To Salmon P. Chase, whom he had not seen in Ohio, Lincoln writes: "It is useless for me to say to you (and yet I cannot refrain from saying it) that you must not let your approaching election in Ohio so result as to give encouragement to Douglasism. That ism is all which now stands in the way of an early and complete success of Republicanism; and nothing would help it or hurt us so much as for Ohio to go over or falter just now." Abraham Lincoln to Salmon P. Chase, 21 September 1859, CW, 3:470-71.