T
he two men facing each other across
the debate stage at Ottawa, Illinois,
on the afternoon of August 21, 1858,
were no strangers to one another.
Indeed, Senator Stephen Douglas and
former one-term congressman Abra-
ham Lincoln had been personal and political
opponents—and more or less friendly neigh-
bors—for the better part of two decades. But
in ways neither man could imagine, their
rivalry was about to grow exponentially and
capture the attention of an increasingly
divided nation. They would speak to each
other, and the rest of the country, in “thun-
der tones,” as Lincoln would report. And
everyone hears thunder when it rolls.
Few political opponents had ever known
each other as well or as long as Douglas and
Lincoln. Almost from the time they arrived in
their adopted home state of Illinois, 16
months apart, in 1831-
1832, they had been
fated to be rivals on the
local, state, and national
scene. Lincoln, who was
four years older, got there
first, literally washing up
on the shore of the tiny
village of New Salem in
the spring of 1831. Resi-
dents of the little village
awoke one late April
morning to see a tall,
homely young man
sweating mightily in the
middle of the Sangamon
River, striving to dislodge
his makeshift flatboat
from its grounding on a
dam in the river’s shal-
lows. By the simple but ingenious method of
drilling a hole in the boat’s foredeck and shift-
ing barrels of goods to the rear, the boat was
tipped over the dam and back into the river.
Lincoln and his three companions went on
their way, but two months later he returned
and settled down in New Salem, where he
quickly struck townsfolk as “a very intelli-
gent young man.” Lincoln had made his first
significant public impression.
Douglas’s arrival in Illinois 19 months laterLEFT: Abraham
Lincoln said of this
photograph, taken
in 1860 in his
adopted hometown
of Springfield, Ill.,
“That looks better
and expresses me
better than any I
have ever seen.” It
was the Lincoln the
North would elect
president that fall.
FAR LEFT:Illinois
Senator Stephen
A. Douglas, pho-
tographed during
the 1860 presiden-
tial election by
famed photogra-
pher Mathew Brady,
seems every inch
“the Little Giant.”CWQ-Sum16 Lincoln Douglas_Layout 1 4/20/16 4:03 PM Page 25