Page:Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865.djvu/51

Rh Abolitionist, but who is now occupying none but common ground, can get the majority of the votes to which all look for an election, there is no safe way but to submit.

As to the inclination of some Republicans to favor Douglas, that is one of the chances I have to run, and which I intend to run with patience.

I write in the court room. Court has opened, and I must close.

A. Lincoln.

During this senatorial campaign in 1858, Hon. James G. Blaine predicted in a letter, which was extensively published, that Douglas would beat Lincoln for the United States Senate, but that Lincoln would beat Douglas for President in 1860. Mr. Lincoln cut out the paragraph of the letter containing this prediction, and placed it in his pocket-book, where I have no doubt it was found after his death, for only a very short time before that event I saw it in his possession.

After Mr. Lincoln's election he was sorely beset by rival claimants for the spoils of office in his own State, and distracted by jealousies among his own party adherents. The State was divided so far as the Republican party was concerned into three cliques or factions. The Chicago faction was headed by Norman B. Judd and Ebenezer Peck, the Bloomington faction by Judge David Davis, Leonard Swett, and others, and that of Springfield by J. K. Dubois, O. M. Hatch, William Butler, and others; and however anxious Mr. Lincoln might be to honor his State by a Cabinet appointment, he was