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. Senator Douglas was an eloquent orator. While he was talking, some of Abe's friends would worry. Would Old Abe be able to answer? Would he be able to hold his own? Then Abe would unfold his long legs and stand up. "The Giant Killer" towered so high above "the Little Giant" that a titter ran through the crowd. When he came to the serious part of his speech, there was silence. His voice reached to the farthest corners of the crowd, as he reminded them what slavery really meant. He summed it up in a few words: "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it." Both men worked hard to be elected. And Douglas won. "I feel like the boy," said Abe, "who stubbed his toe. It hurts too bad to laugh, and I am too big to cry." All of those who loved him--Mary, his wife, in her neat white house; Sarah, his stepmother, in her little cabin, more than a hundred miles away; and his many friends--were disappointed. But not for long. The part he took in the Lincoln-Douglas debates made his name known throughout the United States. Abe Lincoln's chance was coming. 15 [Illustration] During the next two years Abraham Lincoln was asked to make many speeches. "Let us have faith that right makes might," he told one audience in New York, "and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."