ly supported, though unsuccessful candidate for
the Democratic Presidential nomination. In 1858 he was put at or near
the head of every list of possible Presidential candidates made up for
1860.

How barren Lincoln's public career in comparison! Three terms in the
lower house of the State Assembly, one term in Congress, then a
failure which drove him from public life. Now he returns as a bolter
from his party, a leader in a new organization which the conservatives
are denouncing as "visionary," "impractical," "revolutionary."

No one recognized more clearly than Lincoln the difference between
himself and his opponent. "With me," he said, sadly, in comparing the
careers of himself and Douglas, "the race of ambition has been a
failure--a flat failure. With him it has been one of splendid
success." He warned his party at the outset that, with himself as a
standard-bearer, the battle must be fought on principle alone, without
any of the external aids which Douglas's brilliant career gave.
"Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown," he said; "All the anxious
politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years
past, have been looking upon him as certain, at no distant day, to be
the President of the United States. They have seen in his round,
jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshal-ships, and
cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and
sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by
their greedy hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive
picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken
place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but
with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him
marches, triumphal entries, and receptions beyond what even in the
days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his
favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President.
In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages
were sprouting out. These are disadvantages, all taken together, that
the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon
principle, and upon principle alone."

If one will take a map of Illinois and locate the points of the
Lincoln and Douglas debates held between August 21 and October 15,
1858, he will see that the whole State was traversed in the contest.
The first took place at Ottawa, about seventy-five miles sou