He entered upon the campaign of 1858 better equipped than he had ever been before.  He not only instinctively felt, but he had convinced himself by arduous study, that in this struggle against the spread of slavery he had right, justice, philosophy, the enlightened opinion of mankind, history, the Constitution, and good policy on his side.  It was observed that after he began to discuss the slavery question his speeches were pitched in a much loftier key than his former oratorical efforts.  While he remained fond of telling funny stories in private conversation, they disappeared more and more from his public discourse.  He would still now and then point his argument with expressions of inimitable quaintness, and flash out rays of kindly humor and witty irony; but his general tone was serious, and rose sometimes to genuine solemnity.  His masterly skill in dialectical thrust and parry, his wealth of knowledge, his power of reasoning and elevation of sentiment, disclosed in language of rare precision, strength, and beauty, not seldom astonished his old friends.

Neither of the two champions could have found a more formidable antagonist than each now met in the other.  Douglas was by far the most conspicuous member of his party.  His admirers had dubbed him “the Little Giant,” contrasting in that nickname the greatness of his mind with the smallness of his body.  But though of low stature, his broad-shouldered figure appeared uncommonly sturdy, and there was something lion-like in the squareness of his brow and jaw, and in the defiant shake of his long hair.  His loud and persistent advocacy of territorial expansion, in the name of patriotism and “manifest destiny,” had given him an enthusiastic following among the young and ardent.  Great natural parts, a highly combative temperament, and long training had made him a debater unsurpassed in a Senate filled with able men.  He could be as forceful in his appeals to patriotic feelings as he was fierce in denunciation and thoroughly skilled in all the baser tricks of parliamentary pugilism.  While genial and rollicking in his social intercourse—­the idol of the “boys” he felt himself one of the most renowned statesmen of his time, and would frequently meet his opponents with an overbearing haughtiness, as persons more to be pitied than to be feared.  In his speech opening the campaign of 1858, he spoke of Lincoln, whom the Republicans had dared to advance as their candidate for “his” place in the Senate, with an air of patronizing if not contemptuous condescension, as “a kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman and a good citizen.”  The Little Giant would have been pleased to pass off his antagonist as a tall dwarf.  He knew Lincoln too well, however, to indulge himself seriously in such a delusion.  But the political situation was at that moment in a curious tangle, and Douglas could expect to derive from the confusion great advantage over his opponent.