I made money faster than I could
ever have believed it possible to me. I was now very well off at
twenty-seven. But was life nothing but money making?
As I had sold the farm on partial payments I was compelled to make
frequent trips to Springfield to collect the purchase money notes; and I
always saw Douglas unless he was away campaigning. By the new census of
1840 Illinois was entitled to seven Congressmen instead of the four
which it had hitherto been allowed. A legislature had reapportioned the
state in such a way as to give Douglas a chance to be elected. Douglas'
friends had called a convention. The re-apportionment of the state was
charged to be arbitrary; the convention was styled "machine-made" with a
view to Douglas' nomination. Had he had a hand in this--the young judge
of the Supreme Court? If so, many others had had a hand in it.
In the convention Douglas' friends rode roughly over the other
aspirants; and when he received the prize they withdrew and accorded him
their support. All of this was the perfection of party organization, to
which Douglas, with a leader's genius, had directed his party from the
moment he had set foot in Jacksonville. Douglas found an opponent in a
Whig of Kentucky birth. A Democrat from Illinois, a Whig from
Kentucky--such was the anomalous situation.
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