“Butler informs me that he received a letter from you in which you expressed some doubt as to whether the Whigs of Sangamon will support you cordially.  You may at once dismiss all fears on that subject.  We have already resolved to make a particular effort to give you the very largest majority possible in our county.  From this no Whig of the county dissents.  We have many objects for doing it.  We make it a matter of honor and pride to do it; we do it because we love the Whig cause; we do it because we like you personally; and, last, we wish to convince you that we do not bear that hatred to Morgan County that you people have seemed so long to imagine.  You will see by the ‘Journal’ of this week that we propose, upon pain of losing a barbecue, to give you twice as great a majority in this county as you shall receive in your own.  I got up the proposal.

    “Who of the five appointed is to write the district address?  I
    did the labor of writing one address this year, and got thunder
    for my reward.  Nothing new here.

    Yours as ever,

    “A.  LINCOLN.”

“P.S.  I wish you would measure one of the largest of those swords we took to Alton, and write me the length of it, from tip of the point to tip of the hilt, in feet and inches.  I have a dispute about the length[4].

    A. L.”

[Footnote 3:  The originals of both the letters on this page addressed by Lincoln to Hardin are owned by the daughter of General Hardin, Mrs. Ellen Hardin Walworth of New York City.]

[Footnote 4:  The swords referred to in this postscript are those used in the Shields-Lincoln duel.  See MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE for April, 1896.]

LINCOLN WORKS FOR THE NOMINATION IN 1846.

Hardin was elected, and in 1844 Baker was nominated and elected.  Lincoln had accepted his defeat by Hardin manfully.  He had secured the nomination for Baker in 1844.  He felt that his duty toward his friends was discharged, and that the nomination in 1846 belonged to him.  Through the terms of both Hardin and Baker, he worked persistently and carefully to insure his own nomination.  With infinite pains-taking he informed himself about the temper of every individual whom he knew or of whom he heard.  In an amusing letter to Hardin, hitherto unpublished, written in May, 1844, while the latter was in Congress, he tells him of one disgruntled constituent who must be pacified, giving him, at the same time, a hint as to the temper of the “Locofocos.”

“Knowing that you have correspondents enough, I have forborne to trouble you heretofore,” he writes; “and I now only do so to get you to set a matter right which has got wrong with one of our best friends.  It is old Uncle Thomas Campbell of Spring Creek (Berlin P.O.).  He has received several documents from you, and he says they are old newspapers and old documents, having