on. In the hubbub that followed
the Compromise of 1850, while Lincoln, abandoning politics, immersed
himself in the law, Douglas rendered a service to the country by
defeating a movement in Illinois to reject the Compromise. When the
Democratic National Convention assembled in 1852, he was sufficiently
prominent to obtain a considerable vote for the presidential nomination.

The dramatic contrast of these two began with their physical appearance.
Douglas was so small that he had been known to sit on a friend's knee
while arguing politics. But his energy of mind, his indomitable force
of character, made up for his tiny proportions. "The Little Giant" was a
term of endearment applied to him by his followers. The mental contrast
was equally marked. Scarcely a quality in Lincoln that was not reversed
in Douglas--deliberation, gradualness, introspection, tenacity, were the
characteristics of Lincoln's mind. The mind of Douglas was first of all
facile. He was extraordinarily quick. In political Strategy he
could sense a new situation, wheel to meet it, throw overboard
well-established plans, devise new ones, all in the twinkle of an eye.
People who could not understand such rapidity of judgment pronounced him
insincere, or at least, an opportunist. That he did not have the deep
inflexibility of Lincoln may be assumed; that his convictions, such
as they were, did not have an ethical cast may be safely asserted.
Nevertheless, he was a great force, an immense human power, that did not
change its course without good reason of its own sort. Far more than
a mere opportunist. Politically, he summed up a change that was coming
over the Democratic party. Janus-like, he had two faces, one for his
constituents, one for his colleagues. To the voter he was still a
Jeffersonian, with whom the old phraseology of the party, liberty,
equality, and fraternity, were still the catch-words. To his associates
in the Senate he was essentially an aristocrat, laboring to advance
interests that were careless of the rights of man. A later age has
accused the Senate of the United States of being the citadel of Big
Business. Waiving the latter view, the historian may assert that
something suggestive of Big Business appeared in our politics in the
'fifties, and was promptly made at home in the Senate. Perhaps its
first definite manifestation was a new activity on the part of the great
slave-holders. To invoke again the classifications of later points
of v