Letter to the Editor, “Kansas Aid Matters—Reply of Mr. Arny to the Central Committee”

To the Editor of the New-York Daily Times:

An article in your issue of this date, entitled “Kansas Aid,” and signed by J.M. WINCHELL and WM. HUTCHINSON, contains several statements concerning my action as General Agent of the National Kansas Committee, which would admit of an elaborate and lengthy reply. I am satisfied, however, that a newspaper controversy in the present condition of things would prove neither interesting to the friends of Free Kansas in the North, nor advantageous to the suffering settlers of Kansas. I desire, therefore, the privilege of making an explanation in your columns of a matter purely personal and involving no interest which might possibly be damaged by a wrangle in the newspaper press.

1. The sum total of expenses defrayed by myself in behalf of the colony on Pottowatomie [Pottawatomie] Creek, (being the Company mustered under Capt. WALKER and recently disbanded by GOV. GEARY) does not amount to $1,000. I might remark in passing that these men have never received any pay while in the service of the United States, owing to come informality which it is unnecessary to explain.

2. It is perfectly well know in Kansas that I refused to locate with the Colony aforesaid or to have any connection directly or indirectly with the proposed town or the lands adjoining it. If a statement to the contrary should ever be made in more direct form than innuendo, I should deem it my province to notice it in some other way.

3. Concerning my assumptions in the matter of disbursing committees in the Territory, I desire to making the following extract from a letter written by Mr. THOMAS J. ADDIS of Franklin, Kansas, a member of the Kansas Central Committee, and also of the Topeka Convention of July 4, 1856, which created that Committee:

“The present Committee is not the Central Committee, constituted by the Mass Meeting at Topeka on the 4th of July, but a Central Committee, constituted by four of the original Committee at Topeka in the beginning of November, by voting out some of the original members and associating others in their places,” &c.

Mr. ADDIS’ communication was published in the Lawrence Herald of Freedom of Dec. 27, 1856. The italics are his own.

So much, Mr. Editor, I desire to say on my own behalf. My duties as General Agent of the National Kansas Committee have ceased as reported in your paper of a recent date, and it will be understood that I have no authority from and have had no consultation with any member of that body in reference to the foregoing statements.

Respectfully, W.F.M. ARNY