Tag Archives: pardons

“If you will send me a Pardon”

Delia Webster asks for a pardon, 1845

As we know, there’s a lot more to the pardon process than simple justice.  We’ve previously blogged about two Civil War-era pardon requests from Bowling Green and Burkesville, but here’s another 19th-century Kentucky pardon story, plus a new detail about its history found in a letter in WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.

Born in Vermont in 1817, Delia Ann Webster moved to Lexington, Kentucky in 1843 to establish a school for young women.  Educated herself in the abolitionist atmosphere of Oberlin College, she become a thorn in the side of local slaveholders, who rightly suspected her of participation in the Underground Railroad.  Arrested after helping a family of African Americans escape to freedom in Ohio, Webster was tried and convicted of the crime of assisting fugitive slaves.  In December, 1844 she received a two-year prison sentence, the first woman to receive such punishment. 

Nevertheless, the trial jury petitioned Governor William Owsley to pardon Webster because of her sex.  At first, Webster would not accept clemency and demanded a new trial.  By the time she warmed to a pardon, public opinion had turned against her and she was carted off to prison in January, 1845. 

But on February 24, Webster was suddenly released, the beneficiary of a “Free and Full” pardon.  During the negotiations, which had continued after she entered prison, one of the stipulations was that Webster leave Kentucky forever.  But in her later account of her ordeal, she attributed her release to little more than “a friendly feeling” on the part of Governor Owsley and insisted that she had refused to accept the condition of permanent exile from the state.  “I could not think of pledging myself never to return,” she wrote.

Or could she?  In the papers of Governor Owsley’s grandson Robert Rodes, a Bowling Green, Kentucky lawyer and state legislator, we find a handful of his correspondence.  Included is a letter dated February 19, 1845, five days before Webster’s release from prison.  Engrossed with the colorized countenance of Henry Clay, it reads:

Gov. of the State of Ky.
His Excellency William Owsley

I am sorry if I gave you an impression that I was not exceedingly anxious for a pardon.  It is entirely erroneous.  And if you will send me a Pardon or Respite, I will pledge you my word to leave your State never to return.

Delia A. Webster

In any event, Webster did not honor her pledge.  After a few years at home in Vermont, she bought a farm in Trimble County, Kentucky and resumed her activities with the Underground Railroad until driven off by angry locals.

There’s way more to the story of Delia Webster—for example, the scandalous letters sent to her by the lovesick warden of the prison where she had resided in her own private cottage.  “They are quite amorous,” wrote Robert Rodes to his wife after they were published in the newspaper.  “You must criticise them and give me some strictures in my communications to my love.”  But Delia Webster’s contrite letter to Governor Owsley, part of the Rodes Collection in WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections, shows that there may be more to her notorious pardon than previously understood.

Search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat for more about our collections.

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Pardon Me (Part 2)

Erasmus Gardenhire letter

Erasmus Gardenhire seeks a pardon

As we have seen, many Americans who pledged loyalty to the South during the Civil War were compelled to seek pardons in order to resume their economic and civic lives.  Although Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson issued general amnesties, members of the Confederate Congress and high-ranking Confederate Army officers were not covered by this blanket reprieve; instead, they had to petition specifically for a pardon from the chief executive.

Tennessee’s Erasmus L. Gardenhire was excluded from the general amnesty on two counts: not only had he served in the Confederate government, he had abandoned his judicial office to aid the rebellion.  Seeking support for his pardon application, on May 28, 1865 Gardenhire wrote to Jonathan Davis Hale of Nashville, who had served as a kind of intelligence chief for the Union command in Tennessee.  “I now desire to return to my allegiance and make a good citizen,” he assured Hale.  Having lost much of his fortune during the war, Gardenhire had “a large and helpless family of children, most of which are small daughters.” From Burkesville, Kentucky, he asked Hale to “use your influence with the proper authorities, that I may be permitted to stay with them and provide for them.”

Hale turned over Gardenhire’s letter and scrawled his endorsement on the back. “Dear President,” he addressed Johnson, who had served as military governor of Tennessee.  “You will remember Judge Gardenhire.  I am satisfyed he has suffered much both in mind & Body and I can forgive him if you will pardon him.”

Gardenhire filed his petition on August 18, but whether a pardon actually followed is unclear (Tennessee’s governor, William G. Brownlow, opposed it). Nevertheless, Gardenhire seemed to earn some measure of forgiveness, for he soon returned to his legal, political and judicial vocations.  President Andrew Johnson, meanwhile, was headed for a showdown with Radical Republicans in Congress and their ally, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, over Reconstruction policies.  Ultimately, Johnson’s attempt to fire Stanton and replace him with a more sympathetic cabinet member triggered the first impeachment proceedings against an American president.

Click on the links to access finding aids relating to these Civil War pardons, part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  For more collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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Pardon Me (Please!)

Josiah Pillsbury's respite

Josiah Pillsbury’s respite

On December 10, 1861, the Confederate States of America officially recognized a group of secessionists calling themselves the Provisional Confederate Government of Kentucky.  This “shadow” regime, however, never gained legitimacy in Frankfort; in fact, it chose Bowling Green, then under occupation by Confederate forces, as its capital.  (A historical marker commemorating the designation stands on WKU’s campus).

The first governor of Confederate Kentucky was Scott County lawyer George W. Johnson.  In need of someone to fill the position of Auditor, and because his first choice had declined, Johnson asked Josiah Pillsbury of Bowling Green to serve in a temporary capacity.

Pillsbury’s reward for doing this favor for his friend was to find himself, along with other officials of the Provisional Government, indicted for treason by a Warren County grand jury.  In “claiming to be auditor in said pretended government,” read the indictment, Pillsbury had acted “in usurpation of the regular legitimate and constitutional government of the state” and cooperated with an army in “open rebellion” in order to wage war on the good citizens of the county.

Horrified, Pillsbury wrote a “my bad” letter, now in the collections of the Kentucky Historical Society, to Governor Thomas E. Bramlette.  He had wanted no part of the Confederate government, he insisted, but accepted the Auditor’s position only to accommodate Johnson until a replacement could be found. Supporting Pillsbury’s request for clemency were prominent Bowling Green attorneys William V. Loving and Robert Rodes.

Governor Bramlette obliged, but the document filed with the Warren County court was not a full pardon.  The constitution, Kentucky’s Secretary of State warned Pillsbury, only gave the Governor power to issue a temporary “respite”; the document Bramlette signed was, in fact, an edited version of a form used to extend the time for criminals “sentenced to be hung.”

The indictment of Josiah Pillsbury (who was eventually pardoned by President Lincoln) and other members of the Provisional Confederate Government of Kentucky, along with Bramlette’s respite, are part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For more Civil War collections, click here or search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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