of view. It is a fact that the United States army in marching to the Rio
Grande marched into a peaceful Mexican settlement, and frightened the
inhabitants away from their homes and their growing crops. It is a fact
that Fort Brown, opposite Matamoras, was built by that army within a
Mexican cotton-field, on which at the time the army reached it a young
cotton crop was growing, and which crop was wholly destroyed and the field
itself greatly and permanently injured by ditches, embankments, and the
like. It is a fact that when the Mexicans captured Captain Thornton and
his command, they found and captured them within another Mexican field.

Now I wish to bring these facts to your notice, and to ascertain what is
the result of your reflections upon them. If you deny that they are
facts, I think I can furnish proofs which shall convince you that you are
mistaken. If you admit that they are facts, then I shall be obliged for
a reference to any law of language, law of States, law of nations, law of
morals, law of religions, any law, human or divine, in which an authority
can be found for saying those facts constitute "no aggression."

Possibly you consider those acts too small for notice. Would you venture
to so consider them had they been committed by any nation on earth against
the humblest of our people? I know you would not. Then I ask, is the
precept "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to
them" obsolete? of no force? of no application?

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.

ON ZACHARY TAYLOR NOMINATION

TO ARCHIBALD WILLIAMS.

WASHINGTON, June 12, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAMS:--On my return from Philadelphia, where I had been attending
the nomination of "Old Rough," (Zachary Taylor) I found your letter in a
mass of others which had accumulated in my absence. By many, and often, it
had been said they would not abide the nomination of Taylor; but since the
deed has been done, they are fast falling in, and in my opinion we shall
have a most overwhelming, glorious triumph. One unmistakable sign is that
all the odds and ends are with us--Barnburners, Native Americans, Tyler
men, disappointed office-seeking Locofocos, and the Lord knows what. This
is important, if in nothing else, in showing which way the wind blows.
Some of the sanguine men have set down all the States as certain for
Taylor but Illinois, and it as doubtful. Cannot something be done even in
Illinois? Taylor's nomination takes the Locos on