Stephen A. Douglas

He defeated Abraham Lincoln in the 1858 race for the US Senate.  He was the architect of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 which addressed the festering issue of slavery.  He was touted to be a future US President.  He was the complete antithesis of Abraham Lincoln.  He ran against Lincoln in 1860 for US President but was defeated.

In listening to "Lincoln's Melancholy:  How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness", Mr. Douglas was a prominent rival of Lincoln.  It occurred to me that little was heard of him after the 1860 election.  Why?

Douglas died in Chicago from typhoid fever on June 3, 1861, about 3 months after Lincoln's inauguration.  He was 48 years old.  Like many other key figures in US history who rose to prominence quickly and disappeared, likewise was the case for Stephen A. Douglas.