C. H. Ray, Chicago, March 9, 1858, protests against any trading with Douglas on the basis of reëlecting him to the Senate by Republican votes. The Republicans of Illinois are unanimous for Lincoln and will not swerve from that purpose. Thinks that Douglas is coming to the Republican camp and that the disposal of him will be a difficult problem unless he will be content with a place in the Cabinet of the next Republican President. J. K. Dubois, Springfield, April 8, says that Hatch (secretary of state) and himself were in Chicago a few days since. Found every man there firm and true--Judd, Peck, Ray, Scripps, W. H. Brown, etc. Herndon has just come home; says that Wilson, Banks, Greeley, etc., are for returning Douglas to the Senate. "God forbid! Are our friends crazy?" J. M. Palmer, Carlinville, May 25: We feel here that we have fought a strenuous and well-maintained battle with Douglas, backed up by the whole strength of the Federal patronage, and have won some prospect of overthrowing him and placing Illinois permanently in the ranks of the party of progress, whether called Republican or by some other name, and now, by a "Wall street operation," Lincoln, to whom we are all under great obligations, and all our men who have borne the heat and burden of the day, are to be kicked to one side and we are to throw up our caps for Judge Douglas, and he very coolly tells us all the time that we are Abolitionists and negro worshipers and that he accepts our votes as a favor to us! Messrs. Greeley, Seward, Burlingame, etc., are presumed to be able to estimate themselves properly, and if they fix only that value on themselves, no one has a right to complain, but if I vote for Douglas under such circumstances, may I be ----. I don't swear, but you may fill this blank as you please. Yet I have no personal feelings against Douglas.... Lincoln and his friends were under no obligation to us in that controversy [of 1855]. We had, though but five, refused to vote for him under circumstances that we thought, at the time, furnished good reason for our refusal. We elected an anti-Nebraska Democrat to the Senate, by his aid most magnanimously rendered, and that result placed us, through you, on the highest possible ground in the new party. If you had not been elected, we should have been a baffled faction at the tail of an alien organization. We have, as a consequence, an anti-Nebraska Democrat for governor, and our men are the bone and sinew of the new organization, though we are in a minority. In all these results Lincoln has contributed his efforts and the Whig element have coöperated. For myself, therefore, I am unalterably determined to do all that I can to elect Lincoln to the Senate. _I_ cannot elect him, but I can give him and all his friends conclusive proof that I am