Lincoln writes to Nathaniel Pope, U.S. judge, asking him to state in letter, "what you did say to me last spring . . . in relation to my becoming an applicant for that office? Having at last concluded to be an applicant, I have thought it is perhaps due me, to be enabled to show the influences which brought me to the conclusion—among which influences the wishes and opinions you expressed were not the least." Abraham Lincoln to Nathaniel Pope, 8 June 1849, CW, 2:53-54.

[Judge Pope did not respond as Lincoln hoped. He told Secretary Ewing (Interior) that either Lincoln or Butterfield would be acceptable. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1:490n.]