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Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865

"The Writings of Abraham Lincoln - Volume 1: 1832-1843"

By this policy we entangle ourselves.
By voting for our opponents, such of us as do it in some measure estop
ourselves to complain of their acts, however glaringly wrong we may
believe them to be. By this policy no one portion of our friends can
ever be certain as to what course another portion may adopt; and by this
want of mutual and perfect understanding our political identity is
partially frittered away and lost. And, again, those who are thus
elected by our aid ever become our bitterest persecutors. Take a few
prominent examples. In 1830 Reynolds was elected Governor; in 1835 we
exerted our whole strength to elect Judge Young to the United States
Senate, which effort, though failing, gave him the prominence that
subsequently elected him; in 1836 General Ewing, was so elected to the
United States Senate; and yet let us ask what three men have been more
perseveringly vindictive in their assaults upon all our men and measures
than they? During the last summer the whole State was covered with
pamphlet editions of misrepresentations against us, methodized into
chapters and verses, written by two of these same men,--Reynolds and
Young, in which they did not stop at charging us with error merely, but
roundly denounced us as the designing enemies of human liberty, itself.


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