Sure Was Nice to Get Together With Civil War Folk Again-- Part 2: Illinois' Stephen Douglas

Actually, I should say that this "road trip" to Algonquin was the farthest I've been from home since March 4, when we went to DeKalb, Illinois, for the NIU basketball game.  This trip clocked in at an astounding 20.4 miles.

Back to the 1860 presidential election.  A lot of today's hatred of Stephen Davis among certain folk revolves about his being a slave owner.  I didn't know he owned slaves.  How could he own slaves if he lived in the Free State of Illinois which allowed no slaves?

His original last name was Douglass with a second letter "s", but he dropped it in 1846.  No one knows for sure why, but that was a year after Frederick Douglas published his first autobiography.

ABOUT THOSE SLAVES

In 1847 he married Martha Martin, daughter of the wealthy Robert Martin of North Carolina.  A year after they were married, Martha's father died and he had bequeathed her a 2,500-acre cotton plantation in Mississippi which was worked by 100 slaves.

So that was how he got the slaves.  But if her father lived in North Carolina, how did he get a large plantation in Mississippi?

Well, Anyway.  --Old Secesh