notwithstanding that Illinois was exceptionally full, as
later years were to prove, of young men fitted for such careers as
Douglas sought--notwithstanding, too, that there had already drifted to
New Salem, in the very next county, a young Kentuckian destined to such
eminence that the Illinois of those years is oftenest studied now for
light on him, and is most amply revealed to us in the books about him.

But for the very reason that Douglas rose so fast it is not necessary,
in order to understand how or why he rose, to study the conditions and
men he had to deal with so carefully as they have done who seek to
explain for us the slower progress of that strange career with which his
is indissolubly associated. Jacksonville, which was to be his home for a
few years, was a small country town, but it was the county seat of
Morgan, one of the two wealthiest and most populous counties in the
State. A few years earlier, that whole region had been a frontier, but
the first roughness was now worn away. True, the whole northern half of
Illinois was practically unsettled, and Chicago was but three years old,
and not yet important. But it appears that the general character of the
central counties was already fixed, and what followed was of the nature
of growth rather than change. Certain small towns, like Springfield,
were to become cities, and certain others, like New Salem, were to
disappear. Railroads were not yet, though many were planning, and
manufactures were chiefly of the domestic sort. But in the matter of the
opportunities it presented to aspiring youth the country was already
Western, and no longer wild Western. Hunting shirts and moccasins were
disappearing. Knives in one's belt had gone out of fashion. The merely
adventurous were passing beyond the Mississippi, and the field was open
to the enterprising, the speculative, the ambitious.

Enterprise and speculation were in the air, and ambition, if it took a
political turn, must perforce take account of them. The whole country
was prosperous, and Illinois was possessed with the fever of development
then epidemic throughout the West and the South. If one examines the
legislation of any of the States west of the Alleghanies during the
second administration of President Jackson, by far the most numerous
category of bills will be found to deal with internal improvements,
particularly railroads and canals. Money, however, was needed for these
things, and Illinois, like all