People in Cass County knew Abraham Lincoln as both a lawyer and a candidate for the Illinois legislature and U.S. Congress, and those earlier campaigns helped him hone the political skills he brought to the 1858 senatorial contest against Democratic incumbent Stephen A. Douglas and the new Republican Party's challenge to him. A Chicago newspaper correspondent wrote from Springfield that Lincoln would go to Beardstown and attack Douglas forcefully. Lincoln arrived in Beardstown on the morning of August 12, 1858, aboard the steamer Sam Gaty, and a Chicago newspaper reported that 300 to 400 people met him and escorted him as he rode to the National Hotel. At 2:00 P.M., he walked to a platform in the public square and delivered a two-hour speech before a crowd estimated at 2,500 to 3,000 people, then received a rousing sendoff as he boarded a steamboat for Havana. The audience for this first speech of the regular senatorial campaign included citizens from Morgan and Schuyler counties as well as Beardstown and the rest of Cass County, and the event featured two bands, two military companies, and a mounted escort to make up for the lack of a cannon sabotaged by Democrats. Both Lincoln and Douglas spoke to crowds larger than had been seen in earlier campaigns, and nationwide press coverage gave Lincoln, still a relatively unknown politician, the reputation that helped enable his successful presidential bid two years later. Lincoln's 1846 bid for Congress brought a bizarre episode when his Democratic opponent, the Methodist circuit rider Peter Cartwright, claimed near the end of the campaign that Lincoln openly scoffed at Christianity. Just days before the election, Lincoln answered in a handbill that although he was not a member of any Christian church, he had never denied the truth of the Scriptures and had never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general or of any Christian denomination in particular. Cartwright's charges showed no obvious negative effect on the result, and Lincoln won by an unprecedented margin, though questions about his religious views continued throughout his life.