H. Greeley delivered a lecture before our lyceum last evening—a large crowd to hear him. John Wood, Browning, myself, and others talked to him very freely about the course of the Tribune in the late campaign. He acknowledged we were right.

The Douglas men elected a majority of the legislature, but did not have a majority, or even a plurality, of the popular vote. So it appears from a letter to Trumbull, the existence of which the author himself had forgotten.

Horace White, Chicago, January 10, 1859, sends a table of votes cast for members of the legislature in the election of 1858, showing a plurality of 4191 for Republican candidates for the House of Representatives.

W. H. Herndon, Springfield, says that Lincoln was defeated in the counties of Sangamon, Morgan, Madison, Logan, and Mason—a group of counties within a radius of eighty miles from the capital. They were men from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia mainly, old-line Whigs, timid, but generally good men, supporters of Fillmore in the election of 1856. "These men must be reached in the coming election of 1860. Otherwise Trumbull will be beaten also."

Springfield, January 29,1859.
Hon. Lyman Trumbull,

Dear Sir: I have just received your late speech in pamphlet form, sent me by yourself. I had seen and read it before in a newspaper and I really think it a capital one. When you can find leisure, write me your present impression of Douglas's movements.

Our friends here from different parts of the state, in and out of the legislature, are united, resolute, and determined, and I think it almost certain that we shall be far better organized in 1860 than ever before.

We shall get no just apportionment (of legislative districts) and the best we can do—if we can do that—is to prevent one being made worse than the present.

Yours as ever,
A. Lincoln.

A letter from Lincoln following the campaign of 1858, is appended as showing the cordial relations existing between himself and Trumbull. The latter had written to him from Washington under date January 29, 1859, saying that John Wentworth had written an article, intended for publication in the Chicago Journal (but which the editor of that paper had refused to print), imputing bad faith toward Lincoln on the part of N. B. Judd, B. C. Cook, and others, including Trumbull, in the last senatorial campaign. Trumbull had received a copy of this article, and as its object was to create enmity between friends, and as it would probably be published somewhere, he wished to assure Lincoln that the statements and insinuations contained in it were wholly false. To this Lincoln replied as follows:

Springfield, February 3, 1859.
Hon. L. Trumbull,

My dear Sir: Yours of the 29th is received. The article mentioned by you, prepared for the Chicago Journal, I have not seen; nor do I wish to see it, though I heard of it a month or more ago. Any effort to put enmity between you and me is as idle as the wind. I do not for a moment doubt that you, Judd, Cook, Palmer, and the Republicans generally coming from the old Democratic ranks, were as sincerely anxious for my success in the late contest as myself, and I beg to assure you beyond all possible cavil that you can scarcely be more anxious to be sustained two years hence than I am that you shall be sustained. I cannot conceive it possible for me to be a rival of yours or to take sides against you in favor of any rival. Nor do I think there is much danger of the old Democratic and Whig elements of our party breaking into opposing factions. They certainly shall not if I can prevent it.

Yours as ever,
A. Lincoln.

Twenty days after this letter was penned, there was a debate in the Senate which was an echo of the Illinois campaign, which must have been extremely interesting to both Lincoln and Trumbull. In a debate with Douglas in 1856, as already noted, Trumbull had asked him whether, under his doctrine of popular sovereignty, the people could prohibit slavery in a territory before they came to form a state constitution. He replied that that was a judicial question to be settled by the courts, and that all good Democrats would bow to the decision of the Supreme Court whenever it should be made. At Freeport, in the campaign of 1858, Lincoln put the same question to him in a slightly different form.

On the 23d of February, 1859, there was a Senate debate on this question, in which Douglas contended that the Democratic party, by supporting General Cass in 1848, had endorsed the same opinion that he (Douglas) had maintained at Freeport, since Cass, in his so-called "Nicholson Letter," had affirmed the doctrine of squatter sovereignty as to slavery in the territories. Douglas now contended that every Southern state that gave its electoral vote to Cass, including Mississippi, was committed to the doctrine that the people of a territory could lawfully exclude slavery while still in a territorial condition. Jefferson Davis replied:

The State of Mississippi voted [in 1848] under the belief that that letter meant no more than that when the territory became a state, it had authority to decide that question.... If it had been known that the venerable candidate then of the Democratic party, and now Secretary of State, held the opinion which he so frankly avowed at a subsequent period on the floor of the Senate, I tell you, sir [addressing Douglas], he would have had no more chance to get the vote of Mississippi than you with your opinions would have to-day.[35]