| [BOOK I.] THE CALL OF THE WEST | ||
| [CHAPTER I] | From The Green Mountains To The Prairies | 3 |
| [CHAPTER II] | The Rise Of The Politician | 18 |
| [CHAPTER III] | Law And Politics | 51 |
| [CHAPTER IV] | Under The Aegis Of Andrew Jackson | 68 |
| [CHAPTER V] | Manifest Destiny | 84 |
| [CHAPTER VI] | War And Politics | 109 |
| [CHAPTER VII] | The Mexican Cession | 127 |
[BOOK II.] THE DOCTRINE OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY | ||
| [CHAPTER VIII] | Senator And Constituency | 145 |
| [CHAPTER IX] | Measures Of Adjustment | 166 |
| [CHAPTER X] | Young America | 191 |
| [CHAPTER XI] | The Kansas-Nebraska Act | 220 |
| [CHAPTER XII] | Black Republicanism | 260 |
| [CHAPTER XIII] | The Testing Of Popular Sovereignty | 281 |
[BOOK III.] THE IMPENDING CRISIS | ||
| [CHAPTER XIV] | The Personal Equation | 309 |
| [CHAPTER XV] | The Revolt Of Douglas | 324 |
| [CHAPTER XVI] | The Joint Debates With Lincoln | 348 |
| [CHAPTER XVII] | The Aftermath | 393 |
| [CHAPTER XVIII] | The Campaign Of 1860 | 412 |
| [CHAPTER XIX] | The Merging Of The Partisan In The Patriot | 442 |
| [CHAPTER XX] | The Summons | 475 |
| [INDEX] | 490 | |
BOOK I[ToC]
THE CALL OF THE WEST
CHAPTER I[ToC]
FROM THE GREEN MOUNTAINS TO THE PRAIRIES
The dramatic moments in the colonizing of coastal New England have passed into song, story, and sober chronicle; but the farther migration of the English people, from tide-water to interior, has been too prosaic a theme for poets and too diverse a movement for historians. Yet when all the factors in our national history shall be given their full value, none will seem more potent than the great racial drift from the New England frontier into the heart of the continent. The New Englanders who formed a broad belt from Vermont and New York across the Northwest to Kansas, were a social and political force of incalculable power, in the era which ended with the Civil War. The New Englander of the Middle West, however, ceased to be altogether a Yankee. The lake and prairie plains bred a spirit which contrasted strongly with the smug provincialism of rock-ribbed and sterile New England. The exultation born of wide, unbroken, horizon lines and broad, teeming, prairie landscapes, found expression in the often-quoted saying, "Vermont is the most glorious spot on the face of this globe for a man to be born in, provided he emigrates when he is very young." The career of Stephen Arnold Douglas is intelligible only as it is viewed against the background of a New England boyhood, a young manhood passed on the prairies of Illinois, and a wedded life pervaded by the gentle culture of Southern womanhood.