urpose to keep hard by Douglas
and to close with him as often as opportunity offered. Soon afterward
the two encountered again, and on this occasion it is narrated that
Lincoln gave Douglas so much trouble that Douglas cried for a truce,
proposing that neither of them should make any more speeches that
autumn, to which Lincoln good-naturedly assented.

During this winter Lincoln was elected to the state legislature, but
contrary to his own wish. For he designed to be a candidate for the
United States Senate, and there might be a question as to his
eligibility if he remained a member of the electing body. Accordingly he
resigned his seat, which, to his surprise and chagrin, was immediately
filled by a Democrat; for there was a reaction in Sangamon County. On
February 8, 1855, the legislature began voting to elect a senator. The
"Douglas Democrats" wished to reelect Shields, the present incumbent.
The first ballot stood, Lincoln, 45, Shields, 41, Lyman Trumbull, 5,
scattering, 5 (or, according to other authority, 8). After several
ballots Shields was thrown over in favor of a more "practicable"
candidate, Governor Matteson, a "quasi-independent," who, upon the ninth
ballot, showed a strength of 47, while Trumbull had 35, Lincoln had run
down to 15, and "scattering" caught 1. Lincoln's weakness lay in the
fact that the Abolitionists had too loudly praised him and publicly
counted him as one of themselves. For this reason five Democrats,
disgusted with Douglas for his attack on the Missouri Compromise, but
equally bitter against Abolitionism, stubbornly refused ever to vote for
a Whig, above all a Whig smirched by Abolitionist applause. So it seemed
that Owen Lovejoy and his friends had incumbered Lincoln with a fatal
handicap. The situation was this: Lincoln could count upon his fifteen
adherents to the extremity; but the five anti-Douglas Democrats were
equally stanch against him, so that his chance was evidently gone.
Trumbull was a Democrat, but he was opposed to the policy of Douglas's
Kansas-Nebraska bill; his following was not altogether trustworthy, and
a trifling defection from it seemed likely to occur and to make out
Matteson's majority. Lincoln pondered briefly; then, subjecting all else
to the great principle of "anti-Nebraska," he urged his friends to
transfer their votes to Trumbull. With grumbling and reluctance they did
so, and by this aid, on the tenth ballot, Trumbull was elected. In a
letter to Washburne