Secretary Blaine’s Letter to Minister Lincoln
I will conclude by quoting the letter of Secretary Blaine to Mr. Robert Lincoln, then Minister to the Court of St. James. It will be seen that Mr. Blaine was of opinion that I had lost my citizenship. Since this letter was written it has been decided by the Supreme Court of the United States that a woman married to a foreigner, on the death of her husband can, on application, be reinstated to citizenship.
HON. JAMES G. BLAINE,
American Secretary of State, 1889-1892.
“Department of State, Washington,
“March 7, 1892.
“My dear Mr. Lincoln: As Mrs. Maybrick lost her American citizenship by her English marriage, and as I fear she does not resume it by her widowhood, I can not instruct you officially as to the course you should pursue toward her.
“But her American and Southern birth, her connection with many families of the highest respectability and even of prominence in the country’s service, have attracted much attention to her fate.
“I have no other interest in her than an interest which you and I share in common with all our countrymen—the desire to help an American woman in distress. That she may have been influenced by the foolish ambition of too many American girls for a foreign marriage, and have descended from her own rank to that of her husband’s family, which seems to have been somewhat vulgar, must be forgiven to her youth, since she was only eighteen at the time of her marriage.
“There is a wide and widening belief in this country that she is legally innocent and illegally imprisoned. The official charge of the judge that murder must be proved and the official announcement of the Home Secretary that the evidence leaves a ‘reasonable doubt’ of murder are the premises of but one conclusion—the discharge of the prisoner.
“The fact that she was never indicted or tried by a jury of her peers on a specific count of felonious attempt to administer arsenic, yet is condemned to penal servitude for life on the Home Secretary’s statement that she evidently made such an attempt, can never be reconciled to the English principle that an accused person shall be tried by a jury of his peers. Lawyers here are among the strongest believers in the illegality of her imprisonment. Indeed, the sense of injustice is developing and deepening into horror.
“Officially I could only instruct you on behalf of a multitude of American citizens to investigate her case. Personally I beg to express to you my deep interest in it, and pray you, if possible, to communicate with Messrs. Lumley and Sir Charles Russell as to any method of American cooperation which may seem to them desirable.
“Messrs. Lumley have made a very able brief, which I am sure would interest you, and which seems to me unanswerable. Sir Charles Russell, whose reputation you know, is her counsel. Consult with them what best can be done, from an American point of view, to secure Mrs. Maybrick’s release. And if you shall have read Lumley’s brief, I am sure that conviction will lead you to personal activity in her behalf.
“You can communicate with me in strict confidence, as from one American citizen to another, for the relief of an American woman helplessly enduring a great wrong.
“Believe me, etc.,
“James G. Blaine.”
And yet it required the time from March 7, 1892, until July 20, 1904, to attain my liberation; and then it was accomplished by time limit and by no act of grace or concession on the part of the English Government.