The defeat of Clay but intensified his hostility toward his successful rival, and with a following that in personal devotion to its leader has scarcely known a parallel, he was at once the peerless front of a powerful opposition to the Jackson administration.
Such were the existing political conditions throughout the country when Stephen A. Douglas, at the age of twenty-two, first entered the arena of debate. It would not be strange if such environment left its deep impress, and measurably gave direction to his political career. The period of probation and training so essential to ordinary men was unneeded by him. Fully equipped—and with a self-confidence that has rarely had a counterpart—he was from the beginning the earnest defender of the salient measures of the Democratic administration, and the aggressive champion of President Jackson. Absolutely fearless, he took no reckoning of the opposing forces, and regardless of the prowess or ripe experience of adversaries, he at all times, in and out of season, gladly welcomed the encounter. To this end, he did not await opportunities, but eagerly sought them.
His first contest for public office was with John J. Hardin, by no means the least gifted of the brilliant Whig leaders already mentioned. Defeated by Douglas in his candidacy for re-election to the office of Attorney General, Colonel Hardin at a later day achieved distinction as a Representative in Congress, and at the early age of thirty-seven fell while gallantly leading his regiment upon the bloody field of Buena Vista. In the catalogue of men worthy of remembrance, there is to be found the name of no braver, manlier man, than that of John J. Hardin.
With well-earned laurels as public prosecutor, Douglas resigned, after two years' incumbency of that office, to accept that of Representative in the State Legislature. The Tenth General Assembly —to which he was chosen—was the most notable in Illinois history. Upon the roll of members of the House—in the old Capitol at Vandalia —are names inseparably associated with the history of the State and the nation. From its list were yet to be chosen two Governors of the commonwealth, one member of the Cabinet, three Justices of the Supreme Court of the State, eight Representatives in Congress, six Senators, and one President of the United States. That would indeed be a notable assemblage of law-makers in any country or time, that included in its membership McClernand, Edwards, Ewing, Semple, Logan, Hardin, Browning, Shields, Baker, Stuart, Douglas, and Lincoln.
In this assembly, Douglas encountered in impassioned debate, possibly for the first time, two men against whom in succession he was soon to be opposed upon the hustings as candidate for Congress; and later as an aspirant to yet more exalted stations, another, with whose name—now "given to the ages"—his own is linked inseparably for all time.
The most brilliant and exciting contest for the national House of Representatives the State has known—excepting possibly that of Cook and McLean a decade and a half earlier—was that of 1838 between John T. Stuart and Stephen A. Douglas. They were the recognized champions of their respective parties. The district embraced two-thirds of the area of the State, extending from the counties immediately south of Sangamon and Morgan, northward to Lake Michigan and the Wisconsin line. Together on horseback, often across unbridged streams, and through pathless forest and prairie, they journeyed, holding joint debates in all the county seats of the district—including the then villages of Jacksonville, Springfield, Peoria, Pekin, Bloomington, Quincy, Joliet, Galena, and Chicago. That the candidates were well matched in ability and eloquence readily appears from the fact that after an active canvass of several months, Major Stuart was elected by a majority of but eight votes. By re-elections he served six years in the House of Representatives and was one of its ablest and most valuable members. In Congress, he was the political friend and associate of Crittenden, Winthrop, Clay, and Webster. Major Stuart lives in my memory as a splendid type of the Whig statesman of the Golden Age. Courteous and kindly, he was at all times a Kentucky gentleman of the old school if ever one trod this blessed earth.
Returning to the bar after his defeat for Congress, Douglas was, in quick succession, Secretary of State by appointment of the Governor, and Judge of the Circuit and Supreme Courts by election by the Legislature. The courts he held as nisi prius judge were in the Quincy circuit, and the last-named city for a time his home. His associates upon the Supreme Bench were Justices Treat, Caton, Ford, Wilson, Scates, and Lockwood. His opinions, twenty-one in number, will be found in Scammon's Reports. There was little in any of the causes submitted to test fully his capacity as lawyer or logician. Enough, however, appears from his clear and concise statements and arguments to justify the belief that had his life been unreservedly given to the profession of the law, his talents concentrated upon the mastery of its eternal principles, he would in the end have been amply rewarded "by that mistress who is at the same time so jealous and so just." This, however, was not to be, and to a field more alluring his footsteps were now turned. Abandoning the bench to men less ambitious, he was soon embarked upon the uncertain and delusive sea of politics.
His unsuccessful opponent for Congress in 1842 was the Hon. Orville H. Browning, with whom, in the State Legislature, he had measured swords over a partisan resolution sustaining the financial policy of President Jackson. "The whirligig of time brings in his revenges," and it so fell out that near two decades later it was the fortune of Mr. Browning to occupy a seat in the Senate as the successor of Douglas—"touched by the finger of death." At a later day, Mr. Browning, as a member of the Cabinet of President Johnson, acquitted himself with honor in the discharge of the exacting duties of Secretary of the Interior. So long as men of high aims, patriotic hearts, and noble achievements are held in grateful remembrance, his name will have honored place in our country's annals.
The career upon which Douglas now entered was the one for which he was pre-eminently fitted, and to which he had aspired from the beginning. It was a career in which national fame was to be achieved, and—by re-elections to the House, and later to the Senate —to continue without interruption to the last hour of his life. He took his seat in the House of Representatives, December 5, 1843, and among his colleagues were Semple and Breese of the Senate, and Hardin, McClernand, Ficklin, and Wentworth of the House. Mr. Stephens of Georgia,—with whom it was my good fortune to serve in the forty-fourth and forty-sixth Congresses—told me that he entered the House the same day with Douglas, and that he distinctly recalled the delicate and youthful appearance of the latter as he advanced to the Speaker's desk to receive the oath of office. Conspicuous among the leaders of the House in the twenty-eighth Congress were Hamilton Fish, Washington Hunt, Henry A. Wise, Howell Cobb, Joshua R. Giddings, Linn Boyd, John Slidell, Barnwell Rhett, Robert C. Winthrop, the Speaker, Hannibal Hamlin, elected Vice-President upon the ticket with Mr. Lincoln in 1860, Andrew Johnson, the successor of the lamented President in 1865, and John Quincy Adams, whose brilliant career as Ambassador, Senator, Secretary of State, and President, was rounded out by nearly two decades of faithful service as a Representative in Congress.
The period that witnessed the entrance of Douglas into the great Commons was an eventful one in our political history. John Tyler, upon the death of President Harrison, had succeeded to the great office, and was in irreconcilable hostility to the leaders of his party upon the vital issues upon which the Whig victory of 1840 had been achieved. Henry Clay—then at the zenith of his marvellous powers—merciless in his arraignment of the Tyler administration, was unwittingly breeding the party dissentions that eventually compassed his own defeat in his last struggle for the Presidency. Daniel Webster, regardless of the criticism of party associates, and after the retirement of his Whig colleagues from the Tyler cabinet, still remained at the head of the State Department. His vindication, if needed, abundantly appears in the treaty by which our northeastern boundary was definitely adjusted, and war with England happily averted.