Thus you see Mr. Lincoln was opposed to slavery, and though he was as ambitious as Mr. Douglas and would have been glad to be on the successful and winning side so he could be advanced, he was nevertheless so strictly honest that he would not join the popular party because it endorsed slavery, and he was so determined to be strictly honest in his politics as well as everything else that he was willing to apparently throw away his chances of success and join the unpopular party because it did not endorse slavery, which he thought a wicked institution. So these two young men started out. One went into the popular and successful party and succeeded with it. The other went into the unpopular and unsuccessful party and failed with it, yet did not fail, because he kept his principles. Mr. Douglas went on higher and higher in honors and fame and was United States senator a number of years. In the senate he ranked as one of the greatest statesmen of the day. Mr. Lincoln was only a well-to-do lawyer, unknown out of Central Illinois. Twenty years after their start he thus wrote of it: "Twenty years ago Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young then. Even then we were both ambitious. I, perhaps quite as much as he. With me the race of ambition has been a failure--a flat failure. With him it has been one of splendid success. His name fills the nation and is not unknown even in foreign lands. I affect no contempt for the high eminence he has reached. So reached, that the oppressed of my species might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow." By this you see he appreciated Mr. Douglas' honors, but would not accept them himself if to do so, he had to endorse slavery. In 1858 Mr. Douglas was generally recognized as the ablest man in the Democratic party, and it was thought that two years later, he would be the Democratic nominee for president, and as the Democrats were in the majority he would certainly be the next president of the United States. Mr. Lincoln was not known much outside of Central Illinois, where he practiced law.