MY DEAR SIR,--Yours of the 9th written at Joliet is just received. Two or three days ago I learned that McLean had appointed delegates in favor of Lovejoy, and thenceforward I have considered his renomination a fixed fact. My _opinion_--if my opinion is of any consequence in this case, in which it is no business of mine to interfere--remains unchanged, that running an independent candidate against Lovejoy will not do; that it will result in nothing but disaster all round. In the first place, whoever so runs will be beaten and will be spotted for life; in the second place, while the race is in progress, he will be under the strongest temptation to trade with the Democrats, and to favor the election of certain of their friends to the Legislature; thirdly, I shall be held responsible for it, and Republican members of the Legislature, who are partial to Lovejoy, will for that purpose oppose us; and, lastly, it will in the end lose us the District altogether. There is no safe way but a convention; and if in that convention, upon a common platform which all are willing to stand upon, one who has been known as an Abolitionist, but who is now occupying none but common ground, can get the majority of the votes to which _all_ look for an election, there is no safe way but to submit. As to the inclination of some Republicans to favor Douglas, that is one of the chances I have to run, and which I intend to run with patience. I write in the court room. Court has opened, and I must close. Yours as ever, (Signed) A. LINCOLN. During this senatorial campaign in 1858, Hon. James G. Blaine predicted in a letter, which was extensively published, that Douglas would beat Lincoln for the United States Senate, but that Lincoln would beat Douglas for President in 1860. Mr. Lincoln cut out the paragraph of the letter containing this prediction, and placed it in his pocket-book, where I have no doubt it was found after his death, for only a very short time before that event I saw it in his possession.[3] [3] Page 27, line 19, after the word "possession."