Mary did, too, but she wished that Abe would be more dignified.  He sat reading in his shirt sleeves, and he got down on the floor to play with the boys.  His wife did not think that was any way for a successful lawyer to act.  It also worried her that he was no longer interested in politics.

And then something happened that neither Mary nor Abe had ever expected.  Their old friend, Stephen A. Douglas, who was now a Senator in Washington, suggested a new law.  Thousands of settlers were going West to live, and in time they would form new states.  The new law would make it possible for the people in each new state to own slaves, if most of the voters wanted to.

Abraham Lincoln was so aroused and indignant that he almost forgot his law practice.  He traveled around Illinois making speeches.  There were no laws against having slaves in the South, but slavery must be kept out of territory that was still free, he said.  The new states should be places “for poor people to go to better their condition.”  Not only that, but it was wrong for one man to own another.  Terribly wrong.

“If the Negro is a man,” he told one audience, “then my ancient faith teaches me that all men are created equal.”

Perhaps he was thinking of the first time he had visited a slave market.  He was remembering the words in the Declaration of Independence that had thrilled him as a boy.

Two years later Abraham Lincoln was asked to be a candidate for the United States Senate.  He would be running against Douglas.  Abe wanted very much to be a Senator.  Even more he wanted to keep slavery out of the new states.  Taking part in the political campaign would give him a chance to say the things that he felt so deeply.

“I am convinced I am good enough for it,” he told a friend, “but in spite of it all I am saying to myself every day, ’It is too big a thing for you; you will never get it.’  Mary insists, however, that I am going to be Senator and President of the United States, too.”

Perhaps it was his wife’s faith in him that gave him the courage to try.  Never was there a more exciting campaign.  Never had the people of Illinois been so stirred as during that hot summer of 1858.  A series of debates was held in seven different towns.  The two candidates—­Douglas, “the little Giant,” and “Old Abe, the Giant Killer,” as his friends called him—­argued about slavery.  People came from miles around to hear them.

On the day of a debate, an open platform for the speakers was decorated with red-white-and-blue bunting.  Flags flew from the housetops.  When Senator Douglas arrived at the railroad station, his friends and admirers met him with a brass band.  He drove to his hotel in a fine carriage.

Abe had admirers, too.  Sometimes a long procession met him at the station.  Then Abe would be embarrassed.  He did not like what he called “fizzlegigs and fireworks.”  But he laughed when his friends in one town drove him to his hotel in a hay wagon.  This was their way of making fun of Douglas and his fine manners.