Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1907 — TWO WOMEN'S DEVOTION [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TWO WOMEN'S DEVOTION

May Yet Ilrinjc Freedom to Caleb Towera of Kculucky. .. ■' While nothing definite is yet known as to the time of Caleb- Powers’ next ■ trial, recently deferred, on the charge of murdering G6v. William Goebel 0 f Kentucky, the preparations are being made and when the case is again called his defense will be complete. Incarcerated for seven years for a ‘murder which changed the political history of a State, outlawed its Governor and wrecked many homes, Powers, who at the age of 30 years was Secretary of State for Kentucky; is still fighting desperately for his life and liberty., Three times already Caleb Powers has been condemned for participation in the Goebel assassination; three times he has been granted new trials. TO his mother and his old school teacher he is indebted for at least two of these. Almost immediately after the murder Powers was arrested while trying to escape in disguise. On Aug. 19 following, j a jury pronounced him guilty of complicity in the assassination and fixed his punishment at life imprisonment. He was a man of some little means and his political friends, partly considering his trial as one arraigning his party before the world, came to his aid and a new trial was granted. "It was a coward’s shot which slew Goebel, and Caleb is not a coward.” This is what Mrs. Rebecca Powers, the mother of the prisoner, said at the first trial. This is what she said after the appeal was successful, and this is what she made many others believe by consistant reiteration. “I knpw Caleb Is not a coward, ,and 1 also know he had no connection with the* deep damnation of Goebel’s taking off.” This was the downright answer to every charge made against the prisoner returned by Mrs. Lulie Clay Brock, who

taught the young man when he was a youngster and who remembered the slight blue-eyed boy who called her his “second mother.” -- But the convictions of these women had no weight with the second jury which passed upon the guilt or innocence of the man. So on Oct. 28, 1901, these twelve men brought in a verdict of guilty, and again was the prisoner sentenced to the penitentiary for his natural life. i In the meantime, however, and before Gov. Taylor left the State as a fugitive from justice to prevent arrest and arraignment for complicity in the same assassination, the executive granted a pardon to the prisoner., The Supreme Court of the State declared this pardon void, holding that Taylor had ceased to be Governor at the time it was issued. But the feeble old mother fiever ceased praying for *her son’s freedom. Nor did she waver in her faith as to his innocence. She had impoverished herself, having sold her little farm and moved to the home of a daughter, to aid in raising finances for the son to continue his battle against what seemed to be overpowering odds. Then came the third trial. She was living in an humble cottage in Barboursville, and every evening she could be found standing at the gate, hfir very soul crying out for a verdict of “innocent.” Finally the verdict was carried to her, but it was as far from that expected and hoped for as day is from night. It was on the evening of Aug. 29, 1903, that she learned that a third jury had condemned her boy to death. Holding herself steadily erect, the aged woman made but one comment: “My son is innocent; my sole prayer now is to the God of the fatherless and, the widow that he will open the eyes and soften the hearts of those enemies of Caleb who seem determined to have hi* life. But both he and I will live to prove to the he had no connection with the crime.” ;>

Prior to this trial Powers had used up about all the funds he could secure. Now he was pretty well discouraged. Again did a woman come to his rescue. In the mountain school at Flemlngsburg, Caleb Powers had inspired that affection in Mrs. Brock which was to bring forth a harvest that made a fourth trial possible. Not withstanding her 54 years she gave up a) her time to-raising a fund for Poweri defense. She resigned from the littli school and traveled the length and breadth of the State in behalf of her former pupil. She was particularly successful among the women of the State, and it was her spirit, which she imparted to others, that made the fourth trial a certainty. One of the attendants will be the prisoner's mother. She says she cannot bear the suspense which was hers while awaiting the'verdict in the third trial, and she is confident that the prejudices of former juries will not be a part of the make-op of the next which will try her boy. Whatever the outcome of the trial, the prisoner ia bearing up with remarkable fortitude.

CALEB POWERS.