for his party, while the legislature to be elected is to have the responsibility of electing the senator. But with this endorsement, no Republican member of the state legislature would dare to bolt the significant expression of the Springfield Convention. Mr. Douglas, on the other hand, has no nomination. Returning home, he found Mr. Lincoln prepared, and at once he mounted the platform and opened upon him. He is stumping for himself, and trying to vindicate his course to the people at large on the one hand, and to the administration scoffers on the other.
[New York Times, July 16, 1858]
SENATORIAL CONTEST IN ILLINOIS
The Republican candidate for United States Senator, the Hon. Abraham Lincoln, was present on Saturday evening when Mr. Douglas made his address published in Tuesday's Times to the crowd assembled in honor of his arrival in Chicago. On Monday evening Mr. Lincoln replied to his distinguished competitor, and we give his speech in full this morning. He, too, received an enthusiastic welcome and the war between the two champions was fitly inaugurated in the chief city of Illinois. . . . . Until November, therefore, the contest will go on with increasing vigor. Mr Douglas has an undertaking on hand which will task his utmost powers, and he is not the man to flinch from a contest because the odds are against him.
[New York Herald, July, 27, 1858]
RECEPTION OF LINCOLN
On Monday night there was a large gathering in the legislative hall of the Capitol to hear the Honorable Abraham Lincoln in reply to Mr. Douglas. Mr. Lincoln, though not perhaps so well calculated for a leader as Senator Douglas, is a remarkably able man. In addition to his talents as a lawyer, he has many personal qualities which have endeared him to the people of Illinois, and will be beyond all question the strongest opponent that could be found in the State to oppose Mr. Douglas.
It is, we believe somewhat of an anomaly for a Senator of the United States to be stumping the State, and another who wishes to be Senator following in his wake, yet thus it is at the present time in Illinois, and none can have heard either these gentlemen speak without being impressed and highly gratified with the fact that whenever reference is made by either to the other, it is in the kindest, most
