to this question.

May 28, 1859.

ON LINCOLN'S SCRAP BOOK

TO H. C. WHITNEY.

SPRINGFIELD, December 25, 1858.

H. C. WHITNEY, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR:--I have just received yours of the 23rd inquiring whether I
received the newspapers you sent me by express. I did receive them, and
am very much obliged. There is some probability that my scrap-book will be
reprinted, and if it shall, I will save you a copy.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.

1859

FIRST SUGGESTION OF A PRESIDENTIAL OFFER.

TO S. GALLOWAY.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., July 28, 1859.

HON. SAMUEL GALLOWAY.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your very complimentary, not to say flattering, letter of
the 23d inst. is received. Dr. Reynolds had induced me to expect you here;
and I was disappointed not a little by your failure to come. And yet I
fear you have formed an estimate of me which can scarcely be sustained on
a personal acquaintance.

Two things done by the Ohio Republican convention--the repudiation of
Judge Swan, and the "plank" for a repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law--I very
much regretted. These two things are of a piece; and they are viewed by
many good men, sincerely opposed to slavery, as a struggle against, and in
disregard of, the Constitution itself. And it is the very thing that
will greatly endanger our cause, if it be not kept out of our national
convention. There is another thing our friends are doing which gives me
some uneasiness. It is their leaning toward "popular sovereignty." There
are three substantial objections to this: First, no party can command
respect which sustains this year what it opposed last. Secondly, Douglas
(who is the most dangerous enemy of liberty, because the most insidious
one) would have little support in the North, and by consequence, no
capital to trade on in the South, if it were not for his friends thus
magnifying him and his humbug. But lastly, and chiefly, Douglas's popular
sovereignty, accepted by the public mind as a just principle, nationalizes
slavery, and revives the African slave trade inevitably.

Taking slaves into new Territories, and buying slaves in Africa, are
identical things, identical rights or identical wrongs, and the argument
which establishes one will establish the other. Try a thousand years for
a sound reason why Congress shall not hinder the people of Kansas from
having slaves, and, when you have found it, it will be an equally good one
why Congress should not hinder the