Seven of the ten counties composing the Fifth Congressional District were within the so-called “military tract,” between the Mississippi and Illinois rivers; three counties lay to the east on the lower course of the Illinois.  Into this frontier region population began to flow in the twenties, from the Sangamo country; and the organization of county after county attested the rapid expansion northward.  Like the people of southern Illinois, the first settlers were of Southern extraction; but they were followed by Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders.  In the later thirties, the Northern immigration, to which Douglas belonged, gave a somewhat different complexion to Peoria, Fulton, and other adjoining counties.  Yet there were diverse elements in the district:  Peoria had a cosmopolitan population of Irish, English, Scotch, and German immigrants; Quincy became a city of refuge for “Young Germany,” after the revolutionary disturbances of 1830 in Europe.[155]

No sooner had the reapportionment act passed than certain members of the legislature, together with Democrats who held no office, took it upon themselves to call a nominating convention, on a basis of representation determined in an equally arbitrary fashion.[156] The summons was obeyed nevertheless.  Forty “respectable Democats” assembled at Griggsville, in Pike County, on June 5, 1843.  It was a most satisfactory body.  The delegates did nothing but what was expected of them.  On the second ballot, a majority cast their votes for Douglas as the candidate of the party for Congress.  The other aspirants then graciously withdrew their claims, and pledged their cordial support to the regular nominee of the convention.[157] Such machine-like precision warmed the hearts of Democratic politicians.  The editor of the People’s Advocate declared the integrity of Douglas to be “as unspotted as the vestal’s fame—­as untarnished and as pure as the driven snow.”

The Griggsville convention also supplied the requisite machinery for the campaign:  vigilant precinct committees; county committees; a district corresponding committee; a central district committee.  The party now pinned its faith to the efficiency of its organization, as well as to the popularity of its candidate.

Douglas made a show of declining the nomination on the score of ill-health, but yielded to the urgent solicitations of friends, who would fain have him believe that he was the only Democrat who could carry the district.[158] Secretly pleased to be overruled, Douglas burned his bridges behind him by resigning his office, and plunged into the thick of the battle.  His opponent was O.H.  Browning, a Kentuckian by birth and a Whig by choice.  It was Kentucky against Vermont, South against North, for neither was unwilling to appeal to sectional prejudice.  Time has obscured the political issues which they debated from Peoria to Macoupin and back; but history has probably suffered no great loss.  Men, not