In those days Illinois was a frontier State with about 200,000
population, chiefly settled in its southern half. A large part of
the people were from the South and, in defiance of the law, owned
many negro slaves. The Capital was at Vandalia, although Jacksonville
and Springfield were the towns of highest promise and brightest
prospects. Chicago contained a few score of people to whom the
Indians were still uncomfortably close neighbors. Railroads and
canals were beginning to be built, with promise of closer relations
between the villages and settlements theretofore lost in the
solitudes.
Finding no employment at Jacksonville, he sold his few books to
keep off hunger and walked to Winchester. On the morning after
his arrival he found a crowd assembled on the street where a public
sale was about to open. Delay was occasioned by the want of a
competent clerk and he was hired for two dollars a day to keep the
record of the sale. He was then employed to teach a private school
in the town at a salary of forty dollars a month. Besides teaching
he found time to read a few borrowed law books and try an occasional
case before the village justice.
Having been admitted to the bar in March, 1834, he opened a law
office at Jacksonville. His professional career, though successful,
was so completely eclipsed by the brilliancy of his political
achievements that it need not detain us. The readiness and agility
of his mind; the adaptability of his convictions to the demands
of the hour; his self-confident energy, were such that he speedily
developed into a good trial lawyer and won high standing at the
bar. That the profession was not then as lucrative as it has since
become, is evidenced by the fact that he traveled from Springfield
to Bloomington and argued a case for a fee of five dollars.
But his time and energy were devoted to politics rather than law.
The strategy of parties interested him more than Coke or Justinian.
Jacksonville was a conservative, religious town, whose population
consisted chiefly of New England Puritans and Whigs. But the
prairies were settled by a race of thoroughly Democratic pioneers
to whom the rough victor at New Orleans was a hero in war and a
master in statecraft.
Douglas was an enthusiastic Democrat and an ardent admirer of
President Jackson. The favorite occupation of the young lawyer,
not yet harassed by clients, was to talk politics to the farmers,
or gather them into his half furnished office and discuss more
gravely the questions of party management.
A few days after his arrival the opportunity came to distinguish
himself in the field of his future achievements. A mass meeting was
called at the court house for the purpose of endorsing the policy
of the President in removing the deposits of public money from the
United States bank and vetoing the bill for its recharter. The
opposition was bitter. In the state of public temper it was a
delicate task to present the resolutions. The man who had undertaken
it lost courage at the sight of the multitude and handed them to
Douglas, and the crowd looked with amused surprise when the young
stranger, who was only five feet tall, appeared on the platform. He
read the resolutions of endorsement and supported them in a brief
speech.
When he sat down, Josiah Lamborn, an old and distinguished lawyer
and politician, attacked him and the resolutions in a speech
of caustic severity. Douglas rose to reply. The people cheered
the plucky youngster. The attack had sharpened the faculties
and awakened his fighting courage. He had unexpectedly found the
field of action in which he was destined to become an incomparable
master. For an hour he poured out an impassioned harangue, without
embarrassment or hesitation. Astonishment at what seemed a quaint
freak soon gave way to respect and admiration, and at the close
of this remarkable address the hall and courtyard rang with loud
applause. The excited crowed seized the little orator, lifted him
on their shoulders and bore him in triumph around the square.
The young adventurer in the fields of law and politics was thenceforth
a man of mark--a man to be reckoned with in Illinois. There were
scores of better lawyers and more eminent politicians in the State,
but a real leader, a genuine master of men had appeared.
In January, 1835, the legislature met at Vandalia. Early in the
session it elected Douglas State's Attorney of the First Judicial
District--an extraordinary tribute to the professional or political
ability of the young lawyer of less than a year's standing. He
held the office a little more than a year and resigned to enter
the legislature.
This was a really memorable body. Among its members were James
Shields, afterwards United States Senator, John Calhoun of Lecompton
fame, W. A. Richardson, afterwards Democratic leader in the House
of Representatives, John A. McClernand, destined also to distinguish
service in Congress and still more distinguished service as a major
general and rival in arms of Grant and Sherman, Abraham Lincoln,
an awkward young lawyer, from Springfield, and Douglas, whose fate
it was to give Lincoln his first national prominence and then sink
eclipsed by the rising glory of his great rival. The only memorable
work of the session was the removal of the Capital from Vandalia
to Springfield, and the authorization of twelve millions of debt,
to be contracted for government improvements.
Douglas, who had opposed these extravagant appropriations, having
distinguished himself as a debater, an organizer and a leader, was,
a few days after the adjournment, appointed Register of the United
States Land Office at Springfield, to which place he at once removed.
In the following November he was nominated for Congress. The
district, which included the entire northern part of the State,
was large enough for an empire, with sparse population and wretched
means of communication. The campaign lasted nine months, during
which, having resigned the office of the Register, he devoted himself
to the task of riding over the prairies, interviewing the voters
and speaking in school houses and village halls. The monotony was
relieved by the society of the rival candidate, John T. Stuart,
who as Lincoln's law partner. Stuart was declared elected by a
doubtful majority of five, and Douglas, after soothing his wounded
feelings by apparently well founded charges of an unfair count and
threats of a contest, abandoned it in disgust and returned to his
law office. He announced his determination to quit politics forever.
But in December, 1838, the legislature began a session at the old
Capital. The Governor declared the office of Secretary of State
vacant and appointed John A. McClernand to fill it. Field, the
incumbent, questioned the power of the Governor to remove him and
declined to surrender the office. Quo warranto proceedings were
instituted by McClernand, with Douglas and others as counsel. The
Supreme Court denied the Governor's power of removal. The Court
became involved in the partisan battle which raged with genuine
Western fervor for two years.
In the early weeks of 1841, a bill was passed, reorganizing the
Judiciary, providing for the election by the legislature of five
additional Supreme Judges, and imposing the duties of trial Judges
upon the members of the Court. Meanwhile, Field had grown weary of
the struggle with a hostile Governor and legislature, and, being
threatened with a sweeping change of the Court, resigned in January,
1841. The Governor appointed Douglas his successor. Five weeks
later the legislature chose him Justice of the Supreme Court and
presiding Judge of the Fifth District. He resigned the office of
Secretary and began his judicial career, establishing his residence
at Quincy.
This appointment to the bench was one of the most fortunate incidents
in his busy and feverish life. He was not twenty-eight years old.
Adroit, nimble-witted and irrepressibly energetic as he was, he
had not yet developed much solid strength. His stock of knowledge
was scanty and superficial. From force of circumstances he
had devoted little time to calm thought or serious study. Early
convinced that all truth lay on the surface, patent to him who had
eyes to see, he had plunged into the storm of life and, by his
aggressive and overmastering energy, had conquered a place for
himself in the world. He was an experienced politician, a famous
campaign orator, and a Justice of the Supreme Court at a period
when most boys are awkwardly finding their way into the activities
of the world. The younger Pitt was Chancellor of the Exchequer
at twenty-three; but he was the son of Chatham, nurtured in
statesmanship from the cradle. the younger Adams was Minister to
the Hague at twenty-five; but he was already a ripe scholar and heir
to his father's great fame. Douglas was a penniless adventurer, a
novus homo, with none of those accidents of fortune which sometimes
give early success to gifted men.
The opportunity afforded the young Judge to extend his knowledge
and mingle on terms of equality with the masters of his profession
was such as rarely falls to the lot of a half-educated man of
twenty-eight. He did not become an eminent Judge, yet he left the
bench, after three years' service, with marked improvement in the
solidity and dignity of his character.