e 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 Centr