thought a bank of some kind indispensable, and the other side thought and declared the charter of such an institution to be clearly unconstitutional. The resolutions met with fierce opposition in the little caucus. When the day of meeting arrived, the court-house was thronged; people poured into town in wagons, on horseback, and on foot. At twelve o'clock a larger concourse of people had assembled in Jacksonville than had ever met there before. Douglas had previously declined the duty of offering the resolutions, pleading his youth, his short residence in the town, and various personal considerations; but when the hour of meeting arrived, when the court-house was filled to its utmost capacity, when the windows were taken out to enable those outside in the square to hear the proceedings within, the gentleman to whom had been assigned the duty of presenting the resolutions handed them to Douglas, telling him that the opportunity now presented to make an impression was an extraordinary one, and should not be neglected, and was of such personal importance to him (Douglas) that he ought not to allow it to pass. At all events, it was soon ascertained that unless he presented them they would not be offered at all. The meeting having been organized, Douglas boldly advanced, stating that he held in his hands certain resolutions which he supposed would meet the approval of all Democrats: these resolutions he then read, and, in a brief speech, explained and supported them.

As soon as he had taken his seat, Josiah Lamborn, Esq., a lawyer of considerable reputation, subsequently attorney general of the state, a Whig, and a man of great personal influence, followed in opposition to the resolutions. He was severe and caustic in reference to Mr. Douglas, and flatly contradicted a statement of fact made by him. He addressed the meeting for some time. Douglas immediately arose, and at once applied himself to a reply to Lamborn. The question of fact he soon disposed of by calling up several Whigs, who declared Lamborn to be wrong. He then for an hour or more addressed the meeting in his own peculiar style. The effect was irresistible. Lamborn precipitately left the room; and when Douglas concluded his speech, the excitement of the meeting had reached the highest point of endurance; cheer upon cheer was given with hearty vigor; the crowd swayed to and fro to get near the orator, and at length he was seized by them, and, borne

on the shoulders and upheld by the arms of a dozen of his stalwart admirers, was carried out of the court-house and through and around the public square with the most unbounded manifestations of gratitude and admiration. He was greeted with varied but most expressive complimentary titles, such as "Highcombed Cock," "You will be President yet," "Little Giant" —which last title, originating at this first public occasion of his defense of Democratic principles, is yet, with renewed confidence in its appropriateness, applied to him by his friends.

Such was the first appearance of Stephen A. Douglas on the theatre of Illinois politics-a theatre that for twenty-five years has been the constant scene of unbroken triumphs. As on his first appearance he was borne in triumph upon the shoulders of his admiring hearers, so, for a quarter of a century since then, he has been borne upon the hearts of a most generous people. He has made their cause his cause, and, in return, they have made his cause theirs.

That day, the personal and political triumph of the newlydiscovered yet powerful champion of General Jackson's policy settled the political destiny of Morgan County for several years. The speech itself is remembered to this day; and the old veterans who heard Douglas that day, and who have heard him a hundred times since, declare that he has never yet equaled the first speech he delivered in Jacksonville in March, 1834. Morgan County, from that day forth, became Democratic; the Jacksonville News was sustained in its policy. It remained Democratic until Douglas had moved to another county, and the party, feeling secure in its strength, suffered the newspaper to fail for want of support, when it became Whig, and remained a Whig county until, in 1858, it gave a majority for Douglas and democracy.

The history of this meeting was published far and wide in the state, and there was a great desire to see and hear the man -the youthful David-who had compelled an orator like Lamborn to flee from a meeting in his own town. During that year an election was held for governor and lieutenant governor. Joseph Duncan, who for several years had been a representative in Congress, was elected governor, and Alexander M. Jenkins lieutenant governor. Neither had a majority: there being three tickets in the field, Duncan and Jenkins were elected by a plurality of votes. The election took place in August,

and the new officers were installed in January, 1835. The Legislature at that session passed an act changing the mode of appointing certain officers. State's attorneys had previously been appointed by the governor; this act made them elective by the General Assembly in joint convention. The name of Douglas was suggested for the office of attorney for the first judicial district. His friends—and they were all friends who knew him -if few, were ardent in his support. As soon as the act was passed, Mr. Douglas went up to Vandalia, where the Legisla ture was in session. His competitor was JOHN J. HARDIN, one of the most accomplished lawyers in the state, a gentleman universally esteemed and respected, a speaker of the highest order, an experienced prosecutor, and one who had been favorably known to the people of the district for years. On the 10th of February, 1835, the Legislature met in joint convention to elect officers. The vote for state's attorney for the first judicial circuit being taken-we quote the Journal-" Mr. Stephen A. Douglas, Esq., received 38 votes, and John J. Hardin, Esq., 34 votes for that office; scattering, 2."

In the recorded list of the names of those voting for Mr. Douglas on that occasion is that of the now venerable John S. Hacker, at that time a member of the State Senate; Mr. Hacker, in 1858, was dismissed from a small federal office because he refused to support the Republican candidate and oppose Douglas. He had a son in the Legislature of 1858–9 who voted for Douglas's re-election to the Senate. Another name recorded in the list of those who voted for Douglas in 1835 is that of James Hampton, who, in 1859, as a member of the Legislature, had the pleasure of again voting for him-on this latter occasion for his re-election to the Senate, over the combined fury and bitter hostility of the Republican party and federal authorities.

The election of Douglas to the important office of public prosecutor in the most important circuit of the state, over the celebrated Hardin, caused great discussion throughout all Illinois. Those of his political friends who knew him were extravagant in their joy and confident of his success; those who did not know him were doubtful if a mistake had not been made, and his enemies openly declared the election an outrage. One of the Whig judges of the Supreme Court, who has long since expressed the highest opinion of Mr. Douglas's ability,

"What business," he

declared that the election was wrong. asked, "has such a stripling with such an office? he is no lawyer, and has no law-books." A few months sufficed to change the judge's opinion, and a few years more found him recognized as one of the ablest practitioners at the bar of the Supreme Court. We have seen it stated on high authority that during the time Mr. Douglas filled the office of state's attorney, not a single indictment drawn by him was ever quashed; and there was probably not a term of the court in any one of the many counties comprising the large circuit in which there were not more or less criminal cases, embracing, in the aggregate, crime of almost every grade. His success as a public prosecutor, and his personal deportment at the bar, and socially with the people of the several counties to which the duties of his office carried him, rapidly confirmed the high opinions expressed by his friends, and gradually removed all the prejudice which had been created against him by opponents at the time of his election.

An incident that took place during the early days of his attorneyship will illustrate the difficulties he had to encounter, and the promptness and energy with which he met and converted what was intended as a painful humiliation into a proud personal and professional triumph. It was his first term in M'Lean County. There had been some local law violated, and the number of offenders were numerous. The attorney proceeded in the discharge of his duty with great zeal. He sat up all night writing his indictments, and actually closed the business in a short time. The Grand Jury found the bills as prepared, and were forthwith discharged. The bar, having obtained a hint that the new attorney was to be caught and publicly disgraced, waited the denouement with anxiety. The morning after the Grand Jury had been discharged the crisis came. A member of the bar, then, as now, one of the most distinguished lawyers of the state, at the opening of the court, moved to quash all the indictments found at that term, fifty in number, on the ground that they alleged the offenses charged in them as having been committed in "MClean County," a county unknown to the laws of the State of Illinois, the county in which the court was then sitting, and in which the parties were residing, being "M'Lean County." In other words, that the prosecuting attorney had misspelled the name

of the county. The objection, if valid, was a fatal one; and the Grand Jury having been discharged, there was no opportunity to correct the error in spelling. The triumphal glances of the bar, the sharp inquiry of the court if the state's attorney had any thing to say, would have disheartened even a more practiced attorney. The objection was stated in clear and forcible terms; not a lawyer at the bar could see how it was to be overcome; and when the counsel who made the motion took his seat, the laughter and merriment at the counseltable was only equaled by the loud satisfaction expressed in the lobby by the friends and neighbors of the accused. The motion was an entire surprise to the attorney-at least he so expressed himself. He insisted that before the court should decide the question, the original act of the Legislature establishing the county should be produced; when that was done, he informed the court he would possibly have something to say on the motion, if, indeed, that motion was persisted in. This was said with so much confidence and earnestness, and, withal, the position taken was so correct, that the court decided that the attorney was entitled to what he had asked, and that, as the proof required was so easily obtained, counsel should produce the act establishing the county. A number of acts of the Legislature were at once produced, all referring to the county as "M'Lean" County, and the evidence that that was the proper legal name of the county, and had been so recognized through several years of legislation, was positively overwhelming. During the reading of these acts, the remarks of counsel, the emphasis with which the orthography of the name of the county was delivered, was terrible. Several persons approached Douglas and whispered that he would save himself much useless mortification by giving up the contest, and allowing the indictments to be quashed. He refused. There happened at that time to be no copy of the statute establishing the county in Bloomington; Mr. Douglas insisted that the name of the county could only be determined legally by the recital of that act, and, until it was produced, he must insist that the court could not decide that the indictments were fatally defective. He bid the counsel who made the motion, as well as the crowd who seemed to think the escape of criminals but a small matter compared with the professional discomfiture of an attorney, to beware of the consequences of