Well before adjournment, Lincoln and other Whigs girded for the presidential election. Thanks to the hard times caused by the Panic of 1837, they had a good chance to win. Illinois Whigs had at first opposed the convention system adopted by the Democrats, believing it to be “a Yankee contrivance, intended to abridge the liberties of the people, by depriving individuals, on their own mere motion, of the privilege of becoming candidates, and depriving each man of the right to vote for a candidate of his own selection and choice.” Eventually, however, defeat at the polls forced them to reconsider. David Davis told a fellow Whig in 1839: “The longer I live the more I am convinced that unless the Whigs of this State organize through Conventions they will be beaten at the next General election. Candidates show themselves as plenty as blackberries.” The following year Lincoln and four party colleagues declared that a “disbanded yeomanry cannot successfully meet an organized soldiery.” In September 1839, the Whigs of Sangamon County urged their counterparts throughout Illinois to send representatives to a state convention the following month. That conclave chose delegates to the Whig national convention, passed resolutions, adopted a plan for organizing the state, and drafted an address to the people. Lincoln was named one of the five Whig presidential electors and placed on the Whig State Central Committee, which the Democrats derisively called the “Junto.” The delegates endorsed the presidential candidacies of both Henry Clay and William Henry Harrison.
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃