On equal terms he mingled in good-humored rivalry with a group of uncommonly resourceful men, and he passed them all in the race for advancement. There is some reason to believe that Lincoln, strange as it seems, was his successful rival in a love affair, but otherwise Douglas left Lincoln far behind. Buoyant, good-natured, never easily abashed, his maturity and _savoir faire_ were accentuated by the smallness of his stature. His blue eyes and his dark, abundant hair heightened his physical charm of boyishness; his virile movements, his face, heavy-browed, round, and strong, and his well-formed, uncommonly large head gave him an aspect of intellectual power. He had a truly Napoleonic trick of attaching men to his fortunes. He was a born leader, beyond question; and he himself does not seem ever to have doubted his fitness to lead, or ever to have agonized over the choice of a path and the responsibilities of leadership. Principles he had--the principles of Jefferson and Jackson as he understood them. These, apparently, he held sufficient for every problem and every emergency of political life. He believed in party organization quite as firmly as he believed in party principles, and in the summer of 1837 he had a hand in building up the machinery of conventions and committees through which the Illinois Democrats have governed themselves ever since. He defended Van Buren's plan of a sub-treasury when many even of those who had supported Jackson's financial measures wavered in the face of the disfavor into which hard times had brought the party in power, and in November, although the Springfield congressional district, even before the panic, had shown a Whig majority of 3000, he accepted the Democratic nomination for the seat in Congress to be filled at the election in August, 1838, and threw himself with the utmost ardor into the canvass. The district was the largest in the whole country, for it included all the northern counties of the State. His opponent was John T. Stuart, Lincoln's law partner, and for five months the two spoke six days every week without covering the whole of the great region they aspired to represent. The northern counties had been filling up with immigrants, and more than 36,000 votes were cast. Many ballots were thrown out on technicalities; most of the election officials were Whigs. After weeks of uncertainty, Stuart was declared elected by a majority of five. The moral effect, however, was a triumph for Douglas, who at the time of his nomination was not of the age required of congressmen.