is chiefly on you, because of your position and standing, and because I am acquainted with so few others. Let me hear from you soon."

Lincoln followed the vibrations of feeling in the various counties with extreme nicety, studying every individual whose loyalty he suspected or whose vote was not yet pledged. "Nathan Dresser is here," he wrote to his friend Bennett, on January 15, 1846, "and speaks as though the contest between Hardin and me is to be doubtful in Menard County. I know he is candid, and this alarms me some. I asked him to tell me the names of the men that were going strong for Hardin; he said Morris was about as strong as any. Now tell me, is Morris going it openly? You remember you wrote me that he would be neutral. Nathan also said that some man (whom he could not remember) had said lately that Menard County was again to decide the contest, and that made the contest very doubtful. Do you know who that was?

"Don't fail to write me instantly on receiving, telling me all-particularly the names of those who are going strong against me."

In January, General Hardin suggested that since he and Lincoln were the only persons mentioned as candidates, there be no convention, but the selection be left to the Whig voters of the district. Lincoln refused.

"It seems to me," he wrote Hardin, "that on reflection you will see the fact of your having been in Congress has, in various ways, so spread your name in the district as to give you a decided advantage in such a stipulation. I appreciate your desire to keep down excitement; and I promise you to

'keep cool' under all circumstances. . . . I have always been in the habit of acceding to almost any proposal that a friend would make, and I am truly sorry that I cannot in this. I perhaps ought to mention that some friends at different places are endeavoring to secure the honor of the sitting of the convention at their towns respectively, and I fear that they would not feel much complimented if we shall make a bargain that it should sit nowhere."

After General Hardin received this refusal he withdrew from the contest in a manly and generous letter which was warmly approved by the Whigs of the district. Both men were so much loved that a break between them would have been a disastrous thing for the party. "We are truly glad that a contest which in its nature was calculated to weaken the ties of friendship has terminated amicably," said the "Sangamon Journal."

The charge that Hardin, Baker, and Lincoln tried to ruin one another in this contest for Congress has often been denied by their associates, and never more emphatically than by Judge Gillespie, an influential politician of the state. "Hardin," Judge Gillespie says, "was one of the most unflinching and unfaltering Whigs that ever drew the breath of life. He was a mirror of chivalry, and so was Baker. Lincoln had boundless respect for, and confidence in, them both. He knew they would sacrifice themselves rather than do an act that could savor in the slightest degree of meanness or dishonor. These men, Lincoln, Hardin and Baker, were bosom friends, to my certain knowledge. . . . Lincoln felt that they could be actuated by nothing but the most honorable sentiments towards

him. For although they were rivals, they were all three men of the most punctilious honor, and devoted friends. I knew them intimately, and can say confidently that there never was a particle of envy on the part of one towards the other. The rivalry between them was of the most honorable and friendly character, and when Hardin and Baker were killed (Hardin in Mexico, and Baker at Ball's Bluff) Lincoln felt that in the death of each he had lost a dear and true friend."

After Hardin's withdrawal, Lincoln went about in his characteristic way trying to soothe his and Hardin's friends. "Previous to General Hardin's withdrawal," he wrote one of his correspondents, "some of his friends and some of mine had become a little warm; and I felt . . . that for them now to meet face to face and converse together was the best way to efface any remnant of unpleasant feeling, if any such existed. I did not suppose that General Hardin's friends were in any greater need of having their feelings corrected than mine were."

In May, Lincoln was nominated. His Democratic opponent was Peter Cartwright, the famous Methodist exhorter, the most famous itinerant preacher of the pioneer era. Cartwright had moved from Kentucky to Illinois when still a young man to get into a free state, and had settled in the Sangamon Valley, near Springfield. For the next forty years he travelled over the state, most of the time on horseback, preaching the Gospel in his unique and rugged fashion. His district was at first so large (extending from Kaskaskia to Galena) that he was unable to

traverse the whole of it in the same year. He was elected to the legislature in 1828 and again in 1832; Lincoln, in the latter year, being an opposing candidate. In 1840 when he was the Democratic nominee for Congress against Lincoln he was badly beaten. Cartwright now made an energetic canvass, his chief weapon against Lincoln being the old charges of atheism and aristocracy; but they failed of effect, and in August, Lincoln was elected.

The contest over, sudden and characteristic disillusion seized him. "Being elected to Congress, though I am grateful to our friends for having done it, has not pleased me as much as I expected," he wrote Speed.