Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln to Ozias M. Hatch, 24 March 18581
Lincoln, March 24– 1858Hon: O. M. HatchMy dear Sir:
It is next to impossible for me to leave here now–2 I received your letters and inclosures– My judgment is that we must never sell old friends to buy old enemies–3 Let us have a State convention, in which we can have a full consultation; ^and^ till which, let us all stand firm, making no committals as to strange and new combinations– This is the sum of all the counsel I could give if with you; and you are at liberty to show to discreet friends–4
Yours very trulyA. Lincoln–

1Abraham Lincoln wrote and signed this letter.

2Lincoln was in Lincoln, Illinois, from at least March 18 to March 27, 1858, representing legal clients in cases being tried in the Logan County Circuit Court. Per legislation the Illinois General Assembly passed in 1857, the court opened for its spring term on the third Monday of March, which, in 1858, fell on March 15.
The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, March 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarMonth&year=1858&month=3; “An Act Declaring What Counties Shall Compose the Eighth Judicial Circuit, and Fix the Times of Holding the Courts and Regulate the Practice in Said Circuit,”11 February 1857, Laws of Illinois (1857), 12.

3There are only two additional letters known to be extant between Ozias M. Hatch and Lincoln in all of 1858, besides this letter. Roy P. Basler, editor of The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, claimed, without attribution, that the letter Lincoln references was one Hatch and Jesse K. Dubois wrote him on March 23, 1858, and that Hatch and Dubois enclosed one letter from Charles H. Ray and another from Norman B. Judd, written March 20 and March 22, respectively. Only the March 20 letter from Ray is known to still be extant; the others have not been located. It is possible that Basler saw copies of the March 23 Hatch and Dubois letter to Lincoln and the March 22 enclosed letter Judd wrote, but did not transcribe them in full. He did, however, transcribe excerpts from each letter, which he used in a footnote. Basler claims that Judd, in his March 22 letter, wrote, “Our men here are all true to the faith with Douglas to the bitter end.” Discussing the enclosed letters from Ray and Judd, Hatch and Dubois purportedly wrote, “They seem important and require consultation—and answers. Dr. Lieb is in town and knows [sic] all these [overtures] on the part of Douglas friends but not from any of us. He—Lieb says we are fools if we touch Douglas—that we can succeed without him. If you can do so, we should like to see you tonight.”
In the aforementioned March 20 letter to Hatch that Hatch and Dubois supposedly forwarded to Lincoln, Ray discussed the imminent failure of the Lecompton Constitution in the U.S. Congress and Democrat Stephen A. Douglas’s alleged willingness to ally with the Republican Party both to defeat future efforts to impose slavery upon the Kansas Territory against the will of Kansans and to “take down” the James Buchanan administration. Ray enthusiastically relayed this proposal to Hatch; Hatch and Dubois, in the missing letter Basler may have seen and dated March 23, apparently asked to see Lincoln in person to hear his opinion on the subject.

In December 1857, Douglas had spoken out against the Lecompton Constitution and criticized President Buchanan for supporting it. Some Republicans were, at the time, excited by Douglas’s repudiation of the Lecompton Constitution to the extent that they considered supporting his bid for reelection to the U.S. Senate in the 1858 Federal Election. Although Douglas later denied it, he courted Republican support—meeting in person with prominent men such as Horace Greeley and hinting in correspondence to Republicans that he was finished with the Democratic Party. Lincoln and other Republicans were concerned by these developments and urged fellow party members to remain loyal in the upcoming election. In Lincoln’s view, Douglas disagreed with the Buchanan administration over whether the Lecompton Constitution accurately represented the will of Kansans, but did not repudiate the overall goal of admitting Kansas as a slave state.
Ozias M. Hatch to Abraham Lincoln; Jesse K. Dubois and Ozias M. Hatch to Abraham Lincoln; Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1974), 10:30; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:445-50.

4At the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention, convention delegates unanimously nominated Lincoln as their choice to challenge incumbent Douglas for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Both men campaigned extensively during the summer and fall, delivering speeches in support of candidates for the Illinois General Assembly in their respective parties since, at that time, members of the General Assembly elected the state’s representatives in the U.S. Senate. In the end, in Illinois’s local elections of 1858, Republicans won a majority of all votes cast in the state, but pro-Douglas Democrats retained control of the General Assembly and Douglas won reelection to the U.S. Senate. Through the campaign, however, and in particular through his participation in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Lincoln gained recognition and standing within the Republican Party that propelled him to national prominence and helped him win the presidential contest of 1860.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:458, 556-57; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392, 394, 414.