The political situation in Morgan County, as the State election approached, is not altogether clear.  President Jackson’s high-handed acts, particularly his attitude toward the National Bank, had alarmed many men who had supported him in 1832.  There were defections in the ranks of the Democracy.  The State elections would surely turn on national issues.  The Whigs were noisy, assertive, and confident.  Largely through the efforts of Brooks and Douglass, the Democrats of Jacksonville were persuaded to call a mass-meeting of all good Democrats in the county.  It was on this occasion, very soon after his arrival in town, that Douglass made his debut on the political stage.

It is said that accident brought the young lawyer into prominence at this meeting.  A well-known Democrat who was to have presented resolutions, demurred, at the last minute, and thrust the copy into Douglass’ hands, bidding him read them.  The Court House was full to overflowing with interested observers of this little by-play.  Excitement ran high, for the opposition within the party was vehement in its protest to cut-and-dried resolutions commending Jackson.  An older man with more discretion and modesty, would have hesitated to face the audience; but Douglass possessed neither retiring modesty nor the sobriety which comes with years.  He not only read the resolutions, but he defended them with such vigorous logic and with such caustic criticism of Whigs and half-hearted Democrats, that he carried the meeting with him in tumultuous approval of the course of Andrew Jackson, past and present.[39]

The next issue of the Patriot, the local Whig paper, devoted two columns to the speech of this young Democratic upstart; and for weeks thereafter the editor flayed him on all possible occasions.  The result was such an enviable notoriety for the young attorney among Whigs and such fame among Democrats, that he received collection demands to the amount of thousands of dollars from persons whom he had never seen or known.  In after years, looking back on these beginnings, he used to wonder whether he ought not to have paid the editor of the Patriot for his abuse, according to the usual advertising rates.[40] The political outcome was not in every respect so gratifying.  The Democratic county ticket was elected and a Democratic congressman from the district; but the Whigs elected their candidate for governor.

A factional quarrel among members of his own party gave Douglass his reward for services to the cause of Democracy, and his first political office.  Captain John Wyatt nursed a grudge against John J. Hardin, Esq., who had been elected State’s attorney for the district through his influence, but who had subsequently proved ungrateful.  Wyatt had been re-elected member of the legislature, however, in spite of Hardin’s opposition, and now wished to revenge himself, by ousting Hardin from his office.  With this end in view, Wyatt had Douglass draft a bill