After a winter spent reading and studying, Douglas obtained his law license in 1834. Douglas finally settled in Jacksonville, Illinois, after brief stops in Cleveland and St. In 1833, he decided to go west, clearly intent on finding a place where he could obtain a law license in less time. The long internship required in the state of New York to become a lawyer was confining to a young man eager to make his fortune. After graduating, Douglas joined the Hubbell law firm and studied law for six months. In 1830 he moved with her to Clifton Springs, New York, and enrolled in Canandaigua Academy. Illness caused him to surrender that position, but once recovered, Douglas enrolled in Brandon Academy, where he remained until his mother remarried.

He served Parker for nearly a year and then moved to Brandon, where he served as an apprentice to a cabinetmaker, Caleb Knowlton. Eventually Douglas left home to apprentice to cabinetmaker Nathan Parker in Middlebury, Vermont. Douglas described his uncle alternately as a hard man who refused to allow him to attend school more than three months a year and as a loving uncle whose duty to his own family prevented helping Stephen with his education. Sara Douglas moved to her brother Edward’s farm, where Stephen lived for the next 17 years. Stephen’s father was a physician but died in 1815 when Stephen was three months old. His mother was Sara “Sally” Fisk Douglass. His father was Stephen Arnold Douglass (The younger Stephen dropped the second “s” in his name in 1846). He was born in Brandon, Vermont, on April 23, 1813. The facts surrounding Douglas’s early years are foggy, due in part to the various versions of his childhood he issued himself. Unintentionally, while trying to prevent secession by pacifying the Southerners, Douglas’s compromises stoked more violence and helped push the United States over the brink and into Civil War. More than most other antebellum politicians, Stephen Douglas is closely linked with “ Bleeding Kansas” and the Missouri-Kansas “Border War.” A complex man, strongly partisan but committed to the Constitution as the ultimate law of the land, Douglas sponsored both the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

Cause of death: Died of an attack of 'acute rheumatism'.

Political affiliations: Democratic Party.

Claim to fame: In an attempt to prevent secession with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, his compromises backfired, helping to provoke the Civil War.

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