With much the same desperation with which a gambler plays his last stake, he took passage on a river boat up the Illinois, and set foot upon the soil of the great prairie State.1

A primitive stage coach plied between the river and Jacksonville. Too fatigued to walk the intervening distance, Douglass mounted the lumbering vehicle and ruefully paid his fare. From this point of vantage he took in the prairie landscape. Morgan County was then but sparsely populated. Timber fringed the creeks and the river bottoms, while the prairie grass grew rank over soil of unsuspected fertility. Most dwellings were rude structures made of rough-hewn logs and designed as makeshifts. Wildcats and wolves prowled through the timber lands in winter, and game of all sorts abounded.2 As the stage swung lazily along, the lad had ample time to let the first impression of the prairie landscape sink deep. In the timber, the trees were festooned with bitter-sweet and with vines bearing wild grapes; in the open country, nothing but unmeasured stretches of waving grass caught the eye.3 To one born and bred among the hills, this broad horizon and unbroken landscape must have been a revelation. Weak as he was, Douglass drew in the fresh autumnal air with zest, and unconsciously borrowed from the face of nature a sense of unbounded capacity. Years afterward, when he was famous, he testified, "I found my mind liberalized and my opinions enlarged, when I got on these broad prairies, with only the heavens to bound my vision, instead of having

1MS. Autobiography.

Kirby, Sketch of Joseph Duncan in Fergus Historical Series No. *; also Historic Morgan, p. 60. 3 Ibid.

them circumscribed by the little ridges that surrounded the valley where I was born." But of all this he was unconscious, when he alighted from the stage in Jacksonville. He was simply a wayworn lad, without a friend in the town and with only one dollar and twentyfive cents in his pocket.2

Jacksonville was then hardly more than a crowded village of log cabins on the outposts of civilized Illinois. Comfort was not among the first concerns of those who had come to subdue the wilderness. Comfort implied leisure to enjoy, and leisure was like Heaven,―to be attained only after a wearisome earthly pilgrimage. Jacksonville had been scourged by the cholera during the summer; and those who had escaped the disease had fled the town for fear of it. By this time, however, the epidemic had spent itself, and the refugees had returned. All told, the town had a population of about one thousand souls, among whom were no less than eleven lawyers, or at least those who called themselves such.5

A day's lodging at the Tavern ate up the remainder of the wanderer's funds, so that he was forced to sell a few school books that he had brought with him. Meanwhile he left no stone unturned to find employment to his liking. One of his first acquaintances was Murray McConnell, a lawyer, who advised him to go. to Pekin, farther up the Illinois River, and open a law office. The young man replied that he had no license to practice law and no law books. He was assured

1 Speech at Jonesboro, in the debate with Lincoln, Sept. 15, 1858.

2 MS. Autobiography.

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Kirby, Joseph Duncan.

James S. Anderson in Historic Morgan.

"Peck, Gazetteer of Illinois, 1834.

the debates in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Federalist, the works of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, and the recent debates in Congress.

Even while he was teaching school, Douglass found time to practice law in a modest way before the justices of the peace; and when the first of March came, he closed the schoolhouse door on his career as pedagogue. He at once repaired to Jacksonville and presented himself before a justice of the Supreme Court for license to practice law. After a short examination, which could not have been very searching, he was duly admitted to the bar of Illinois. He still lacked a month of being twenty-one years of age.1 Measured by the standard of older communities in the East, he knew little law; but there were few cases in these Western courts which required much more than common-sense, ready speech, and acquaintance with legal procedure. Stare decisis was a maxim that did not trouble the average lawyer, for there were few decisions to stand upon.2 Besides, experience would make good any deficiencies of preparation.

1MS. Autobiography.

2 Hon. J. C. Conkling in Fergus Historical Series, No. 22.

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couragement.1 The intimacy which followed was of great value to the younger man, who needed just the advertising which the editor was in a position to give. The bond between them was their devotion to the fortunes of Andrew Jackson. Together they labored to consolidate the Democratic forces of the county, with results which must have surprised even the sanguine young lawyer.

The political situation in Morgan County, as the State election approached, is not altogether clear. President Jackson's high-handed acts, particularly his attitude toward the National Bank, had alarmed many men who had supported him in 1832. There were defections in the ranks of the Democracy. The State elections would surely turn on national issues. The Whigs were noisy, assertive, and confident. Largely through the efforts of Brooks and Douglass, the Democrats of Jacksonville were persuaded to call a mass-meeting of all good Democrats in the county. It was on this occasion, very soon after his arrival in town, that Douglass made his début on the political stage.

It is said that accident brought the young lawyer into prominence at this meeting. A well-known Democrat who was to have presented resolutions, demurred, at the last minute, and thrust the copy into Douglass' hands, bidding him read them. The Court House was full to overflowing with interested observers of this little by-play. Excitement ran high, for the opposition within the party was vehement in its protest to cutand-dried resolutions commending Jackson. An older an with more discretion and modesty, would have hesitated to face the audience; but Douglass possessed Sheahan, Life of Douglas, pp. 16-17.

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neither retiring modesty nor the sobriety which comes with years. He not only read the resolutions, but he defended them with such vigorous logic and with such caustic criticism of Whigs and half-hearted Democrats, that he carried the meeting with him in tumultuous approval of the course of Andrew Jackson, past and present.1

The next issue of the Patriot, the local Whig paper, devoted two columns to the speech of this young Democratic upstart; and for weeks thereafter the editor flayed him on all possible occasions. The result was such an enviable notoriety for the young attorney among Whigs and such fame among Democrats, that he received collection demands to the amount of thousands of dollars from persons whom he had never seen or known. In after years, looking back on these beginnings, he used to wonder whether he ought not to have paid the editor of the Patriot for his abuse, according to the usual advertising rates. The political outcome was not in every respect so gratifying. The Democratic county ticket was elected and a Democratic congressman from the district; but the Whigs elected their candidate for governor.

2

A factional quarrel among members of his own party gave Douglass his reward for services to the cause of Democracy, and his first political office. Captain John Wyatt nursed a grudge against John J. Hardin, Esq., who had been elected State's attorney for the district through his influence, but who had subsequently proved ungrateful. Wyatt had been re-elected member of the

1 Sheahan's account of this incident (pp. 18-20) is confused. The episode is told very differently in the MS. Autobiography. MS. Autobiography.

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