with the new political organization, and was in
very truth one of the builders of the Republican party. At its
first national convention, in 1856, he received a large vote for
nomination to the Vice-Presidency, and during the memorable campaign
of that year canvassed the State in advocacy of the election of
Fremont and Dayton, the candidates of the Philadelphia convention.

In the year 1858--that of the great debates--Douglas was the better
known of the opposing candidates in the country at large. In a
speech then recently delivered in Springfield, Mr. Lincoln said:

"There is still another disadvantage under which we labor and to
which I will ask your attention. It arises out of the relative
positions of the two persons who stand before the State as candidates
for the Senate. Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the
anxious politicians of his party have been looking upon him as
certainly at no distant day to be the President of the United
States. They have seen in his ruddy, jolly, fruitful face,
postoffices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments,
and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful
exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. On
the contrary, nobody has ever seen in my poor lank face that any
cabbages were sprouting out."

Both, however, were personally well known in Illinois. Each was
by unanimous nomination the candidate of his party. Douglas had
known sixteen years of continuous service in one or the other House
of Congress. In the Senate, he had held high debate with
Seward, Sumner, and Chase from the North, and during the last
session--since he had assumed a position of antagonism to the
Buchanan administration--had repeatedly measured swords with Tombs,
Benjamin, and Jefferson Davis, chief among the great debaters of
the South.

Mr. Lincoln's services in Congress had been limited to a single
term in the lower house, and his great fame was yet to be achieved,
not as a legislator, but as Chief Executive during the most critical
years of our history.

Such, in brief, were the opposing candidates as they entered the
lists of debate at Ottawa, on the twenty-first day of August, 1858.
Both were in the prime of manhood, thoroughly equipped for the
conflict, and surrounded by throngs of devoted friends. Both were
gifted with remarkable forensic powers and alike hopeful as to the
result. Each recognizing fully the strength of his opponent