Who will be nominated
neither I nor any one else can tell. Now, let me pray to you in turn. My
prayer is that you let nothing discourage or baffle you, but that, in
spite of every difficulty, you send us a good Taylor delegate from your
circuit. Make Baker, who is now with you, I suppose, help about it. He
is a good hand to raise a breeze."
In due time Mr. Lincoln's sagacity and earnestness were both justified;
for on June 12 he was able to write to an Illinois friend:
"On my return from Philadelphia, where I had been attending the
nomination of 'Old Rough,' I found your letter in a mass of others which
had accumulated in my absence. By many, and often, it had been said they
would not abide the nomination of Taylor; but since the deed has been
done, they are fast falling in, and in my opinion we shall have a most
overwhelming, glorious triumph. One unmistakable sign is that all the
odds and ends are with us--Barnburners, Native Americans, Tyler men,
disappointed office-seeking Locofocos, and the Lord knows what. This is
important, if in nothing else, in showing which way the wind blows. Some
of the sanguine men have set down all the States as certain for Taylor
but Illinois, and it as doubtful. Cannot something be done even in
Illinois? Taylor's nomination takes the Locos on the blind side.
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