The Republicans won more popular votes, but the state legislature, which made the final decision, decided for Douglas. Lincoln had lost again.

Tradition has it that Lincoln, the night he learned of his election defeat, tripped and almost fell while going home. The story also goes that Lincoln, who had been despondent, reminded himself that this was a small trip, and not a serious fall, and that the analogy regarding his political career might also be true. Whether this story is precisely true is less important than what it reveals about Lincoln: he was a powerful fighter and seldom gave up. He needed that quality because there had been plenty of failures earlier in life. He lost his first political election at the age of twenty-three; the store in which he worked had gone bankrupt.