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Bowling Green Ky th 1861
Governor Megoffin
Dear Sir
We take the privilege of addressing you a letter in relation to, and in behalf of our young friend Rufus Jones who was sentenced to the state prison from the county at the late term of our criminal court for the term of four years -- Having been the family physician for many years of most of those related to the Criminal as well as of those of the young man who was killed by Jones, or sympathies for all parties have been painfully exercised on account of the calamity which has so overwhelmed in trouble their respective friends & relations, and we would respectfully solicit the intervention of executive clemency in behalf of the prisoner --
The relations of the parties are of our most respectable quiet and law abiding citizens, and feel the full force of this sad and disparageing calamity -- The widowed mother of the prisoner, her youngest son, has lately gone to the grave, a victim to sorrows that only a mother can feel; and a grandfather, now near ninety, having
for years assumed the duties of father to this boy, experiences all the agonies incident to such relationship, and is bending under a load of grief that must soon number him among the victims of irrepresible sorrow -- The prisoner untill within a few years past, was a most exemplary and dutiful boy, proverbial for those good qualities which so much enderar a youth to his parents & friends, but in an evil hour he come under the example and influence of wild and thoughtless young men by whenom for a time he was burned from the path of propriety -- It was in the immediate presence of one of these, and by his encouragement if not advice and while under the influence of strong drink, that Jones committed the act for which he is now in prison -- He has deplored the act since the hour of its commision, as none but the truly sensitive and honorable can -- declaring in his first sober moment after the act that he had killed his friend without cause, and only could have done so while crased by liquors and seeming to regret most deeply that he was spared to live a life of regret and remorse after such an act. -- While under bail (his wealthy grand Father being his securty)
he refused to entertain the thought of fleeing his county but expressed himself to me as willing to suffer any reasonable amount of penalty as an atonement for his offence rather than depart the ends of justice and disappoint the wishes of those who might naturally be expected to desire his punishment, enemies though they might be this sentiment was worthy of a true spartan, and greatly interested me in his fate -- I never witnessed a more manly and willing resignation to the just demands of violated law & public feeling, than in the case of this young man not then twenty one I believe, and now as ever I can but feel a more than ordinary solicitude in his fate, believing that his reformation dating from the hour of the fatal act, is not so substantially fixed, that he will not in the future disappoint the hopes of those whose good offices and warm sympathies have been elicited in his behalf -- If however it will not comport with your sense of duty to the state, to pardon the young man, we will make the request that in selecting a trade that the keeper of the penetentiary, may be requested to make it in responce to the presentation of the life and health of R Jones, whose constitution
is delicate and of consumptive tendencies which may and will be developed by close confinement to a laborious or sedentary occupation
In conclusion we would say that the sympathies of this community are and have been with the prisoner, the blame being attached to older and more experienced offenders, who for the time were misleading young Jones --
We appreciate the delicacy of the duties that your official position must often impose upon you, in being now & then being forced to repress the warm sympathies of humanity in obedience to the stern sense of duty to law and justice, and full that we would not under ordinary circumstances, ask an executive officer to withhold a penalty in favor of mercy, but in this case our sense of the just demands of the law is not offended by the request we make with sentiments as high regard we are yours
L C Porter M. D.
J M Briggs M D