Hancock County was off the beaten track for Abraham Lincoln, and county residents were more familiar with his senatorial opponent, Stephen A. Douglas. In October 1858, Lincoln addressed an enthusiastic audience on the Carthage square, then walked a few blocks to his local lodgings with his boyhood friend Alexander Sympson and obliged those who followed him with spirited oratory from the doorway. Although he was from Springfield, over a hundred miles away, Lincoln campaigned vigorously in Hancock County during the 1858 senatorial election because he had relatives and close friends there, and though he won many popular votes, the final victory went to Stephen Douglas. Among Lincoln's strongest supporters in the county were the Wide Awakes, a political club that strongly backed him, staged ceremonial marches in his honor, served as official escorts for prominent Republican speakers like Lincoln, and acted as a security force in the often unruly political climate of the era. Many able-bodied young men wanted to join the popular Wide Awakes, whose Fountain Green contingent won first prize in October 1860 for the largest, best-disciplined marching unit. Their split rail routine nodded to Lincoln's early days. An eighteen-star flag, sewn by Carthage women and hung over a hotel balcony when Lincoln addressed supporters on the Carthage courthouse square in 1858, aligned Illinois with anti-slavery states and showed local support for him. A Wide Awakes ceremonial torch and red, white, and blue oilcloth uniform, the Sympson doorway where Lincoln spoke while staying at his friend's residence in Carthage, and a Lincoln ambrotype that may have been taken there by traveling photographer Charley Frost in October 1858 all reflect the importance of political pageantry in nineteenth-century American life and the loyalty Lincoln inspired in Hancock County.