But Lincoln was only one of many remarkable personalities in Springfield who had discovered themselves and were seeking to be discovered.  Sundry individuals were lifting their heads above the crowd but not with the modesty and self-distrust of Honest Abe.  “Steve” Douglas, whom Samson had referred to as “that little rooster of a man,” put on the stilts of a brave and ponderous vigor.  His five-foot stature and his hundred pounds of weight did not fit the part of Achilles.  But he would have no other.  He blustered much with a spear too heavy for his hands.  Lincoln used to call him a kind of popgun.

This free-for-all joust of individualism—­one of the first fruits of Freedom in the West—­gave to the life of the little village a rich flavor of comedy.  The great talents of Douglas had not been developed.  His character was as yet shifty and shapeless.  Some of the leading citizens openly distrusted him.  He sought to command respect by assaulting men of full size and was repeatedly and soundly thumped for his presumption.  He had endeavored publicly to chastise the sturdy Simeon Francis and had been bent over a market cart and severely wigged by the editor.  Lincoln used to call these affairs “the mistakes of Douglas due wholly to the difference between the size of his body and the size of his feelin’s.”  He never liked this little man, in opposing whom he was to come to the fulness of his power on the platform.  It is evident that Lincoln regarded him as an able advocate of small sincerity looking chiefly for personal advancement.

There is a passage in the diary which illustrates the character of Douglas and Lincoln’s knowledge of it.  The passage relates to a day in the famous debates of 1858.  Lincoln had not reached Havana in time to hear the speech of his opponent.  A great crowd had come by train and in wagons.  Taking advantage of his absence Douglas had called Lincoln “a liar, a coward and a sneak” and declared that he was going to fight him.

Lincoln heard of this and said in his speech: 

“I shall not fight with Judge Douglas.  A fight could prove nothing at issue in this campaign.  It might prove that he is a more muscular man than I or that I am a more muscular man than he, but this subject is not mentioned in either platform.  Again he and I are really very good friends and when we are together he would no more think of fighting me than of fighting his wife.  Therefore when the Judge talked about fighting he was not giving vent to any ill feeling but was trying to excite—­well, let us say enthusiasm against me on the part of his audience.”

Justice accomplished her ends now and then with comic displays of violence in the prairie capital.  One night Abe Lincoln and certain of his friends captured a shoe-maker who had beaten his wife and held him at the village pump while the aggrieved woman gave him a sound thrashing.  So this phase of imperialism was cured in Springfield by “hair off the same dog” as Lincoln put it.