a strong sympathy, for they were both young men making an uphill
struggle in life. Lincoln, at his first sight of Douglas, during the
contest with Hardin for the attorneyship, pronounced him "the least man
he ever saw."

Douglas was the youngest member of an unusual house, but he at once took
his place among the leaders. When the governor's message, animadverting
severely on the President's course with the Bank, brought on a
discussion of national party questions, he and Hardin seem to have won
the chief honors of the debate. He was appointed chairman of the
Committee on Petitions, to which numerous applications for divorce were
referred, and introduced a resolution which passed and which put an end
to divorces by act of the legislature. On the great question of the
hour, the question of development and internal improvements, he declared
that the State ought to attempt no improvement which it could not afford
to construct and to own. He favored a few specific enterprises and the
making of careful surveys and estimates before any others should be
taken up. But it was the very height of "flush times" in Illinois, and
the legislature added millions to the vast sums in which the State was
already committed to the support of canals, railroads, river
improvements, and banks. It was but a few weeks from the adjournment in
March to the great financial panic of 1837, which crushed every one of
the state-aided banks, stopped the railroad building and river dredging,
and finally left Illinois burdened with an enormous debt. There was a
special session of the legislature in the summer, occasioned by the
depression and hard times which had followed so hard upon the flush
times of the winter, but Douglas was not there to tax his associates
with their unwisdom. He had taken another step in his unexampled career
of office-holding by accepting from President Van Buren the office of
register of public lands at Springfield, the growing town in Sangamon
County which the legislature had just made the capital of the State, and
where, within a few years, Shields, McClernand, Lincoln, and other
rising young men were gathered.

From this time, Douglas and Lincoln knew each other well, for they lived
together several years in an atmosphere of intimate personal scrutiny.
For searching study of one's fellows, for utter disregard of all
superficial _criteria_ of character and conventional standards of
conduct, there is but one sort of life to be c