JOHN SHERMAN - MANUSCRIPT LETTER SIGNED 01/22/1887 - HFSID 13828

JOHN SHERMAN
John Sherman, author of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, signed this letter on U. S. Senate stationery in 1887, to decline an invitation from John P. Foster, President of the New York City Republican Club. He was a U. S. Senator from Ohio when he signed this letter.
Manuscript letter signed "John Sherman," 2p, 5x8, separate sheets. United States Senate, 1887 January 22. To James P. Foster Esq., who was President of the newly organized Republican Club of New York. In full: "I have withheld a definite answer to your letter of the 19th inst., with a sincere hope that I might accept your invitation to attend the first annual dinner of the Republican Club of the City of New York on the 12th of February next. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to share in the comfort, mental and physical of such a banquet, and to exchange with you congratulations for the feast and hopes for the future of the Republican party, but the more I reflect the more I feel that it will not answer for me to leave the city, holding my present position, in the midst of the session, when my presence will be required daily for the signing of bills &c. Please convey my regrets to our mutual friends in the Club." At the time of this letter, Ohio Senator John Sherman was President Pro Tempore of the U.S. Senate. Vice President (and President of the Senate) Thomas A. Hendricks had died on November 25, 1885 and Sherman's presence was necessary in Washington to sign all bills passed by the Senate. When also signed by Speaker of the House John G. Carlisle and President Grover Cleveland, a bill would become law. Sherman was U.S. Senator from Ohio (1861-1877, 1881-1897), Rutherford B. Hayes' Secretary of State (1877-1881) and William McKinley's Secretary of State (1897-1898). At the 1888 Republican National Convention held in Chicago, Sherman led all other Republicans on the first ballot for the Republican nomination for President. Other first ballot vote-getters included Benjamin Harrison, Robert Todd Lincoln and William McKinley. On the eighth ballot, Harrison won the presidential nomination, with Sherman finishing second. In the November 6, 1888 election, Harrison defeated incumbent Democratic President Grover Cleveland 233-168 electoral votes, with New York's 36 electoral votes going Republican to Harrison and his running mate, former N.Y. Congressman and diplomat Levi P. Morton. If the Republicans had lost New York, they would have lost the election to Cleveland, so the new Republican Club of the City of New York was successful in its first presidential election. File holes in left margin, staple holes at top left, else fine condition.