olutions in the nature of a platform. I
think the only temptation will be to lower the Republican standard in
order to gather recruits In my judgment, such a step would be a serious
mistake, and open a gap through which more would pass out than pass in.
And this would be the same whether the letting down should be in
deference to Douglasism, or to the Southern opposition element; either
would surrender the object of the Republican organization--the
preventing of the spread and nationalization of slavery.... Let a union
be attempted on the basis of ignoring the slavery question, and
magnifying other questions which the people are just now not caring
about, and it will result in gaining no single electoral vote in the
South, and losing every one in the North."

To Schuyler Colfax (afterward Vice-President) he said in a letter dated
July 6, 1859:

"My main object in such conversation would be to hedge against divisions
in the Republican ranks generally and particularly for the contest of
1860. The point of danger is the temptation in different localities to
'platform' for something which will be popular just there, but which,
nevertheless, will be a firebrand elsewhere and especially in a national
convention. As instances: the movement against foreigners in
Massachusetts; in New Hampshire, to make obedience to the
fugitive-slave law punishable as a crime; in Ohio, to repeal the
fugitive-slave law; and squatter sovereignty, in Kansas. In these things
there is explosive matter enough to blow up half a dozen national
conventions, if it gets into them; and what gets very rife outside of
conventions is very likely to find its way into them."

And again, to another warm friend in Columbus, Ohio, he wrote in a
letter dated July 28, 1859:

"There is another thing our friends are doing which gives me some
uneasiness. It is their leaning toward 'popular sovereignty.' There are
three substantial objections to this. First, no party can command
respect which sustains this year what it opposed last. Secondly Douglas
(who is the most dangerous enemy of liberty, because the most insidious
one) would have little support in the North, and, by consequence, no
capital to trade on in the South, if it were not for his friends thus
magnifying him and his humbug. But lastly, and chiefly, Douglas's
popular sovereignty, accepted by the public mind as a just principle,
nationalizes slavery, and revives the African slave-trade inevitably.
Taking