torial canvass in Illinois came to a close with the election
on the 2d of November and resulted in a victory for Douglas. The
Republicans, on their State ticket, polled 125,430 votes; the Douglas
Democrats, 121,609; the Buchanan Democrats, 5071. By this plurality
the Republican State officers were chosen. But in respect to members
of the Legislature the case stood differently, and when in the
following January the Senatorial election took place in joint session
of the two Houses, Douglas received the vote of every Democrat, 54
members, and Lincoln the vote of every Republican, 46 members,
whereupon Douglas was declared elected Senator of the United States
for six years from the 4th of March, 1859.

The main cause of Lincoln's defeat was the unfairness of the existing
apportionment, which was based upon the census of 1850. A fair
apportionment, based on the changes of population which had occurred,
would have given northern Illinois a larger representation; and it was
there the Republicans had recruited their principal strength in the
recent transformation of parties. The Republicans estimated that this
circumstance caused them a loss of six to ten members.

[Sidenote] Lincoln, Cincinnati Speech, Sept. 17, 1859. Debates,
p. 263.

But the unusual political combinations also had a large influence on
the result. Lincoln, in an Ohio speech made in the following year,
addressing himself to Kentuckians, thus summarized the political
forces that contributed to his defeat: "Douglas had three or four very
distinguished men of the most extreme anti-slavery views of any men in
the Republican party expressing their desire for his reelection to the
Senate last year. That would of itself have seemed to be a little
wonderful, but that wonder is heightened when we see that Wise, of
Virginia, a man exactly opposed to them, a man who believes in the
divine right of slavery, was also expressing his desire that Douglas
should be reelected; that another man that may be said to be kindred
to Wise, Mr. Breckinridge, the Vice-President, and of your own State,
was also agreeing with the anti-slavery men in the North, that Douglas
ought to be reelected. Still to heighten the wonder, a Senator from
Kentucky, whom I have always loved with an affection as tender and
endearing as I have ever loved any man, who was opposed to the
anti-slavery men for reasons which seemed sufficient to him and equally
opposed to Wise and Breckinridge, was writin