This is no other
than a bold denial of the history of the country. If we do not know that
the compromises of 1850 were dependent on each other; if we do not know
that Illinois came into the Union as a free State,--we do not know
anything. If we do not know these things, we do not know that we ever had
a Revolutionary War or such a chief as Washington. To deny these things
is to deny our national axioms,--or dogmas, at least,--and it puts an end
to all argument. If a man will stand up and assert, and repeat and
reassert, that two and two do not make four, I know nothing in the power
of argument that can stop him. I think I can answer the Judge so long as
he sticks to the premises; but when he flies from them, I cannot work any
argument into the consistency of a mental gag and actually close his
mouth with it. In such a case I can only commend him to the seventy
thousand answers just in from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.
REQUEST FOR SENATE SUPPORT
TO CHARLES HOYT
CLINTON, De WITT Co., Nov. 10, 1854
DEAR SIR:--You used to express a good deal of partiality for me, and if
you are still so, now is the time. Some friends here are really for me
for the U.
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