In the Illinois campaign of 1858, Abraham Lincoln challenged Stephen A. Douglas on July 24, 1858, to divide time and address the same audiences, and Douglas proposed seven locations and further discussion of how the debates would be conducted. After Douglas was scheduled to speak in Monticello on July 29, 1858, Francis E. Bryant invited Senator and Mrs. Douglas to stay overnight, and the couples traveled there together from Bement. Returning after the meeting, they encountered Lincoln about one mile south of Monticello in a prairie schooner, and Douglas asked whether he had received his letter. Lincoln said he had and asked where they could confer later, and Bryant invited him to his home in Bement. After speaking in Monticello, Lincoln went to Bement, where he and Douglas met in Bryant’s parlor and agreed on the details of the debates. Douglas then wrote a letter from Bryant’s home dated Bement, Piatt County, Illinois, July 30, 1858, confirming the dates, places, and operating arrangement for the seven debates, and Lincoln accepted the terms in his reply of July 31, 1858. Francis E. Bryant, born in 1818, was the son of a New Hampshire farmer who moved to Ohio in 1833; Bryant studied surveying, settled in Rushville, Illinois, married Sarah Briscoe of Kentucky, and moved to Bement in 1856. He became a merchant, banker, civic leader, postmaster, mayor, and Democratic member of the Illinois legislature, and his friendship with Douglas reflected his place in a statewide network of small-town businessmen whose support the senator relied upon.