William McKinley 1890 Letter Signed as Congressman - "Now About The Governorship"

Congressman McKinley considers a gubernatorial campaign: “I should esteem it both an honor and a duty to respond to the call”

25th President.

Letter signed “W. McKinley, Jr.” as an Ohio congressman, six pages on three sheets, 5.5 x 9, U.S. House of Representatives letterhead, December 26, 1890. Headed “Confidential for the present,” a letter to journalist Guy S. Comly, in full:

I have your valued favors of the 20th and have noted contents. Your suggestions are most friendly and timely, and I thank you for them. They read as though they might have been written by your dear father, whose friendship I enjoyed for a life–time. Now about the Governorship. I have noted with no feeling of indifference the sentiment throughout the State for my nomination—a sentiment which I have in no way influenced or promoted by any word or suggestion of mine; and therefore it is all the more gratifying to me. I have not thought that I ought to be a seeker for the nomination at the hands of the Republican party, and I cannot and will not be placed in that position. I would not want to be at the head of the ticket unless it was the manifest sentiment of a majority of the Republicans of the State. If that shall be the sentiment when the convention assembles and it shall so declare I should esteem it both an honor and a duty to respond to the call. It is my purpose to be entirely free to accept the judgment of the Convention whatever it shall be. I realize the hard work which will be before me in the campaign of next year. We must have no divisions or factions. Every Republican will be required. I think I know what labors and responsibilities would attach to a nomination at that time. It will be one of those periods in our political history in the State when the Republicans should have the right to make free choice of a candidate from its entire body, and when no Republican can afford to decline any call of duty which his party may make.

McKinley adds a lengthy postscript in his own hand, in full:

It may be that before the convention assembles some body else's nomination would seem the wisest to make, and therefore it would be best that no earlier judgment should be created which might embarrass the Republicans of the State. The strongest nomination must be made which it is possible to make.

In fine condition, with writing showing through from opposing sides.

Accompanied by the original mailing envelope.

Shortly after completing his final term in congress, McKinley accepted the nomination for Governor of Ohio at the 1891 state Republican convention. Thanks to tireless campaigning in the year’s latter portion, McKinley ousted former Democratic Governor James E. Campbell by some 20,000 votes and uplifted himself into the national spotlight.