In the following June, an Iowa friend wrote to Douglas to inquire whether he would be a candidate for the Presidential nomination at the coming Charleston Convention.

Douglas replied that party issues must first be defined.

If the Democracy adhered to their former principles, his friends would be at liberty to present his name.

"If, on the contrary," continued he, "it shall become the policy of the Democratic party, which I cannot anticipate, to repudiate these their time-honored principles, on which we have achieved so many patriotic triumphs, and in lieu of them the convention shall interpolate into the creed of the party such new issues as the revival of the African slave-trade, or a Congressional slave-code for the Territories, or the doctrine that the Constitution of the United States either establishes or prohibits slavery in the Territories beyond the power of the people legally to control it, as other property--it is due to candor to say that, in such an event, I could not accept the nomination if tendered to me." [Sidenote] Ray to Lincoln, July 27, 1858.

MS.
We must leave the career of Douglas for a while, to follow up the personal history of Lincoln.