Recollection by Lew Wallace, Senator Stephen A. Douglas

To me Mr. Douglas was the first of living orators. What a magnificent spectacle he had presented standing day after day alone in the Senate, flinging answers, now to the abolitionists, now to the slave-holders, now to Mr. Seward, now to the arch-conspirator, Jefferson Davis! At such times he was in my eyes a lion baited by foxes and jackals. That Mr. Lincoln—gaunt, awkward, comic Lincoln whom I had seen in the bar-room of the old tavern at Danville—could get the better of him in debate was ludicrous as a mot of the uncouth clown himself. Yet if he could not get the better of my "Little Giant," he could at least draw him fully out upon all the phases of the mighty clash about Slavery and the Extension of Slavery.