On Nomination To The National Ticket

To N. B. Judd.

Springfield, February 9, 1859

HON. N. B. JUDD.

DEAR Sir:—I am not in a position where it would hurt much for me to not be nominated on the national ticket; but I am where it would hurt some for me to not get the Illinois delegates. What I expected when I wrote the letter to Messrs. Dole and others is now happening. Your discomfited assailants are most bitter against me; and they will, for revenge upon me, lay to the Bates egg in the South, and to the Seward egg in the North, and go far toward squeezing me out in the middle with nothing. Can you help me a little in this matter in your end of the vineyard. I mean this to be private.

Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN