Stephen Arnold Douglas

At twenty, fever-worn and nearly penniless, Stephen A. Douglas kept heading west. When he reached Jacksonville, Illinois, he had just thirty-seven cents—and no clear plan beyond making his way.

Writing in the early twentieth century, William Garrott Brown traces Douglas’s rise from rural New England to the centre of American politics. The book opens against the upheaval of the 1850s, when old parties were collapsing and the argument over slavery grew harder to contain. Douglas begins with little: a thwarted education, a failed search for work, and a body his doctors fear cannot bear Western hardships. Yet in a village auction, he finds a chance to show his quick wit and instinct for politics. Can this unknown young man turn a few lucky openings into a place at the heart of the nation’s most dangerous debate?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.