Published August 16, 2020
By Reg Ankrom
They were almost mirror images. Congressmen Stephen A.
Douglas of Quincy and David Settle Reid of Reidsville, North Carolina, a town
named for his father, were both freshmen members of the 28th
Congress of the United States. Their seat assignments in the House of
Representatives as Congress began on December 5, 1843, put them next to each
other.
Reid and Douglas were born within four days of each
other, Reid on April 19, 1813, and Douglas on April 23. Both were equally
ambitious. Although Reid had been admitted to the North Carolina bar in 1833, a
year before Douglas was certified to practice in Illinois, it was Douglas who
had vaulted his way through its practice. Then law became an afterthought.
After Douglas hung his shingle on the front wall of the Morgan County
courthouse, the county’s 11 Whig attorneys conspired to “starve him out.” That would
be unnecessary. Douglas’s interest in jurisprudence was half-hearted. He more
often closed the door of his first floor office to talk politics with his denim-clad
visitors rather than to keep private any conversations with clients.
Both bachelors, Reid and Douglas were young—and
Jacksonian in their Democratic politics. The two men, each 5’4” tall and 105
pounds, looked eye to eye on nearly every vote they cast. Friend Reid’s most
important contribution to his Illinois seatmate, however, had nothing to do
with national politics or law or debates about them.
In
1843, Reid’s uncle, Robert Martin of Wentworth in north-central North Carolina,
arrived in Washington with daughters Lucinda and Martha to watch their cousin
sworn in as their representative in Congress. As a boy, Reid had worked in
Martin’s Wentworth store and now continued the family’s tradition in elective
politics. Martin’s uncle Alexander had been a member of the Continental
Congress, twice governor of North Carolina, and three times a U.S. Senator. The
Reids also had been legislators and judges.
Planning
a six-week stay in Washington, Martin asked Reid to escort and introduce Lucinda
and Martha to his friends. Reid asked Congressman Douglas to join them. Martha,
who at 15 was half Douglas’s age, was his height, thin, bobbed-haired, hazel
eyed, and an alumna of boarding schools in Salem, North Carolina, and
Washington. Douglas took her to dances, receptions, and plays. He was smitten.
Throughout her stay, he sent flowers and candy to her. When she returned home,
he feared he would never see her again.
Reid
made sure the courtship would continue. At the end of the congressional
session, he invited Douglas to Rockingham County, where the Douglas-Martin
romance resumed. At summer’s end, Martha Martin returned to a Philadelphia finishing
school to continue studies in music and lessons in piano and harp. While there,
she had three serious suitors, all lawyers, including Douglas. Her father and
cousin were influential, however, in their preference for Douglas, who already had
been an Illinois secretary of state, circuit judge, Supreme Court justice, and
now congressman. Martin believed that for Douglas there were more honors ahead.
Their
doting father saw that his daughters had everything they wanted. So when
Lucinda, whose life seemed so promising when she married a young physician,
died on September 15, 1846, the family fell into a deep despair. Robert Martin
wrote Douglas that intense agony and fever had gripped Martha, and her mother’s
grief was likely to be worse. “Everything about our House, Yard, and Garden
seems to wear the most melancholy aspect,” he wrote. “We look only to God for
relief.” Under the circumstances, he added, “we cannot think of receiving any
company.” He advised Douglas to stay away for several months.
The
Illinois General Assembly on December 13, 1846, elected Douglas U.S. senator.
Colonel Martin and daughter Martha were in the Senate gallery on March 4, 1847,
to see him sworn in. At the end of the session, Douglas returned with the Martins
to Rockingham County, where on April 7 Stephen Douglas, 34, and Martha Martin,
18, were wed on the Martin’s tobacco plantation that stretched a mile along the
Dan River.
The
following day, Colonel Martin proposed to transfer to Douglas ownership of his second
slave plantation in Lawrence County in southern Mississippi. Douglas declined
the wedding gift. Martin presumed it was because Douglas was a northern man whose
moral principles and political circumstances prevented it. Martin, who died a
year later, left it to his daughter and willed Douglas 20 percent of the
plantation’s income to manage it.
The
new Mrs. Douglas not feeling well, Douglas decided to make the trip from North
Carolina to Illinois in Colonel Martin’s more spacious brougham carriage. The couple
made frequent rest stops and arrived in Quincy on May 18, 1847. The Martins
decided to follow Martha as she was their only child. They arranged to sell the
Dan River plantation and “settle for life in the neighborhood of Quincy.”
Martin
had planned the move extensively. He had two “waggons” custom built and
itemized the furnishings and goods in a lengthy list each would carry. He sent
a detailed itinerary to Martha. “To Quincy. Rent a house – superintend the
workmen on our buildings – Garden – Grounds, etc. . . .I believe I gave you and
Judge D. both my view concerning buying land in Illinois and advised you not to
engage any more than the 180 acres already purchased until I could see you.”
The
Quincy Whig
on May 18, 1847, in a vignette noted the arrival of Senator
and Mrs. Douglas, who lodged at the Quincy Hotel on the southeast corner of
Fourth and Main Streets. Within a few days, Mrs. Douglas determined Quincy not
to her liking, early enough for her parents to change their plan for relocation
in Western Illinois. With Senator Douglas’s constituency spread across the
state, the couple by late summer of 1847 moved to Chicago and lodged in the
Tremont Hotel. Douglas kept his official residence in Quincy until 1849. He
retained his membership as a “Companion” in the Quincy Chapter No. 5 of the
Masonic Lodge in Quincy through 1858.
Sources
Acklen, Jeanette T.
Tennessee Records: Tombstone
Inscriptions and Manuscripts.
(Baltimore
Genealogical
Publishing Co., Inc., 1967), 211.
Ankrom, Reg.
Stephen A. Douglas: The Political
Apprenticeship, 1833-1843.
(Jefferson, North
Carolina:
McFarland Publishing Co., 2015), xi.
―――, “Steven A. Douglas: Western Man, 1844-1850,”
unpublished manuscript, 2020.
Barkley, Meredith. “Love Story: Douglas Won Her Hand,”
Greensboro (North Carolina) News
and
Record,
April 28, 1993.
Johannsen, Robert W.
Stephen A. Douglas.
(New
York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 209.
Lane, Francie.
The Martin Family History, Volume IV
.
(Yuba City, California: Francie Lane),
242,
245, 304, 306, 310.
Robert Martin to Martha Denny Martin Douglas, July 10,
1847, in Lane,
The Martin Family
History,
312.
Rodenbough, Charles
Settle: A Family Journey
Through Slavery.
(Santa Monica, California:
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