Community Corner

Letter to the Editor: Petition to Pardon John Gordon

G. Brian Sullivan encourages residents to sign the Petition to Pardon John Gordon, which is being circulated by Rep. Peter Martin.

A kind and generous friend gave me two tickets to the closing matinee performance of “” by Newport playwright Ken Dooley at the Park Theatre in Cranston.  I invited my son Keith, who lives in Providence, where I joined him and my daughter-in-law, Laura, for Sunday dinner before attending the play.  We enjoyed a delicious dinner of Irish stew, a most enjoyable and very appropriate preliminary to the courtroom drama of an Irishman’s murder trial that we were about to witness.

The handsomely refurbished and redesigned Park Theatre is situated within one mile of where, on December 31, 1843, the rich and powerful industrialist Amasa Sprague was shot and brutally bludgeoned to death.  Ken Dooley grew up in this neighborhood attending films at the old Park Movie Theatre. He had also grown fascinated with the legendary John Gordon story in his youth.

Dooley drew upon actual transcripts of the John Gordon murder trial in his faithful dramatization of events leading to the conviction of his tragic hero.  “The Murder Trial of John Gordon” presents the audience/jury with a most convincing argument for understanding that Gordon did not murder Amasa Sprague.  My son and I were fully persuaded to sign the petition available in the lobby in support of Representative Peter Martin’s bill:  “HOUSE RESOLUTION Memorializing the Governor of the State of Rhode Island to Pardon John Gordon”, which I include for the benefit of your readers, who may also be thereby inclined to sign the Petition to Pardon John Gordon, being circulated by Peter Martin.

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Resolution (H 5068) reads as follows:

WHEREAS, On New Year’s Eve in 1843, Amasa Sprague, a Yankee factory owner, was beaten to death. He had been bludgeoned so brutally that his face was barely recognizable; and

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WHEREAS, At the time, Rhode Island was rife with anti-immigration hysteria and hatred. Local Yankees, who had maintained tight control on industry and politics in the state, felt unjustifiably threatened by the Irish Roman Catholics, who were the first group to immigrate to Rhode Island in large numbers; and

WHEREAS, The Spragues were wealthy and powerful, and held posts such as governor and United States senator. Amasa Sprague oversaw the family’s textile empire; and

WHEREAS, The Gordon brothers, Irish immigrants, ran a store and tavern. Authorities maintained the Gordons plotted to do away with Amasa, after he engineered the suspension of Nicholas’s liquor license, to curb drinking by Sprague factory workers; and

WHEREAS, Anti-immigrant emotions inflamed the case, and after a trial based solely on  circumstantial evidence and false testimony, John Gordon was found guilty of murder in the  shooting and bludgeoning death of Mr. Sprague; and

WHEREAS, On Valentine’s Day, February 14th of 1845, John Gordon was hanged for a murder he did not commit. He became the last man to be executed in the state. Seven years after his death, Rhode Island abolished the death penalty; and

WHEREAS, The conviction and subsequent hanging of John Gordon was racially motivated and discriminatory and stands as a black mark on our great state’s judicial history; now, therefore be it

RESOLVED, That this House of Representatives of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations hereby requests The Honorable Lincoln Chafee, Governor of the State of Rhode Island, to posthumously pardon John Gordon for the 1843 murder of Amasa Sprague; and be it further

RESOLVED, That the Secretary of State be and he hereby is authorized and directed to transmit a duly certified copy of this resolution to The Honorable Lincoln Chafee, Governor of the State of Rhode Island.

Hereunto gentle reader, kindly allow me to urge -- with a hundred thousand welcomes, (“céad mile failte” in Gaelic) – you to invite your elected representatives in the State of Rhode Island General Assembly to approve this worthy resolution to exonerate John Gordon, because justice and forgiveness have no statute of limitations.  You may readily obtain your Representatives’ email addresses by means of the online directory located here.

And, since this fine piece of legislation [H 5068] is scheduled for the House’s vote on March 17th, you might also advise that the Assembly’s affirmative vote for posthumous pardon promises to make it a Happier Saint Patrick’s Day alike on earth as in Heaven.  

Respectfully submitted,

G. Brian Sullivan, Ph.D.

P.S.:  This Resolution and other supportive documentation for the exoneration of John Gordon can be accessed on the web site of Representative Martin (D-Dist. 75, Newport) located at  http://www.stacyhouse.com.  Please see.


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