Stephen Arnold Douglas was considered by many of his contemporaries to be the greatest statesmen of the period in which he lived. There was one man — big, quiet, awkward, humorous Abe Lincoln — against whom all of Douglas' force and talent were of no avail. Time and again their paths crossed and tangled, when Douglas met in combat Old Abe, the Railsplitter. Douglas respected Abraham Lincoln and learned to fear him. Perhaps he recognized in Lincoln those very qualities with which he himself was not so abundantly blessed — the uncompromising honesty, simplicity of soul, and the stark kind of courage that would not yield an inch. Their rivalry has become one of the country's famed traditions.

Almost entirely self-educated, Stephen Douglas emigrated from Vermont to the West. He was by turns a cabinet-maker, an auctioneer's clerk, a school teacher, and then a lawyer, steadily advancing to prominence in Illinois, his adopted State. Politics and governmental affairs were his passion; when only twenty-one years old, he was elected to Illinois' attorney-generalship, from which office he forged still further ahead, holding almost every high elective and appointive office within the power of the people to confer.

At thirty he was ready to enter the national picture as a member of Congress, a militant Democrat, with a genius for oratory and a dynamic personality attracting and inspiring a train of ardent followers.

In the House and later in the Senate, Stephen Douglas rapidly became a leading figure. He was the "Little Giant," diminutive in stature, handsome, vigorous, challenging, a man of fiery speech and stubborn convictions, the hero of a hundred legislative battles. It was his habit to fight — to sweep opposition before him.

Here in well-documented, vivid narrative is the story of the famous rivalry of Douglas and Lincoln.

From the dust jacket