He had not taken this prominent position because the Whig party lacked material. Edward Dickinson Baker, Colonel John J. Hardin, John T. Stuart, Ninian W. Edwards, Jesse K. Dubois, O.H. Browning, were but a few of the brilliant men who were throwing all their ability and ambition into the contest for political honors in the State. Nor were the Whigs a whit superior to the Democrats. William L.D. Ewing, Ebenezer Peck, William Thomas, James Shields, John Calhoun, were in every respect as able as the best men of the Whig party. Indeed, one of the prominent Democrats with whom Lincoln came often in contact, was popularly regarded as the most brilliant and promising politician of the State--Stephen A. Douglas. His record had been phenomenal. He had amazed both parties, in 1834, by securing appointment by the legislature to the office of State Attorney for the first judicial circuit, over John J. Hardin. In 1836 he had been elected to the legislature, and although he was at that time but twenty-three years of age, he had shown himself one of the most vigorous, capable, and intelligent members. Indeed, Douglas's work in the Tenth Assembly gave him about the same position in the Democratic party of the State at large that Lincoln's work in the same body gave him in the Whig party of his own district. In 1837 he had had no difficulty in being appointed register of the land office, a position which compelled him to make his home in Springfield. It was only a few months after Lincoln rode into town, all his earthly possessions in a pair of saddle-bags, that Douglas appeared. Handsome, polished, and always with an air of prosperity, the advent of the young Democratic official was in striking contrast to that of the sad-eyed, ill-clad, poverty-stricken young lawyer from New Salem. From the first, Lincoln and Douglas were thrown constantly together in the social life of the town, and often pitted against each other in what were the real forums of the State at that day--the space around the huge "Franklin" stove of some obliging store-keeper, the steps of somebody's law office, a pile of lumber, or a long timber, lying in the public square, where the new State-house was going up.