Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Election Outcome & Lincoln (Guelzo, 2008)

[Abraham Lincoln's] resiliency now came to his aid in the cave of defeat. Returning home the night of the election, “the path” he walked on his way back to the clapboard house at Eighth and Jackson streets “had been worn hog-backed & was slippering. My foot slipped from under me, knocking the other one out of the way, but I recovered myself & lit square: and I said to myself ‘It's a slip and not a fall.'" A slip and not a fall. By any other standards for measuring political shelf life, Lincoln's would, by this point, have been close to expiration. He had spent one term in the House of Representatives, mostly fruitless; he had failed in one bid for the Senate in 1855, switched parties, and now had been defeated again for the Senate when it had looked as though he had every expectation of winning. [Norman] Judd and the Republican state committee had run the campaign “upon the most economical plan” possible, but they still ended up $65,000 in the hole, with the Chicago Tribune mortgaged to the chin to generate the loans and another $2,5000 in borrowing made by the committee directly. Judd had no choice but to write out $300 assessments for each of the state committee members, and for Lincoln.