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Twenty-two years ago Judge Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young then; he a trifle younger than I. Even then, we were both ambitious; I, perhaps, quite as much so as
he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure---a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success. His name fills the nation; and is not unknown, even, in foreign lands. I affect no contempt for the high eminence he has reached. So reached, that the oppressed of my species, might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence, than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow.
[1] AD-P, ISLA. This single page of manuscript is dated on the basis of the fact that, according to Lincoln's own statement written in the margin of Samuel C. Parks' copy of Howells' Life of Abraham Lincoln (1860), p. 41, Lincoln first saw Douglas ``at Vandalia, Decr. 1834.''