“It is very pleasant to learn from you that there are some who desire that I should be reelected.  I most heartily thank them for their kind partiality; and I can say, as Mr. Clay said of the annexation of Texas, that ‘personally I would not object’ to a reelection, although I thought at the time, and still think, it would be quite as well for me to return to the law at the end of a single term.  I made the declaration that I would not be a candidate again, more from a wish to deal fairly with others, to keep peace among our friends, and to keep the district from going to the enemy, than for any cause personal to myself; so that, if it should so happen that nobody else wishes to be elected, I could not refuse the people the right of sending me again.  But to enter myself as a competitor of others, or to authorize any one so to enter me, is what my word and honor forbid.”

Judge Stephen T. Logan, his late law partner, was nominated for the place, and heartily supported not only by Mr. Lincoln, but also by the Whigs of the district.  By this time, however, the politics of the district had undergone a change by reason of the heavy emigration to Illinois at that period, and Judge Logan was defeated.

Mr. Lincoln’s strict and sensitive adherence to his promises now brought him a disappointment which was one of those blessings in disguise so commonly deplored for the time being by the wisest and best.  A number of the Western members of Congress had joined in a recommendation to President-elect Taylor to give Colonel E.D.  Baker a place in his cabinet, a reward he richly deserved for his talents, his party service, and the military honor he had won in the Mexican War.  When this application bore no fruit, the Whigs of Illinois, expecting at least some encouragement from the new administration, laid claim to a bureau appointment, that of Commissioner of the General Land Office, in the new Department of the Interior, recently established.

“I believe that, so far as the Whigs in Congress are concerned,” wrote Lincoln to Speed twelve days before Taylor’s inauguration, “I could have the General Land Office almost by common consent; but then Sweet and Don Morrison and Browning and Cyrus Edwards all want it, and what is worse, while I think I could easily take it myself, I fear I shall have trouble to get it for any other man in Illinois.”

Unselfishly yielding his own chances, he tried to induce the four Illinois candidates to come to a mutual agreement in favor of one of their own number.  They were so tardy in settling their differences as to excite his impatience, and he wrote to a Washington friend: 

“I learn from Washington that a man by the name of Butterfield will probably be appointed Commissioner of the General Land Office, This ought not to be....  Some kind friends think I ought to be an applicant, but I am for Mr. Edwards.  Try to defeat Butterfield, and, in doing so, use Mr. Edwards, J.L.D.  Morrison, or myself, whichever you can to best advantage.”