DEAR WILLIAMS:--On my return from Philadelphia, where I had been
attending the nomination of "Old Rough," (Zachary Taylor) 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. It turns the war thunder against them. The war is now
to them the gallows of Haman, which they built for us, and on which they
are doomed to be hanged themselves.

Excuse this short letter. I have so many to write that I cannot devote
much time to any one.

Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.




SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

JUNE 20, 1848.