"I am here, just now, attending court," Lincoln begins his reply to letter he read in Smith's store yesterday. "If we could have a moderate, carefully adjusted, protective tariff, so far acquiesced in, as to not be a perpetual subject of political strife, squabbles, charges, and uncertainties, it would be better for us." He does not intend this as public statement. Abraham Lincoln to Edward Wallace, 11 October 1859, CW, 3:486-87.