A few weeks again changed the situation, of which he informed Speed in a letter dated May 18: 

“In relation to our Congress matter here, you were right in supposing I would support the nominee.  Neither Baker nor I, however, is the man—­but Hardin, so far as I can judge from present appearances.  We shall have no split or trouble about the matter; all will be harmony.”

In the following year (1844) Lincoln was once more compelled to exercise his patience.  The Campbellite friends of Baker must have again been very active in behalf of their church favorite; for their influence, added to his dashing politics and eloquent oratory, appears to have secured him the nomination without serious contention, while Lincoln found a partial recompense in being nominated a candidate for presidential elector, which furnished him opportunity for all his party energy and zeal during the spirited but unsuccessful presidential campaign for Henry Clay.  He not only made an extensive canvass in Illinois, but also made a number of speeches in the adjoining State of Indiana.

It was probably during that year that a tacit agreement was reached among the Whig leaders in Sangamon County, that each would be satisfied with one term in Congress and would not seek a second nomination.  But Hardin was the aspirant from the neighboring county of Morgan, and apparently therefore not included in this arrangement.  Already, in the fall of 1845, Lincoln industriously began his appeals and instructions to his friends in the district to secure the succession.  Thus he wrote on November 17: 

“The paper at Pekin has nominated Hardin for governor, and, commenting on this, the Alton paper indirectly nominated him for Congress.  It would give Hardin a great start, and perhaps use me up, if the Whig papers of the district should nominate him for Congress.  If your feelings toward me are the same as when I saw you (which I have no reason to doubt), I wish you would let nothing appear in your paper which may operate against me.  You understand.  Matters stand just as they did when I saw you.  Baker is certainly off the track, and I fear Hardin intends to be on it.”

But again, as before, the spirit of absolute fairness governed all his movements, and he took special pains to guard against it being “suspected that I was attempting to juggle Hardin out of a nomination for Congress by juggling him into one for governor.”  “I should be pleased,” he wrote again in January, “if I could concur with you in the hope that my name would be the only one presented to the convention; but I cannot.  Hardin is a man of desperate energy and perseverance, and one that never backs out; and, I fear, to think otherwise is to be deceived in the character of our adversary.  I would rejoice to be spared the labor of a contest, but, ‘being in,’ I shall go it thoroughly and to the bottom.”  He then goes on to recount in much detail the chances for and against