Lincoln, the unknown

I94 • LINCOLN THE UNKNOWNcool sands. Horses fell in their harness and lay dying in thestreets.But notwithstanding the heat, thousands of excited men,guns in their pockets, flocked to hear Douglas. No hall in Chicagocould hold the throng. They packed a public square, andhundreds stood on balconies and sat astride the roofs of near-byhouses.The very first sentence that Douglas uttered was greeted withgroans and hisses. He continued to talk—or, at least, he continuedto try—and the audience yelled and booed and sang insultingsongs and called him names that are unprintable.His excited partizans wanted to start a fight. Douglas beggedthem to be quiet. He would tame the mob. He kept on trying,but he kept on failing. When he denounced the "ChicagoTribune," the great gathering cheered the paper. When hethreatened to stand there all night unless they let him speak,eight thousand voices sang: "We won't go home until morning.We won't go home until morning."It was a Saturday night. Finally, after four hours of futilityand insult, Douglas took out his watch and shouted at the howling,bellowing, milling mob: "It is now Sunday morning, I'll goto church. And you can go to hell."Exhausted, he gave up and left the speaker's stand. TheLittle Giant had met humiliation and defeat for the first timein his life.The next morning the papers told all about it; and down inSpringfield, a proud, plump brunette, trembling on the brinkof middle age, read it with peculiar satisfaction. Fifteen yearsbefore, she had dreamed of being Mrs. Douglas. For years shehad watched him mount on wings until he had become the mostpopular and powerful leader in the nation, while her husbandhad gone down in humiliating defeat; and, deep in her heart,she resented it.But now, thank God, the haughty Douglas was doomed. Hehad split his own party in his own State. And just before theelection. This was Lincoln's chance. And Mary Lincoln knewit—his chance to win back the public favor that he had lost in1848, his chance to reinstate himself politically, his chance tobe elected to the United States Senate. True, Douglas still hadfour more years to serve. But his colleague was coming up forreelection in a few months.And who was his colleague? A swaggering, pugnacious Irish-