NEW SALEM, June 13, 1836.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE JOURNAL:—­

In your paper of last Saturday I see a communication over the signature of “Many Voters” in which the candidates who are announced in the “Journal” are called upon to “show their hands.”  Agreed.  Here’s mine.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens.  Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me.

While acting as their representative, I shall be governed by their will on all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing what their will is; and upon all others I shall do what my own judgment teaches me will best advance their interests.  Whether elected or not, I go for distributing the proceeds of the sales of public lands to the several States to enable our State, in common with others, to dig canals and construct railroads without borrowing money and paying the interest on it.

If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for Hugh L. White for President.

Very respectfully,

A. LINCOLN.

The canvass was conducted after the usual fashion, with stump-speaking, fighting, and drinking.  Western voters especially fancied the joint debate between rivals, and on such exciting occasions were apt to come to the arbitrament of fists and knives.  But it is pleasant to hear that Lincoln calmed rather than excited such affrays, and that once, when Ninian W. Edwards climbed upon a table and screamed at his opponent the lie direct, Lincoln replied by “so fair a speech” that it quelled the discord.  Henceforward he practiced a calm, carefully-weighed, dispassionate style in presenting facts and arguments.  Even if he cultivated it from appreciation of its efficiency, at least his skill in it was due to the fact that it was congenial to his nature, and that his mind worked instinctively along these lines.  His mental constitution, his way of thinking, were so honest that he always seemed to be a man sincerely engaged in seeking the truth, and who, when he believed that he had found it, would tell it precisely as he saw it, and tell it all.  This was the distinguishing trait or habit which differentiates Lincoln from too many other political speakers and writers in the country.  Yet with it he combined the character of a practical politician and a stanch party man.  No party has a monopoly of truth and is always in the right; but Lincoln, with the advantage of being naturally fair-minded to a rare degree, understood that the best ingenuity is fairness, and that the second best ingenuity is the appearance of fairness.