In March I had a letter from my grandmother.  She expressed pride in me for what I had done, approved the spirit I had shown towards Zoe.  She was a great admirer of Wilberforce; and as she disliked America for its separation from the Crown she wished the institution of slavery no good on these shores.  But she was disturbed about the conditions in England and Europe.  The old order seemed to her to be crumbling.  Revolution might break forth.  The middle classes in England, having secured their rights, as she expressed it, the laborers were now striving for the franchise.  Chartism was rampant.  What would it all come to?  Was England safe against such innovation?  But how about America, if the colored people were given freedom, not of the franchise merely, but in civil rights of property and free activity?  But contemporaneous with this letter, two events came into my life of profound influence.  One was my meeting with Russell Lamborn, the son of one of Jacksonville’s numerous lawyers.  And the other was an extraordinary debate between a Whig politician named John J. Wyatt and young Douglas.  It was at the debate that I met Lamborn.

Douglas had finished his school teaching.  He had been licensed to practice law, though not yet twenty-one years of age.  He had opened an office in the courthouse at Jacksonville.  His sharp wit, pugnacity, self-reliance, had already excited rivalry and envy.  He had suddenly leaped into the political arena, carrying a defiant banner.

Affairs in America were no more tranquil than they were in England.  President Jackson had stirred the country profoundly by his imperious attitude toward the banking interests on the one hand, and the matter of South Carolina’s nullification of the tariff law on the other hand.  This had weakened the Democratic party in Illinois.  And as there was to be an election in the fall of state officials, it was necessary to success to satisfy the electorate that President Jackson had not betrayed his leadership.

Bantering words went around to the effect that Douglas was seizing the opportunity of this debate to make himself known, to get a start as a lawyer, and a lift in politics.  When a chance to make a hit fits the orator’s opportunity and convictions, it would be difficult for a man of Douglas’ enterprise and audacity to resist it.

For Douglas had, in spite of everything, captured the town.  His name was on every one’s tongue.  He had lauded President Jackson and his policies with as much fervor as he had with virulence and vehemence denounced the humbugging Whigs, as he had characterized them.  The village paper, a Whig publication, had sat upon him.  It had dubbed him a turkey gobbler, a little giant, a Yankee fire-eater.  But Douglas gave no quarter to any one.  He returned blow for blow.  He had become a terror.  He must be subdued.

John J. Wyatt, a man of ready speech, in the full maturity of his powers, a debater and campaigner, a soldier in the War of 1812, and a respected character, was to lay the adventurer, the interloper, low!  He was elected to the task.  Was Douglas a youth?  No.  He was a monstrosity.  He had always been a man.  He had never grown up.  He had simply appeared in this part of the world, a creature of mature powers.  Yet Wyatt would subdue him.