Thursday, July 4, 2024

General William T. Sherman to Senator John Sherman, June 15, 1884

ST. LOUIS, June 15, 1884.

Dear Brother: I am just back from a trip to Carthage, Joplin, etc., in Southwest Missouri. Thence to Kansas City in a week, and find an unusual pile of letters for answer, yours of June 11th among the number. This calls for an answer, for I fear even you suppose I was coquetting with the Chicago Convention. course this is not true, and if you could be here to see the letters and telegrams received by me marked "Strictly confidential," from parties even you cannot conjecture, you would have to admit that my course was fair, honest, and straightforward. . . .

Henderson, and Henderson alone, had a scratch of pen or even telegram which could be tortured into authority to personate me. I talked with him before I went to Washington, and explained fully that in no event and under no circumstances would I assent to the use of my name as a Presidential candidate. He contended that no American citizen could disobey the "call of his country," but I insisted that the Chicago Convention was not this country. . . .

Yours affectionately,
W. T. SHERMAN.

SOURCE: Rachel Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 362

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