HYDE PARK — The annual wreath laying at the Stephen Douglas Tomb will be on Saturday.
The annual ceremony will be at 10 a.m. Saturday at the tomb, 636 E. 35th St., by the Stephen A. Douglas Association.
It’s a good chance to remember the complicated figure that Douglas was.
In Illinois, he’s most often remembered as the U.S. senator who debated Abraham Lincoln for hours in the presidential election of 1860.
The tomb stands where Douglas’ farm once stood in what-is-now the mostly black Douglas neighborhood. Though he leant his name to the neighborhood, Douglas is often unpleasantly remembered as a slave owner and for his advocacy of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed slavery to spread to the newly forming Western states.
Douglas was eventually rejected by the pro-slavery factions of the Democratic Party because of his fierce allegiance to democracy and the opinion that such issues should be decided by the people.
