Almost President by Scott Farris Page B

full foot shorter at five-feet-four-inches tall with legs so short that Senator Thomas Hart Benton complained, “That part of his body, sir, which men wish to kick, is too near the ground.” But above these stumpy legs was a pair of broad shoulders topped by a massive head with a pompadour of thick, brown hair that gave Douglas a leonine appearance. He also had a deep, melodious bass voice that loved to roar.
    Where Lincoln favored reason in his speeches, Douglas believed emotion carried the day and he could work himself into a fit when aroused, which was often. John Quincy Adams, who served with Douglas in the House of Representatives, gave a memorable description of the young Illinoisan’s debating technique: “His face was convulsed, his gesticulation frantic, and he lashed himself into such a heat that if his body had been made of combustible matter, it would have burned out. In the midst of his roaring, to save himself from choking, he stripped off and cast away his cravat, and unbuttoned his waist coat, and had the air and aspect of a half-naked pugilist.”
    Douglas’s fury, sincere or feigned, was perhaps one means by which he overcompensated for his small stature. As Lincoln no doubt found that droll humor helped put people at ease when his height might have otherwise been intimidating, Douglas conversely compensated for his short stature and boyish looks with a forceful and vivacious personality that made him appear larger than he was. He also self-consciously adopted the vices of a “man’s man.”
    Douglas drank to excess (and may have died from cirrhosis of the liver), greatly enjoyed the company of women, and was always seen with a Cuban cigar clenched between his teeth. Despite his size, he would brawl when necessary, once nearly biting off a man’s thumb to release the man’s grip on his throat. Douglas worked hard to ensure his constituents thought of him as one of them, boasting, “I . . . eat with my constituents, drink with them, lodge with them, pray with them, laugh, hunt, dance, and work with them; I eat their corn dodgers and fried bacon and sleep two in bed with them.”
    Lincoln had no need to pretend to be one of the common folk, for he had been born to a poor farmer on the Kentucky frontier in 1809. Douglas, however, was born April 23, 1813, into a prosperous family in Brandon, Vermont, his ancestors tracing their New England lineage to 1640. Douglas’s father was a physician who died when Douglas was only two months old. The death of his father postponed his formal schooling for a while, but Douglas eventually was able to study English, mathematics, and classical languages at a local college preparatory academy.
    While he had been briefly apprenticed to a cabinet-maker, Douglas concluded early in life, as did Lincoln, that he was not made for manual labor. Like Lincoln, Douglas decided to pursue the practice of law, which is why he moved west to Illinois where all that was needed to pass the bar was a simple oral examination by a judge and a character reference. Asked by his mother when she would see him again as he departed for Illinois at age twenty-one, Douglas supposedly replied, “On my way to Congress.”
    Though not as brilliant at law as Lincoln, Douglas gained the reputation of being “the best lawyer for a bad case” in all of Illinois, usually by misrepresenting opposing counsel’s position and twisting the logic of his opponent’s case. It was a trait he brought to politics, which led Lincoln to once exclaim that while Douglas seldom told an outright lie, “I think he cares as little for the truth . . . as any man I ever saw.”
    Despite Lincoln’s feeling of inferiority in comparison to Douglas’s achievements, Douglas thought highly of Lincoln. When Lincoln became the Republican presidential nominee in 1860, Douglas surprised his Democratic colleagues with his praise, saying Lincoln was the