The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln's Thirty-Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America

From the time they first set foot in Illinois in the early 1830s, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas were fated to become political competitors. The Long Pursuit tells the dramatic story of how these two radically different individuals rose to the pinnacle of American politics, and how their personal rivalry shaped and altered the future of the nation during its most convulsive era. Indeed, had it not been for Douglas, who served as Lincoln’s personal goad, pace horse, and measuring stick, there would have been no Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, no Lincoln presidency in 1860, and perhaps no Civil War six months later.

 

The Long Pursuit is not only a detailed political study but also a compelling look at the personal side of politics on the rough-and-tumble western frontier. It shows us a more human Lincoln, a bare-knuckles politician who was not above trading on his wildly inaccurate image as a humble “rail-splitter” when he was, in fact, one of the nation’s most successful railroad attorneys. And as the first extensive biographical study of Stephen Douglas in more than three decades, the book presents a long-overdue reassessment of one of the nineteenth century’s more compelling and ultimately tragic figures, the one-time “Little Giant” of American politics.