STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS SUFFERED ONLY TWO ELECTION LOSSES during his celebrated political career. One was his well-known defeat in the 1860 presidential election, losing to Abraham Lincoln. Less familiar was his loss twenty-two years earlier to Lincoln's first law partner, John T. Stuart, in the 1838 congressional race in the Illinois Third Congressional District. In his 1909 memoir, former vice president Adlai E. Stevenson called the Stuart-Douglas campaign “the most brilliant and exciting contest for the national House of Representatives the State has known.”1 David Davis, who served as a US Supreme Court justice and US senator, had earlier concurred, declaring that “with a national importance attached to the election, it made the contest the most memorable one in the history of the State.”2
Stuart, a Whig, and Douglas, a Democrat, were brilliant young leaders of their parties in Illinois. They demonstrated an evenly matched skill as orators...
