the Western
commonwealths, and predicted that he would come into power when it
should be the turn of the West to dominate the country. "Small, black,
stocky," so this observer described him, "his speech is full of nervous
power, his action simple and strong." Douglas, however, quickly adapted
himself to his new environment,--no man in the country excelled him in
that art,--and took on all the polish which the Washington of that day
demanded, without any loss of fighting spirit or any abandonment of his
democratic manners and principles.

He soon got a good opportunity to plant himself on a powerful popular
sentiment by urging, in a really excellent speech, that the country
should repay to the aged Jackson the fine which had been imposed upon
him for contempt of court during the defense of New Orleans. An
experienced opponent found him ready with a taking retort to every
interruption. It being objected that there was absolutely no precedent
for refunding the fine, "I presume," he replied, "that no case can be
found on record, or traced by tradition, where a fine, imposed upon a
general for saving his country, at the peril of his life and reputation,
has ever been refunded." When he visited The Hermitage during the
following summer, Jackson singled him out of a distinguished party and
thanked him, not without reason, for defending his course at New Orleans
better than he himself had ever been able to defend it. Douglas won
further distinction during the session by defending, in a report from
the committee on elections, the right of the several States to determine
how their representatives in Congress should be chosen. Later, in a
debate with John J. Hardin, his rival in Congress as in the Illinois
legislature, he contrasted the Whig and Democratic positions on the
questions of the day with so much force and skill that the speech was
used as the principal Democratic document in the presidential campaign
of 1844.

In Congress, distinction does not always, or usually, imply power; but
Douglas was consummately fit for the sort of struggling by which things
are in fact accomplished at Washington. Whatever the matter in hand, his
mind always moved with lightning rapidity to positive views. He was
never without a clear purpose, and he had the skill and the temper to
manage men. He knew how to conciliate opponents, to impress the
thoughtful, to threaten the timid, to button-hole and flatter and
cajole. He breathed freely the he