.............  But you Democrats are for the Union; and you greatly fear
the success of the Republicans would destroy the Union.  Why?  Do the
Republicans declare against the Union?  Nothing like it.  Your own
statement of it is that if the Black Republicans elect a President, you
“won’t stand it.”  You will break up the Union.  If we shall
constitutionally elect a President, it will be our duty to see that you
submit.  Old John Brown has been executed for treason against a State.  We
cannot object, even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong. 
That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed and treason.  It could avail him
nothing that he might think himself right.  So, if we constitutionally
elect a President, and therefore you undertake to destroy the Union, it
will be our duty to deal with you as old John Brown has been dealt with. 
We shall try to do our duty.  We hope and believe that in no section will
a majority so act as to render such extreme measures necessary.

TO G. W. DOLE, G. S. HUBBARD, AND W. H. BROWN.

Springfield, Dec. 14, 1859

Messrs.  Dole, Hubbard & Brown.

Gent.:—­Your favor of the 12th is at hand, and it gives me pleasure to be able to answer it.  It is not my intention to take part in any of the rivalries for the gubernatorial nomination; but the fear of being misunderstood upon that subject ought not to deter me from doing justice to Mr. Judd, and preventing a wrong being done to him by the use of nay name in connection with alleged wrongs to me.

In answer to your first question, as to whether Mr. Judd was guilty of any unfairness to me at the time of Senator Trumbull’s election, I answer unhesitatingly in the negative; Mr. Judd owed no political allegiance to any party whose candidate I was.  He was in the Senate, holding over, having been elected by a Democratic Constituency.  He never was in any caucus of the friends who sought to make me U. S. Senator, never gave me any promises or pledges to support me, and subsequent events have greatly tended to prove the wisdom, politically, of Mr. Judd’s course.  The election of Judge Trumbull strongly tended to sustain and preserve the position of that lion of the Democrats who condemned the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and left them in a position of joining with us in forming the Republican party, as was done at the Bloomington convention in 1856.

During the canvass of 1858 for the senatorship my belief was, and still is, that I had no more sincere and faithful friend than Mr. Judd—­certainly none whom I trusted more.  His position as chairman of the State Central Committee led to my greater intercourse with him, and to my giving him a larger share of my confidence, than with or to almost any other friend; and I have never suspected that that confidence was, to any degree, misplaced.