Recurring to Illinois, we want something quite as much as, and which is harder to get than, the electoral vote,--the legislature,--and it is exactly on this point that Seward's nomination would be hard on us. Suppose he should gain us a thousand votes in Winnebago, it would not compensate for the loss of fifty in Edgar. A word now for your own special benefit. You better write no letter which can be distorted into opposition, or _quasi_-opposition, to me. There are men on the constant watch for such things, out of which to prejudice my peculiar friends against you. While I have no more suspicion of you than I have of my best friend living, I am kept in a constant struggle against questions of this sort. I have hesitated some to write this paragraph, lest you should suspect I do it for my own benefit and not for yours, but on reflection I conclude you will not suspect me. Let no eye but your own see this--not that there is anything wrong or even ungenerous in it, but it would be misconstrued. Your friend as ever, A. LINCOLN. What happened in the Chicago Convention was widely different from the conjectures of these writers, but the result seemed entirely reasonable after it was reached. Lincoln was as radical as Seward--subsequent events proved him to be more so--but his tone and temper had been more conservative, more sedative, more sympathetic toward "our Southern brethren," as he often called them. He had never endorsed the "higher-law doctrine," with which Seward's name was associated; he believed that the South was entitled, under the Constitution, to an efficient Fugitive Slave Law; he had never incurred the enmity, as Seward had, of the Fillmore men, or of the American party. These facts, coupled with some personal contact and neighborliness, early attracted the conservative delegates of Indiana. Seward, with his "irrepressible conflict" speech, had been too strong a dose for them, but they were quite willing to take Lincoln, whose phrase, "the house divided against itself," had preceded the irrepressible conflict speech by some months. The example of Indiana bore immediate fruit in other quarters, and especially in Pennsylvania. Curtin, the nominee for governor, was early convinced that Seward could not carry that state, but that Lincoln could. Curtin and Henry S. Lane, the nominee for governor of Indiana, became active torch-bearers for Lincoln.