"He loved his country partly because it was his own country, and
mostly because it was a free country; and he burned with a zeal for
its advancement, prosperity, and glory, because he saw in such the
advancement, prosperity and glory of human liberty, human right and
human nature."(19)




VIII. A RETURN TO POLITICS

Meanwhile, great things were coming forward at Washington. They centered
about a remarkable man with whom Lincoln had hitherto formed a curious
parallel, by whom hitherto he had been completely overshadowed. Stephen
Arnold Douglas was prosecuting attorney at Springfield when Lincoln
began the practice of law. They were in the Legislature together. Both
courted Mary Todd. Soon afterward, Douglas had distanced his rival. When
Lincoln went to the House of Representatives as a Whig, Douglas went
to the Senate as a Democrat. While Lincoln was failing at Washington,
Douglas was building a national reputation. In the hubbub that followed
the Compromise of 1850, while Lincoln, abandoning politics, immersed
himself in the law, Douglas rendered a service to the country by
defeating a movement in Illinois to reject the Compromise. When the
Democratic National Convention assembled in 1852, he was sufficiently
prominent to obtain a considerable vote for the presidential nomination.

The dramatic contrast of these two began with their physical appearance.
Douglas was so small that he had been known to sit on a friend's knee
while arguing politics. But his energy of mind, his indomitable force