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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: public opinion, and death alone could have prevented his choice
by the Republican national convention. He took no measures to
help on his own candidacy. With strangers he would not talk about
the probability of his reelection; but with friends he made no
secret of his readiness to continue the work he was engaged in if
such should be the general wish. "A second term would be a great
honor and a great labor; which together, perhaps, I would not
decline," he wrote to one of them. He discouraged officeholders,
either civil or military, who showed any special zeal in his
behalf. To General Schurz, who wrote asking permission to take an
active part in the campaign for his reelection, he answered: "I
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