Not long after this encounter, Douglas came in for his share of public ridicule.  Considering himself insulted by a squib in the Sangamo Journal, Douglas undertook to cane the editor.  But as Francis was large and rotund, and Douglas was not, the affair terminated unsatisfactorily for the latter.  Lincoln described the incident with great relish, in a letter to Stuart:  “Francis caught him by the hair and jammed him back against a market-cart, where the matter ended by Francis being pulled away from him.  The whole affair was so ludicrous that Francis and everybody else, Douglas excepted, have been laughing about it ever since."[103] The Illinois State Register tried to save Douglas’s dignity by the following account of the rencontre:  “Mr. Francis had applied scurrilous language to Mr. Douglas, which could be noticed in no other way.  Mr. Douglas, therefore, gave him a sound caning, which Mr. Francis took with Abolition patience, and is now praising God that he was neither killed nor scathed.”

The executive talents of Douglas were much in demand.  First he was made a member of the Sangamon County delegation to the State convention;[104] then chairman of the State Central Committee; and finally, virtual manager of the Democratic campaign in Illinois.[105] He was urged to stand for election to the legislature; but he steadily refused this nomination.  “Considerations of a private nature,” he wrote, “constrain me to decline the nomination, and leave the field to those whose avocations and private affairs will enable them to devote the requisite portion of their time to the canvass."[106] Inasmuch as Sangamon County usually sent a Whig delegation to the legislature, this declination could hardly have cost him many hours of painful deliberation.[107] At all events his avocations did not prevent him from making every effort to carry the State for the Democratic party.

An unfortunate legal complication had cost the Democrats no end of worry.  Hitherto the party had counted safely on the vote of the aliens in the State; that is, actual inhabitants whether naturalized or not.[108] The right of unnaturalized aliens to vote had never been called in question.  But during the campaign, two Whigs of Galena instituted a collusive suit to test the rights of aliens, hoping, of course, to embarrass their opponents.[109] The Circuit Court had already decided the case adversely, when Douglas assumed direction of the campaign.  If the decision were allowed to stand, the Democratic ticket would probably lose some nine thousand votes and consequently the election.  The case was at once appealed.[110] Douglas and his old friend and benefactor, Murray McConnell, were retained as counsel for the appellant.  The opposing counsel were Whigs.  The case was argued in the winter term of the Supreme Court, but was adjourned until the following June, a scant six months before the elections.