he
24th ult. was forwarded to me from Chicago. It certainly is important
to secure Pennsylvania for the Republicans in the next Presidential
contest; and not unimportant to also secure Illinois. As to the ticket
you name, I shall be heartily for it after it shall have been fairly
nominated by a Republican National Convention; and I cannot be
committed to it before. For my single self, I have enlisted for the
permanent success of the Republican cause; and for this object I shall
labor faithfully in the ranks, unless, as I think not probable, the
judgment of the party shall assign me a different position. If the
Republicans of the great State of Pennsylvania shall present Mr.
Cameron as their candidate for the Presidency, such an indorsement of
his fitness for the place could scarcely be deemed insufficient.
Still, as I would not like the public to know, so I would not like
myself to know, I had entered a combination with any man to the
prejudice of all others whose friends respectively may consider them
preferable."

[Sidenote] Lincoln to Judd, Feb. 9, 1860. MS. Also printed in a
pamphlet.

Not long after these letters, at some date near the middle of the
winter 1859-60, the leaders of the Republican party of Illinois met at
Springfield, the capital of the State, and in a more pressing and
formal manner requested him to permit them to use his name as a
Presidential candidate, more with the idea of securing his nomination
for Vice-President than with any further expectation. To this he now
consented. His own characteristic language, however, plainly reveals
that he believed this would be useful to him in his future Senatorial
aspirations solely, and that he built no hopes whatever on national
preferment. A quarrel was going on among rival aspirants to the
Illinois governorship, and Lincoln had written a letter to relieve a
friend from the imputation of treachery to him in the recent
Senatorial contest. This act of justice was now used to his
disadvantage in the scramble for the Illinois Presidential delegates,
and he wrote as follows: "I am not in a position where it would hurt
much for me not to be nominated on the national ticket; but I am where
it would hurt some for me not to get the Illinois delegates. What I
expected when I wrote the letter to Messrs. Dole and others is now
happening. Your discomfited assailants are most bitter against me; and
they will for revenge upon me, lay to the Bates egg in the South,