Daily Kennebec Journal

Hamilton Fish Jr.
He Will Not Join the Independents but Will Support Blaine and Logan-A Straight-Forward Letter.

New York, June 27, 1874

Arthur M. Sherwood, Esq., 18 W. 32d-st.,
New York City.

Dear Sir: I am in receipt of a circular dated June 26, purporting to come from the "independent republican committee," and signed by you, requesting me if in sympathy with the movement to sign the following call:

"The undersigned, protesting against the nomination of Mr. Blaine and Mr. Logan, propose to join their fellow republicans and independent voters in sending representatives to a general conference to be held immediately after the democratic national convention, which conference shall consider, in case the democratic nominations do not justify the support of protesting republicans, what further action may be necessary to secure candidates who will appeal, in the interests of clean and honest politics, to the sober moral sense of the American people."

Not having the honor of your acquaintance, I am at a loss to understand why you should have sent me such a circular. unless it is the design of the so-called independent republican committee to send such appeals to the five or six hundred thousand republican voters in this State, with the hope of finding a few dissatisfied and disgruntled spirits.

I may be doing injustice to your association, not having a list of its membership, but from the accounts in the public prints, one may well infer that it is largely composed, especially in its controlling elements, of persons who are wedded to free trade principles, and who have at heart the success of those principles, rather than that of the republican party. In fact, if the newspaper accounts of its meetings are correct, persons have taken part in its deliberations who have not for years been republicans, if they ever were.

Although Mr. Blaine was not my preference at Chicago still in view of the fact that his nomination was made by delegates elected in the main by Congressional districts, (not by State conventions. as has hitherto been the custom) and was evidently the free and untrammeled act of the great majority of the delegated representatives of the republican party, I cannot associate myself with any adjunct or tender to the democratic party (which your movement necessarily must be-whether intentionally or not I am not prepared to say), and am with the great mass of sincere republicans earnestly supporting the distinguished candidates recently nominated. and of whose election happily for the country, there is so little question.

I am very respectfully yours,

Hamilton Fish, Jr.