15;  at  Charleston,  Sept.  18;  at  Galesburg,  Oct.  7;
at  Quincy,  Oct.  13;  at  Alton,  Oct.  15.  Immense
audiences  gathered  to  hear  these  debates,  which
have  become  famous  in  the  political  history  of
the  Nation,  and  the  campaign  was  the  most  noted
in  the  history  of  any  State.  It  resulted  in  the
securing  by  Douglas  of  a  re-election  to  the  Senate ;
but  his  answers  to  the  shrewdly-couched  interrog-
atories of  Lincoln  lid  to  the  alienation  of  his
Southern  following,  the  disruption  of  the  Demo-
cratic party  in  1860,  and  the  defeat  of  his  Presi-
dential aspirations,  with  the  placing  of  Mr.
Lincoln  prominently  before  the  Nation  as  a
sagacious  political  leader,  and  his  final  election
to  the  Presidency.
LINCOLN  UNIVERSITY,  an  institution  located
at  Lincoln,  Logan  County,  111.,  incorporated  in
1865.  It  is  co-educational,  has  a  faculty  of  eleven
instructors  and,  for  1896-8,  reports  209  pupils —
ninety-one  male  and  118  female.  Instruction
is  given  in  the  classics,  the  sciences,  music,  fine
arts  and  preparatory  studies.  The  institution
has  a  library  of  3,000  volumes,  and  reports  funds
and  endowment  amounting  to  860,000,  with
property  valued  at  $55,000.
LINDER,  Usher  F.,  lawyer  and  politician,  was
born  in  Elizabethtown,  Hardin  County,  Ky.  (ten
miles  from  the  birthplace  of  Abraham  Lincoln),
March  20,  1809;  came  to  Illinois  in  1835,  finally
locating  at  Charleston,  Coles  County ;  after  travel-
ing the  circuit  a  few  months  was  elected  Repre-
sentative in  the  Tenth  General  Assembly  (1836),
but  resigned  before  the  close  of  the  session  to
accept  the  office  of  Attorney-General,  which  he
held  less  than  a  year  and  a  half,  when  he  resigned
that  also.  Again,  in  1846,  he  was  elected  to  the
Fifteenth  General  Assembly  and  re-elected  to  the


HISTORICAL   ENCYCLOPEDIA    OF   ILLINOIS.
