c. 1860 Presidential Campaign, STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS Silk Campaign Ribbon for Democratic Candidate for President against Abraham Lincoln, Printed in black on apricot colored Silk with his large central Portrait and Slogan, "OUR NEXT PRESIDENT", Fine.
This historic Printed Silk Campaign Ribbon measuring 4.5 x 2.25 inches, some soiling from use and has an old hinge on the upper reverse, issued for Stephen A. Douglas during the Presidential election of 1860. It is printed in black on Silk with a large Bust Portrait of Douglas and the bold slogan "OUR NEXT PRESIDENT" below. Douglas ran as the Northern Democratic Candidate in 1860, only two years after his famous series of debates with Abraham Lincoln during their 1858 Illinois Senate race. Those debates made both men national figures, and turned largely on Douglas's doctrine of Popular Sovereignty, the idea that settlers in each new Territory should decide for themselves whether to permit Slavery.
That same doctrine of “Popular Sovereignty” split the Democratic Party in 1860. The with Southern delegates walking out to nominate John C. Breckinridge on a separate ticket, a fracture that divided the anti-Republican vote and helped hand Lincoln the presidency with well under half the popular vote nationwide. Douglas campaigned harder and more personally than any presidential candidate before him, touring the country by rail to warn against secession even as the country was already pulling apart beneath him, and he would die barely a year later, in June 1861, just weeks after the war he had tried to prevent had already begun.
[Antebellum Period, Election of 1860, 19th Century America] [Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Popular Sovereignty] [Textiles, Ribbons, Political Campaign Memorabilia]