SPRINGFIELD, August 11, 1855.
Mr. Owen Lovejoy,
My dear Sir: Yours of the 7th. was received the day before yesterday. Not even you are more anxious to prevent the extension of slavery than I. And yet the political atmosphere is such, just now, that I fear to do anything, lest I do wrong. Know Nothingism has not yet entirely tumbled to pieces. Nay, it is even a little encouraged by the late elections in Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama. Until we can get the elements of this organization there is not sufficient material to successfully combat the Nebraska democracy with. We cannot get them so long as they cling to a hope of success under their own organization; and I fear an open push by us now may offend them and tend to prevent our ever getting them. About us here, they are mostly my old political and personal friends, and I have hoped this organization would die out without the painful necessity of my taking an open stand against them. Of their principles I think little better than I do of those of the slavery extensionists. Indeed I do not perceive how any one professing to be sensitive to the wrongs of the negro, can join in a league to degrade a class of white men. I have no objection to “fuse” with any body provided I can fuse on grounds which I think right. And I believe the opponents of slavery extension could now do this if it were not for the K.N.ism. In many speeches last summer I advised those who did me the honor of a hearing to “stand with” any body who stands right, and I am still quite willing to follow my own advice. I lately saw in the Quincy Whig the report of a preamble and resolution made by Mr. Williams, as chairman of a committee, to a public meeting and adopted by the meeting. I saw them but once, and have them not now at command, but so far as I can remember them they occupy the ground I should be willing to “fuse” upon. As to my personal movements this summer and fall, I am quite busy trying to pick up my lost crumbs of last year. I shall be here till September; then with Circuit till the 20th, then to Cincinnati awhile, after a Patent Right case, and back to the Circuit to the end of November. I can be seen here any time this month and at Bloomington at any time from the 10th. to the 17th. of September. As to an extra session of the Legislature, I should know no better how to bring that about than to lift myself over a fence by the straps of my boots.
Yours truly, A. LINCOLN.
