y 17, at Springfield, before
an enthusiastic audience, he proceeded to dissect the matters so
plausibly presented.

At the same hour Douglas was addressing a Springfield audience of
his own, ridiculing especially Mr. Lincoln's alleged attitude toward
the Supreme Court.

Contrasting the disadvantages under which, by reason of an unfair
apportionment of State Legislature representation and otherwise,
the Republicans labored in that campaign, Mr. Lincoln on that
occasion said in the course of his talk:

"Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians
of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have
been looking upon him as certainly, 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, marshalships, and cabinet
appointments, _charge_-ships 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."

He affirmed that Popular Sovereignty, "the great staple" of the
Douglas campaign, was "the most arrant Quixotism that was ever
enacted before a community."

As a result of these preliminary speeches of the Congressional
campaign it was generally conceded that, at last, the "Little Giant"
had met his match, and the intellectual and political appetites of
the public called for more. In recognition of this demand, Mr.
Lincoln opened a correspondence which led to an agreement with Mr.
Douglas for a series of joint discussions, seven in number, on fixed
dates in August, September, and October. Alternately they were,
in succession, to open the discussion and speak for an hour, with
another half-hour at the close after the other had spoken for an
hour and a half continuously. My friend and schoolmate, the late
Mr. R. R. Hitt, an efficient stenographer, was employed to report
the whole series