to promote popular sovereignty, Douglas, who was running for president, opposed the upstarts. He later pledged loyalty to the Union in an 1861 speech which McClelland contends was “the greatest argument... ever delivered on setting aside partisanship.” Artfully blending biography and history, McClelland gives the “Little Giant” his due as a unifier. It’s a wise examination of America’s divisive antebellum politics. (June)