We shall get no just apportionment (of legislative districts)
and the best we can do--if we can do that--is to prevent one
being made worse than the present.
Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.
A letter from Lincoln following the campaign of 1858, is appended as
showing the cordial relations existing between himself and Trumbull. The
latter had written to him from Washington under date January 29, 1859,
saying that John Wentworth had written an article, intended for
publication in the Chicago _Journal_ (but which the editor of that paper
had refused to print), imputing bad faith toward Lincoln on the part of
N. B. Judd, B. C. Cook, and others, including Trumbull, in the last
senatorial campaign. Trumbull had received a copy of this article, and
as its object was to create enmity between friends, and as it would
probably be published somewhere, he wished to assure Lincoln that the
statements and insinuations contained in it were wholly false. To this
Lincoln replied as follows:
SPRINGFIELD, February 3, 1859.
HON. L. TRUMBULL,
MY DEAR SIR: Yours of the 29th is received. The article
mentioned by you, prepared for the Chicago _Journal_, I have
not seen; nor do I wish to see it, though I heard of it a month
or more ago. Any effort to put enmity between you and me is as
idle as the wind. I do not for a moment doubt that you, Judd,
Cook, Palmer, and the Republicans generally coming from the old
Democratic ranks, were as sincerely anxious for my success in
the late contest as myself, and I beg to assure you beyond all
possible cavil that you can scarcely be more anxious to be
sustained two years hence than I am that you shall be
sustained. I cannot conceive it possible for me to be a rival
of yours or to take sides against you in favor of any rival.
Nor do I think there is much danger of the old Democratic and
Whig elements of our party breaking into opposing factions.
They certainly shall not if I can prevent it.
Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.
Twenty days after this letter was penned, there was a debate in the
Senate which was an echo of the Illinois campaign, which must have been
extremely interesting to both Lincoln and Trumbull. In a debate with
Douglas in 1856, as already noted, Trumbull had asked him whether, under
his doctrine of popular sovereignty, the people could prohibit slavery
in a territory before they came to form a state constitution. He replied
that that was a judicial question to be settled by the courts, and that
all good Democrats would bow to the decision of the Supreme Court
whenever it should be made. At Freeport, in the campaign of 1858,
Lincoln put the same question to him in a slightly different form.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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