"
He had written the heads of what he intended to say on a few pages of foolscap paper, which he placed on a friend's desk, bordering on an alley-way, which he had obtained permission to speak from. At first he followed his notes; but, as he warmed up, he left his desk and his notes, to stride down the alley towards the Speaker's chair, holding his left hand behind him so that he could now and then shake the tails of his own rusty, black broadcloth dress-coat, while he earnestly gesticulated with his long right arm, shaking the bony index-finger at the Democrats on the other side of the chamber. Occasionally, as he would complete a sentence amid shouts of laughter, he would return up the alley to his desk, consult his notes, take a sip of water, and ."
99 The Baltimore American called it "the crack speech of the day," and said of Lincoln: "He is a very able, acute, uncouth, honest, upright man and a tremendous wag withal.... Mr. Lincoln's manner was so good-natured, and his style so peculiar, that he kept the House in a continuous roar of merriment for the last half-hour of his speech. He would commence a point in his speech far up one of the aisles, and keep on talking, gesticulating, and walking until he would find himself, at the end of a paragraph, down in the centre of the area in front of the clerk's desk. He would then go back and take another head, and work down again. And so on, through his capital speech."
Referring to another brief speech made in defence of his Committee on Post Roads, Lincoln wrote a friend at home, "As to speech-making, by way of getting the hand of the House, I made a little speech two or three days ago on a post-office question of no general interest. I find speaking here and elsewhere about the same thing. I was about as badly scared, and no worse, as I am when I speak in court. I expect to make one within a week or two in which I hope to succeed well enough to wish you to see it reenex facial."
The speech he was then preparing was delivered four days later. It was his first formal appearance in Congress, and, according to custom, he finished the occasion by a series of resolutions referring to President Polk's declaration that the war of 1848 had been begun by Mexico's "invading our territory and shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil," and calling upon him to give the House specific information as to the invasion and bloodshed. These resolutions were frequently referred to afterwards in his political contests, and were relied upon to sustain a charge of lack of patriotism during the Mexican War made by Mr. Douglas against their author.
Like all young members of the House of Representatives,100 Lincoln was compelled to remain in the background most of the time; but he learned a great deal in his brief experience, and created such an impression by his speeches that upon the adjournment he was invited to enter the Presidential campaign of 1848 in New England, making his first speech at Worcester, where the meeting was presided over by ex-Governor Levi Lincoln, who was also a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, of Hingham. The New England newspapers and people gave him many compliments and in subsequent campaigns repeated their invitations Filing Cabinet.
The first collision between Lincoln and Douglas occurred during the Harrison Presidential campaign of 1840, and from that time they were regarded as active rivals. These two remarkable men became acquainted in 1834 during Lincoln's first session in the Legislature at Vandalia, then the capital of Illinois. Mr. Douglas was four years younger and equally poor. In his youth he had been apprenticed to a cabinet-maker in Vermont, had studied law under very much the same difficulties as Lincoln, was admitted to the bar as soon as he was twenty-one, and came to Springfield, with no acquaintances and only thirty-seven cents in his pocket, to contest for the office of State attorney with John J. Hardin, one of the most prominent and successful lawyers of the State. By the use of tactics peculiar to his life-long habits as a politician, he secured the appointment, made a successful prosecutor, and in 1836 was elected to the Legislature, and occupied a position on the Democratic side of that body similar to that occupied by Lincoln on the Whig side. In 1837 he secured from President Van Buren the appointment of Register of the Public Land Office, and made Springfield his home. In the fall of the same year he was nominated to Congress against John T. Stuart, Lincoln's law partner and friend, and the campaign which followed was one of the most remarkable in the history of the State, with Lincoln, as101 usual, the conspicuous figure upon the Whig stump. When the vote was counted, Stuart received a majority of only fourteen out of a total of thirty-six thousand.
Douglas charged fraud, and his reckless attack upon the integrity of Stuart aroused in Lincoln's breast a resentment which never died. From that time he regarded Douglas with strong dislike and disapproval, and, although his natural generosity as well as his sense of propriety silenced his tongue in public, he never concealed from his friends his conviction that Douglas was without political morals. At the same time he recognized the ability and power of "the Little Giant" as Douglas was already called, and no one estimated more highly his ability as an orator and his skill as a debater. Personally, Douglas was a very attractive man. He had all the graces that Lincoln lacked,—short and slight of stature, with a fine head, a winning manner, graceful carriage, a sunny disposition, and an enthusiastic spirit. His personal magnetism was almost irresistible to the old as well as the young, and his voice was remarkable for its compass and the richness of its tones. On the other hand, Lincoln was ungainly and awkward; his voice was not musical, although it was very expressive; and, as I have before said, he often acknowledged that there was no homelier man in all the States.
Douglas recognized an antagonist who was easier to avoid than to meet, and attempted to keep Lincoln out of his path by treating him as an inferior. On one occasion, when both happened to be in the same town, there was a strong desire among the people to hear them discuss public questions. The proposition irritated Judge Douglas, who, with his usual arrogance, inquired,—
"What does Lincoln represent in this campaign? Is he an abolitionist or a Whig?
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