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attending the nomination of ‘Old Rough,’ I found your letter in a mass of others which had accumulated in my absence.
By many, and often, it had been said they would not abide the nomination of Taylor; but since the deed has been done, they are fast falling in, and in my opinion we shall have a most overwhelming, glorious triumph.
One unmistakable sign is that all the odds and ends are with us-Barnburners, Native Americans, Tyler men, disappointed office-seeking Locofocos, and the Lord knows what.
This is important, if in nothing else, in showing which way the wind blows.
Some of the sanguine men have set down all the States as certain for Taylor but Illinois, and it as doubtful.
Cannot something be done even in Illinois?
Taylor's nomination takes the Locos on the blind side.
It turns the war-thunder against them.
The war is now to them the gallows of Haman, which they built for us, and on which they are doomed to be hanged themselves.
Nobody understood better than
Mr. Lincoln the obvious truth that in politics it does not suffice merely to nominate candidates.
Something must also be done to elect them.
Two of the letters which he at this time wrote home to his young law partner,
William H. Herndon, are especially worth quoting in part, not alone to show his own zeal and industry, but also as a perennial instruction and encouragement to young men who have an ambition to make a name and a place for themselves in American politics:
Last night I was attending a sort of caucus of the Whig members, held in relation to the coming presidential election.
The whole field of the nation was scanned, and all is high hope and confidence . . Now, as to the young men. You must not wait to be brought forward by the older men. For instance, do
