Douglas promptly accepted the challenge, and it was arranged that there should be seven joint debates, each alternately opening and closing, the opening speech to occupy one hour, the reply one hour and a half, and the closing half an hour. They spoke at Ottawa, August 21st; Freeport, August 27th; Jonesboro’, September 15th; Charleston, September 18th; Galesburg, October 7th; Quincy, October 13th; and Alton, October 15th. We give in Book III of this volume their closing speeches in full. Great crowds attended, and some of the more enterprising daily journals gave phonographic reports of the speeches. The enthusiasm of the North soon ran in Lincoln’s favor, though Douglas had hosts of friends; but then the growing and the aggressive party was the Republican, and even the novelty of a new and attractive doctrine like that of “popular sovereignty” could not long divert their attention. The prize suspended in view of the combatants was the United States Senatorship, and to close political observers this was plainly within the grasp of Douglas by reason of an apportionment which would give his party a majority in the Legislature, even though the popular majority should be twenty thousand against him—a system of apportionment, by the way, not confined to Illinois alone, or not peculiar to it in the work of any of the great parties at any period when party lines were drawn. Buchanan closely watched the fight, and it was charged and is still believed by the friends of the “Little Giant,” that the administration secretly employed its patronage and power to defeat him. Certain it is that a few prominent Democrats deserted the standard of Douglas, and that some of them were rewarded. In the heat of the battle, however, Douglas’ friends were careless of the views of the administration. He was a greater leader than Buchanan, and in Illinois at least he overshadowed the administration. He lacked neither money nor friends. Special trains of cars, banners, cannon, bands, processions, were all supplied with lavish hands. The democracy of Illinois, nor yet of any other State, ever did so well before or since, and if the administration had been with him this enthusiasm might have spread to all other States and given his doctrine a larger and more glorious life. Only the border States of the South, however, saw opportunity and glory in it, while the office-holders in other sections stood off and awaited results.