Sixty-one years after the event, William H. Pierce penned this brief account of the encounter between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. Pierce was living on a small farm about twenty miles outside Peoria in October 1854, and not wanting to miss a verbal duel between two of the state’s leading politicians, he drove his wagon to town the preceding day, positioning it some fifty feet from the veranda of the courthouse where the speeches were to take place. Obviously a Lincoln man, Pierce had little complimentary to say about Douglas other than to compare the Democratic senator’s voice to the roar of a lion. Lincoln, by contrast, speaking in what Pierce described as a “head tone,” was both forceful and factual, making few if any gestures.