This is John Bachelor, conversation with Professor Alan Taylor of the University of Virginia,

his new book American Civil Wars, A Continental History 1850 to 1873.

Discussion about Stephen A Douglas of Illinois,

the man who tangles with Abraham Lincoln and the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

A man who has a better idea to solve the divide

between the North and the South over slavery. He comes up with an idea that he is at once embraced by the Congress, but also it's to the

fragmenting of the Democratic Party and what is left of the Whig Party and the creation of the Republican Party.

Here's Stephen A Douglas of Illinois with his better idea and unintended consequences.

More of this tonight. Well, Douglas grew up in New England, and so he's not a southern, but he most Illinois.

And Illinois is, it's one of the swing states at that time.

Southern Illinois had many settlers who had moved over

from southern states.

On the northern part of the state, mostly people

who'd come in from New England or other Northern states.

And Douglas is the dominant Democratic politician in the Northern states.

He is extremely eloquent, Gregarious, powerful memory, very few scruples.

And he is very successful in Illinois politics.

He becomes senator from Illinois.

And he wants to become president.

And to become president within the Democratic Party meant that he would need support in the South.

So he's always casting about for some formula for allowing southern expansion of its slave society into the west,

but in a way that won't be alarming to the northern states.

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