American Historical Ephemera & Photography, Featuring Property from the James Milgram, M.D., Collection of Broadsides, Ephemeral Americana & Historical Documents

1 page, 10 3/8 x 16 in., accomplished in manuscript, folds with some spotting and discoloration and light wear to creases. State of Maine seal affixed to left margin above Chamberlain's signature. Additionally signed by Franklin M. Drew as Secretary of State of Maine. Pardon for Jesse Wright of Phillips, Maine, who was convicted of murder on 16 October 1866. He was sentenced to hang until dead, but this sentence was commuted to life imprisonment the following year. 

One of the controversies of Chamberlain's tenure as Governor of Maine remains his seemingly paradoxical record with regard to the death penalty. He granted more pardons and sentence commutations than any governor before him, but defended the death penalty, even strongly supporting the execution of Clifton Harris in 1869, in staunch defiance of public sentiment against capital punishment. In fact, Harris was only the second prisoner ever executed at Maine's Thomaston State Prison. Though the exact number of pardons Chamberlain granted in 1870 is unclear, biographer John J. Pullen records that he pardoned 19 convicts in 1868 and 16 the following year.