Panel backs pardon of Irish man hanged in 1845

Source: Associated Press

Thursday, May. 05, 2011
Panel backs pardon of Irish man hanged in 1845
Associated Press --

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- John Gordon, the last man executed in Rhode Island, can perhaps rest easier now that a state legislative committee has endorsed a bill seeking his pardon for a murder that many say the Irish immigrant did not commit.

The House Judiciary Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to advance a resolution urging Gov. Lincoln Chafee to pardon Gordon. Gordon, who was convicted of the 1843 killing of a wealthy and politically connected Rhode Island mill owner, was hanged in 1845 at age 29.

Historians now say the evidence against him was circumstantial and that his trial was tainted by widespread bigotry against Irish Catholics. The story of Gordon's death was passed down through the generations and has come to represent the intolerance faced by Irish immigrants.

"My father always told me the last man hanged in Rhode Island was innocent," the bill's sponsor, Rep. Peter Martin, D-Newport, told The Associated Press. "I don't know where people go when they die. But there's something about having your name cleared. I think we owe it to him."

Read more: http://www.bnd.com/2011/05/05/1696918/panel-backs-pardon-of-irish-man.html

"Rest easier,' is an admission of the reality of heaven, hell and purgatory. How else could justification be gained?

Stop executing humans in the hope that injustices can be glossed over as merre 'errors'.

Irony: Roger Williams left Massachusetts for Rhode Island, seeking greater religious freedom for religious minorities than provided by the Massachusetts Puritans.

the first group to immigrate in large numbers and threaten the hold of Yankee Protestants.

Mill owner Amasa Sprague was beaten and shot to death on the banks of the Pocasset River on New Year’s Eve 1843. Suspicion soon fixed on the Gordon family, Roman Catholic immigrants from Ireland.

Sprague had had several clashes with John’s brother about Sprague’s workers coming to the mill drunk after buying liquor at the brother’s store. Sprague, the brother of U.S. Sen. William Sprague, persuaded city officials to suspend Gordon’s liquor license.

As widely told, Gordon was convicted of murdering Sprague after a trial rife with prejudice against Irish Catholics. John Gordon was hanged after his appeal failed before the same judges who heard his trial."

http://www.projo.com/news/content/GORDON_VOTE_05-05-11_2ONTN1A_v12.1cb17c0.html

Interesting to see evidence that "anti-immigrant hysteria" has been an American phenomenon for close to 200 years. The principal targets of the hysteria change over time (from the Irish to Southern Europeans to Asians to Hispanics) but there always seems to be a group of "others" whom we should be afraid of. If the tea party had existed in 1843, I'm sure they would have "wanted their country back" from Irish immigrants. Indeed that sentiment was one of the main factors that led to the rise (and quick fall) of the Know Nothing party (kind of the 19th century of the tea party.

Benjamin Franklin wrote a nasty piece about why an Englishman would never want to marry a German (immigrant) woman.

(I just tried to find that piece of writing but couldn't, unfortunately. I read it years ago.)