Was Stephen A. Douglas Antislavery?
GRAHAM A. PECK
In 1947 Allan Nevins published the second volume of Ordeal of the Union, which included his scathing indictment of Stephen A. Douglas's willingness to repeal the antislavery provisions of the Missouri Compromise. Nevins especially condemned Douglas's "attitude toward free-soil opinion," which he called "curiously blind and callous, a mixture of incomprehension and indifference." According to Nevins, Douglas's attitude resulted from a lack of "moral repugnance to slavery," which rendered him unable to comprehend the force of northern antislavery convictions. In contrast to his fellow northerners, Douglas possessed a "ledger outlook" toward slavery, much like slaveholders: "When it paid it was good," wrote Nevins, "and when it did not pay it was bad." Nevins consequently judged that Douglas did not "regard a slaveholding society as one whit inferior to a free society." All in all, Nevins rather brutally assessed what he called Douglas's "dim moral perceptions." [1]
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0026.203/--was-stephen-a-douglas-antislavery?rgn=main;view=fulltext
