friends, Edward D. Baker and John J. Hardin. On February 14 Lincoln told a local Whig political leader, "if you should hear any one say that Lincoln don't want to go to Congress, I wish you as a personal friend of mine, would tell him you have reason to believe he is mistaken. The truth is, I would like to go very much." At the end of February the Whigs met in Springfield, where Lincoln wrote the party platform "opposing direct federal taxes and endorsing a protective tariff, a national bank, distribution to the states of proceeds from federal land sales, and the convention system of choosing candidates." Baker and Lincoln campaigned vigorously throughout March, but Lincoln, believing that Baker had an insurmountable lead, withdrew when the Sangamon County convention was held on March 20. Lincoln was selected as a delegate to the district convention which met on May 1 in Pekin. Although Lincoln worked hard for Baker, Hardin was selected as the Whig candidate, winning by a single vote. Lincoln then initiated a resolution that endorsed Baker for the nomination in two years. The resolution passed, which seemed to set a precedent for a single term with rotation among the party's leaders, and suggested that Lincoln would be next in line after Baker. Campaigning for Henry Clay (1844) In 1844 Lincoln campaigned enthusiastically for Henry Clay, the Whig nominee for president and a personal hero of Lincoln. On the campaign trail Lincoln and the other Illinois Whigs emphasized tariff issues, while touting the economic success of the Tariff of 1842 that had been passed in Congress under Whig leadership. Part of the campaign pitted Lincoln in a series of debates against Democrat John Calhoun, a candidate for Congress. Campaigning in Illinois for most of 1844, Lincoln spoke out against the annexation of Texas (a potential slave territory), promoted national and state banks, and opposed a wave of nativism that would become a major political issue a decade later. On the last issue Lincoln declared that "the guarantee of the rights of conscience, as found in our Constitution, is most sacred and inviolable, and one that belongs no less to the Catholic, than to the Protestant; and that all attempts to abridge or interfere with these rights, either of Catholic or Protestant, directly or indirectly, have our decided disapprobation, and shall ever have our most effective opposition." Clay's opponent, James