Stephen A. Douglas and the Dilemmas of Democratic Equality

<P>In this engaging new biography James L. Huston explores the political life of Stephen A. Douglas and his definition and promotion of the ideal of democratic equality. By placing Douglas in the current historiographical controversies of the antebellum period Huston updates our understanding of Douglas and the battles that he fought over the meaning democracy and its institutional framework in the building of the Democratic party the struggle over slavery's extension into the West the meaning of popular sovereignty and the legitimacy of peaceful secession from the Union.</P>