It was the announced purpose of Mr. Douglas to speak between that time and the election at various large towns throughout the State, and Mr. Lincoln was requested to follow and reply to him, according to the prevailing Western custom. The request was united in by prominent men of the three factions, Whigs, Abolitionists, and Anti-Nebraska Democrats, which were already coalescing to form the new party and did not know it. The duty was promptly accepted by Mr. Lincoln, and the two leaders met at Peoria in a second encounter. The results of this destroyed all willingness on the part of Douglas for any further trial of strength. An agreement, afterwards somewhat departed from, was entered into, by the terms of which both combatants retired from the canvass. It was a

political capitulation.

Mr. Lincoln's Peoria speech was printed and widely read. By it his followers were supplied with forcible verbal formulas for the expression of their thoughts and feelings, and all the local speakers of the fall campaign were given a magazine of fresh material to draw upon.

Mr. Douglas, prior to his arrangement for withdrawal, had made an appointment to speak at Lacon, and Mr. Lincoln went to meet him there, but refrained from speaking when he found his opponent disabled by illness. On his return home he learned that his friends, represented by Mr. William Jayne, had announced him in the Journal as a candidate for the State Legislature, and that Mrs. Lincoln, well knowing her husband's views and wishes, had called upon the editor, Mr. Francis, and procured the removal of the announcement from the paper. Of course Mr. Jayne went to see Mr. Lincoln on his arrival, and he thus relates the story of it:

"I went to see him in order to get his consent to run. This was at his house. He was then the saddest man I ever saw; the gloomiest. He walked up and down the floor, almost crying, and to all my persuasions to let his name stand in the paper he said, 'No, I can't. You don't know all. I say you

don't begin to know one half, and that's enough.' I did, how ever, go and have his name reinstated, and there it stood. He and Logan were elected by about six hundred majority."

There is a wonderful simplicity about this whole transaction of wife and husband and devoted friends. Little enough the others knew, unless it may have been to some extent known to his wife, the awful struggle of which the external symptoms so puzzled them.

They seem to have sagely decided, although with some wonder that Lincoln should feel so badly about it, that he had serious doubts of the advisability of going to the Legislature just then. His very soul was wrung to agony; they could see that; but he never took the small trouble to have his candidacy denied. He was elected; and then, as soon as the Legislature came together, he resigned.

There was an obvious reason for the latter step. Mr. Lincoln was well known to be a candidate for United States Senator, in place of James Shields, whose term was expiring. The latter had voted for the Kansas-Nebraska Bill with Mr. Douglas, and the opponents of the hated law were in the majority if their several factions could be induced to act in concert. Some other man than Shields would surely be chosen by the Legislature, and Mr. Lincoln's sense of propriety forbade him to sit as a member of the body which was to act upon his claims as a candidate.

He had a strong desire to go to the Senate, there to continue the war he had so well begun. He was no prophet, and had none to tell him that, for a time at least, private life was a better place for him than the dignified assembly which has been shrewdly described as "the graveyard of Presidential candidates." It was necessary that he should remain a man of the people, among the people; studying the course of events better than that could be done in the heated atmosphere of the Capitol. It was equally needful that he should keep himself untrammeled by the fetters of official responsibility, and that

he should avoid the sure peril of injudicious utterances in the fierce debates that were soon to come, and to which the country was to listen as it had never listened before.

More than all was it needful that the forces preparing and growing within him should have two years of accumulation, rather than exhaustion.

On the 8th of February, 1855, the Legislature took in hand the election of a United States Senator. It was found that Gen. Shields, and after him ex-Governor Mattison, to whom the Democrats transferred their strength, had forty-one votes; while the anti-Democratic majority were divided, giving to Mr. Lincoln forty-five, Mr. Trumbull five, and Mr. Koerner two. Forty-seven were required to elect, and repeated ballotings brought no change in favor of either of the leading candidates. Then came signs of danger that some of Mr. Trumbull's supporters, who were opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska measure, but were Democrats all, and old political opponents of Mr. Lincoln, might relapse into their former party allegiance. Mr. Lincoln's advice was asked and given. He said without a moment's hesitation: "You ought to drop me and go for Trumbull. That is the only way you can defeat Mattison."

His friend, Judge Logan, urged that he should continue to be a candidate, but was firmly answered:

"If I do, you will lose both Trumbull and myself, and I think the cause, in this case, is to be preferred to men."

The Whigs obeyed, in bitterness of spirit, and Lyman Trumbull was chosen Senator instead of Abraham Lincoln. The act of the latter did more than send an able and patriotic man to the Senate. It retained the anti-Nebraska Democratic element in the new party, in that and in other States. It kept Lincoln at home in Illinois, but in charge of all further consolidation of jarring elements, and with the threads of all control more firmly in his hands than ever. His neighbors had trusted his integrity and recognized his capacity. They were now compelled to acknowledge and to honor his rare unselfishness.