To His Excellency
The Governor of Kentucky.

At a called term of the Hickman Circuit Court which has just expired three negroes named John, Elijah and James, were condemned and sentenced to be hung on the 15^th day of May next for the crime of arson. These negroes were very ably defended in their trial by E. J. Bullock Esqr and Co^l Woodyard of the 21^st Missouri volunteers and at the solicitation of the prosecuting attorney the jury coupled with their verdict a recommendation to your Excellency that their punishment be commuted to imprisonment for life. The undersigned citizens of Hickman County respectfully remonstrate against the commmutation of punishment for the following reasons. The burning of the house of M^r William Poore by these negroes was perpetrated under circumstances of peculiar atrocity & aggravation. There was no motive of revenge for any injury done them by M^r Poore who was a stranger to them, and yet they went with arms and attempted first to murder him, firing at him twice with their muskets, and after he and his wife & infant child had fled to the woods, they robbed the house of what valuables they could find and then

reduced it to ashes. They then proceeded to the house of M^r C. S. Parrot an aged man and the owner of the slave John before named and attempted to murder him inflicting a severe wound upon his head by a musket shot. These negroes were accompanied throughout by a white man(?) named Wheeler who is sentenced to the Penitentiary for five years for his part in these villanies, and he and the negroes were arrested with the horse & other stolen property belonging to W^m Poore in their possession and the proof of their guilt was full, complete and overwhelming. Although the crime of these negroes was committed with every circumstance of atrocity possible, and simple justice demands their execution under the law yet your petitioners, actuated by no feeling of malignity towards the condemned, would be far from sending this remonstrance if the safety and well-being of the community here did not imperatively demand it. The negroes who are hanging around the 21^st Reg — of Missouri Volunteers encamped at Clinton in this County are a scourge and terror to the whole County. They obtain arms — United States muskets — whenever they choose and make nightly excursions into the country, bursting open the houses

of citizens, robbing them, putting upon them and their wives & families every kind of indignity and insult short of actual murder and violation. Three or four families are now shelterless on account of these incendiaries, and many others have fled the county after one visit of the marauders. Appeal after appeal has been made to Col Moore the commandat at Clinton, but no redress has been given and the diabolical work still goes on. The citizens of this county have no hope except in the civil laws. If these afford them no protection and that immediately society here will be broken up and the negro become supreme. A stern but just example made of the wretches already condemned would go far in awing and intimidating their fellow marauders — whereas a commutation of the sentence to imprisonment would strike little terror to the negro and be regarded as almost a concession that their crimes are not very grave. For these reasons, lamely set forth, your petitioners pray that your Excellency will make no change in the verdict of the jury. This 11^th April 1863.

Thomas G Powel Clk Hickman Cir Ct

Citizens of Hickman ask Guard for convict Negroes &