While Douglas had been carrying off the honors of the Democratic party of Illinois, Lincoln had been rising more slowly to prominence in the ranks of the Whig and later of the newly organized Republican party. With the events of his early life his subsequent career has made every one familiar. He had been a practising lawyer as well as politician, had been several times to the state legislature, and in 1846 had been sent to Congress. Opposing the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he had done much to organize the new Republican party in Illinois, and was recognized as its strongest man. He was now unanimously named as “the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate.” Yet, although known to the Republicans of the Northwest as a lawyer of ability and a political leader, he seemed no match for the popular and well-known senator from Washington. With Lincoln standing behind him within the hotel, Douglas made on the evening of the 9th of July a long address to the thousands of people who surged in the street below the balcony. This speech was a defence of his Lecompton attitude, and a review of his differences with Lincoln’s propositions, as expressed in his speech accepting the nomination, the famous “house-divided-against-itself” declaration. Douglas was a short, broad-shouldered, thick-set man, with great alertness and animation of manner. A traveller from the East who was staying at the hotel recorded her impressions of the two speakers. Of Douglas, she said that in manner he combined force and unusual grace. His head was noble, almost Websterian, his voice pleasant, and altogether he was “a most effective popular speaker.” The next night Lincoln spoke to a large and enthusiastic audience from the same balcony. Because he was not so well-known the writer described him more fully. In person tall and awkward, and in manner ungainly, his face still had such good humor, generosity, and intellect beaming from it that it made the eye love to linger there until one almost fancied him good-looking. As a political speaker she found him ready, humorous, and argumentative, with a gift at telling anecdotes with inconceivable quaintness and effect. The two candidates had met many times before, and had debated together as early as 1834. Lincoln was not underrated by Douglas as a weak opponent in the campaign. When Douglas heard of his nomination he had said, “I shall have my hands full. He is the strong man of his party--full of wit, facts, dates--and the best stump speaker, with his droll ways and dry jokes, in the West. He is as honest as he is shrewd; and if I beat him, my victory will be hardly won.”