Abraham Lincoln to John Moses, 24 October 18581
“Blandonville Oct. 24. 1858
Hon. John Moses
My Dear Sir:Throw on all your weight– Some things I have heard make me think your case is not
so desperate as you thought when I was in Winchester,– Put in your best licks–2
Yours in hasteA. Lincoln.”1This letter is attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but the original in Lincoln’s handwriting
is not extant. John Moses added this transcription to a letter he sent William H. Herndon on September 19, 1866.
John Moses to William H. Herndon, 19 September 1866, The Herndon-Weik Collection of Lincolniana: Group IV: Papers of William Henry Herndon,
-1891; 1866, Aug. 11-1866, Nov. 16., Manuscript/Mixed Material, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss25791.mss25791-008_0332_0574/?sp=109&st=image, accessed 26 November 2024; Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 3:332.
2In the state elections of 1858, John Moses ran as a Republican for an Illinois Senate seat in the Thirteenth Senate District that included Scott, Pike, and Calhoun counties. Moses earned 653 votes, losing to Democrat Chauncey L. Higbee, who amassed 1,000 votes.
Abraham Lincoln was the Republican candidate from Illinois for the U.S. Senate. At this time the Illinois General Assembly elected the state’s representatives in the U.S. Senate, thus the outcome of races
for the Illinois House of Representatives and Illinois Senate were of importance to Lincoln’s campaign. Lincoln campaigned
extensively in Illinois in the summer and fall of 1858, delivering speeches and campaigning
on behalf of Republican candidates for the General Assembly. He and his opponent,
Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, the incumbent, both focused their campaign efforts on the former Whig stronghold of central Illinois, where the state legislative races were the closest.
In local elections, Republicans gained a majority of the votes, but Pro-Douglas Democrats
retained control of the General Assembly, and Douglas won re-election. See 1858 Illinois Republican Convention; 1858 Federal Election.
John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 219, 222; History of Pike County Illinois (Chicago: Chas. C. Chapman, 1880), 882; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 3 November 1858, 2:3; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:457-61, 476-77, 513-14,
546-47; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape
of 1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392-99, 400-401, 414-16.
Handwritten Transcription, 1 page(s), Volume Volume 17, page 2670 (roll 8, frame 910) , Herndon-Weik Collection, Library of Congress (Washington, DC) .