COMMENT AND REVIEW
Please present my kindest greetings to your good wife and receive them for your good self. I have very pleasant memories of you both and hope we are to meet again.
Always very truly yours,
Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker,
Harrisburg, Pa.
Dear Governor Pennypacker:
Having the pleasure and privilege to know you personally, I address these lines to you on behalf of a German, Trautwin, who has been sentenced to be hanged on March 28th. Will you please treat these lines as altogether personal and private.
Today I had a letter from Trautwin in which he says:
“I gave my wife a good home, but when I was at work she had sinful intercourse with an Italian. I told my wife that the people were speaking about her, but she would not listen. At last I found her myself at night, at nine o'clock in company with an Italian with whom she had had sinful intercourse. I become so infuriated that I could not speak. I drew a pistol and fired a shot. My wife fell and the Italian ran away. I did not intend to shoot her. You cannot tell what love can drive a man to do.”
The letter of Trautwin gives me the impression that he is not a bad fellow. He is absolutely uneducated and perhaps hardly fit to accurately state his case. When facing the shame of his wife he seems to have lost all self-control and blazed away.
Knowing that class of Germans so well, the rural, among which I was personally raised, I thought it fit to send you these lines. I want it to be strictly understood that I in no way want to interfere with the findings of your courts, I simply want to give you my private and personal opinion about Trautwin and the act he committed, leaving it absolutely to your judgment what action you perhaps may deem fit to take with regard to the man.
Believe me, dear Governor,
Yours most sincerely,
H. Sternberg,
My dear Governor:
Swing your axe.
Yours always,
