wning, Shields, Baker, Stuart,
Douglas, and Lincoln.

In this assembly, Douglas encountered in impassioned debate, possibly
for the first time, two men against whom in succession he was soon
to be opposed upon the hustings as candidate for Congress; and
later as an aspirant to yet more exalted stations, another, with
whose name--now "given to the ages"--his own is linked inseparably
for all time.

The most brilliant and exciting contest for the national House
of Representatives the State has known--excepting possibly that of
Cook and McLean a decade and a half earlier--was that of 1838
between John T. Stuart and Stephen A. Douglas. They were the
recognized champions of their respective parties. The district
embraced two-thirds of the area of the State, extending from the
counties immediately south of Sangamon and Morgan, northward to
Lake Michigan and the Wisconsin line. Together on horseback, often
across unbridged streams, and through pathless forest and prairie,
they journeyed, holding joint debates in all the county seats of
the district--including the then villages of Jacksonville, Springfield,
Peoria, Pekin, Bloomington, Quincy, Joliet, Galena, and Chicago.
That the candidates were well matched in ability and eloquence
readily appears from the fact that after an active canvass of
several months, Major Stuart was elected by a majority of but eight
votes. By re-elections he served six years in the House of
Representatives and was one of its ablest and most valuable members.
In Congress, he was the political friend and associate of
Crittenden, Winthrop, Clay, and Webster. Major Stuart lives in my
memory as a splendid type of the Whig statesman of the Golden Age.
Courteous and kindly, he was at all times a Kentucky gentleman
of the old school if ever one trod this blessed earth.

Returning to the bar after his defeat for Congress, Douglas was,
in quick succession, Secretary of State by appointment of the
Governor, and Judge of the Circuit and Supreme Courts by election by
the Legislature. The courts he held as _nisi prius_ judge were in
the Quincy circuit, and the last-named city for a time his home.
His associates upon the Supreme Bench were Justices Treat, Caton, Ford,
Wilson, Scates, and Lockwood. His opinions, twenty-one in number,
will be found in Scammon's Reports. There was little in any of
the causes submitted to test fully his capacity as lawyer or
logician. Enough, however, appears from his cle