After her release, Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins wanted to find out whether this pardon also meant that the President supported their Amendment. She therefore wrote him the following letter:
My dear Mr. President:
The pardon issued to me by you is accompanied by no explanation. It can have but one of two meanings—either you have satisfied yourself, as you personally stated to Mr. Hopkins, that I violated no law of the country, and no ordinance of this city, in exercising my right of peaceful petition, and therefore you, as an act of justice, extended to me your pardon, or you pardoned me to save yourself the embarrassment of an acute and distressing political situation.
In this case, in thus saving yourself, you have deprived me of the right through appeal to prove by legal processes that the police powers of Washington despotically and falsely convicted me on a false charge, in order to save you personal or political embarrassment.
As you have not seen fit to tell the public the true reason, I am compelled to resume my peaceful petition for political liberty. If the police arrest me, I shall carry the case to the Supreme Court if necessary. If the police do not arrest me, I shall believe that you do not believe me guilty. This is the only method by which I can release myself from the intolerable and false position in which your unexplained pardon has placed me.
Mr. Hopkins and I repudiate absolutely the current report that I would accept a pardon which was the act of your good nature.
In this case, which involves my fundamental constitutional rights, Mr. Hopkins and myself do not desire your Presidential benevolence, but American justice.
Furthermore, we do not believe that you would insult us by extending to us your good-nature under these circumstances.
This pardon without any explanation of your reasons for its issuance, in no way mitigates the injustice inflicted upon me by the violation of my constitutional civil right.
Respectfully yours,