The first collision between Lincoln and Douglas occurred during the Harrison Presidential campaign of 1840, and from that time they were regarded as active rivals. These two remarkable men became acquainted in 1834 during Lincoln's first session in the Legislature at Vandalia, then the capital of Illinois. Mr. Douglas was four years younger and equally poor. In his youth he had been apprenticed to a cabinet-maker in Vermont, had studied law under very much the same difficulties as Lincoln, was admitted to the bar as soon as he was twenty-one, and came to Springfield, with no acquaintances and only thirty-seven cents in his pocket, to contest for the office of State attorney with John J. Hardin, one of the most prominent and successful lawyers of the State. By the use of tactics peculiar to his life-long habits as a politician, he secured the appointment, made a successful prosecutor, and in 1836 was elected to the Legislature, and occupied a position on the Democratic side of that body similar to that occupied by Lincoln on the Whig side. In 1837 he secured from President Van Buren the appointment of Register of the Public Land Office, and made Springfield his home. In the fall of the same year he was nominated to Congress against John T. Stuart, Lincoln's law partner and friend, and the campaign which followed was one of the most remarkable in the history of the State, with Lincoln, as usual, the conspicuous figure upon the Whig stump. When the vote was counted, Stuart received a majority of only fourteen out of a total of thirty-six thousand. Douglas charged fraud, and his reckless attack upon the integrity of Stuart aroused in Lincoln's breast a resentment which never died. From that time he regarded Douglas with strong dislike and disapproval, and, although his natural generosity as well as his sense of propriety silenced his tongue in public, he never concealed from his friends his conviction that Douglas was without political morals. At the same time he recognized the ability and power of "the Little Giant" as Douglas was already called, and no one estimated more highly his ability as an orator and his skill as a debater. Personally, Douglas was a very attractive man. He had all the graces that Lincoln lacked,--short and slight of stature, with a fine head, a winning manner, graceful carriage, a sunny disposition, and an enthusiastic spirit. His personal magnetism was almost irresistible to the old as well as the young, and his voice was remarkable for its compass and the richness of its tones. On the other hand, Lincoln was ungainly and awkward; his voice was not musical, although it was very expressive; and, as I have before said, he often acknowledged that there was no homelier man in all the States.