GONZÁLEZ: This is Mosaic, I’m Ana González.

Who killed Amasa Sprague? It’s New Year’s Eve, 1843. Michael Costello, a Sprague servant, just found his master, well his body, face down by the Pocasset River. Blood everywhere. It makes the fresh snow look black in the early night of winter. Who killed him? The wealthy mill owner certainly had enemies. He was an imposing man from a wealthy family who didn’t much care for the hundreds of immigrant men, women, and children he employed. But who would muster up the rage, the courage, to kill him? Maybe it was Big Peter Dolan. He was fired just last week for busting up the loom where his nephew’s fingers were torn off. An angry man, big too. Or maybe it was those Gordon boys. Nicholas hates Sprague. And his brothers, William and John, are no good drunks who would do anything for their brother after he brought them over from Ireland this summer.

Who killed Amasa Sprague? There are theories to this day. But no answers. One family, though, and really just one man, remains indellibly linked to the Sprague murder. In this episode of Mosaic, part one of the story of Irish immigrant John Gordon.

PAUL CARANCI: Right now, we’re on the Sprague mansion property. The carriage house is straight ahead of us. Across the street from the carriage house, across Dyer Avenue, there used to be the Sprague mill. Now it’s the Printworks.

GONZÁLEZ: Paul Caranci is a lifelong Rhode Islander. He literally wrote the book on North Providence. He’s also written a book about John Gordon. Today, we’re in Cranston outside of a white, colonial mansion that’s now the Cranston Historical Society. Amasa Sprague was born here in 1798 to William Sprague II, a politician who used his money to open one of Rhode Island’s first cotton mills in 1807.

PAUL: Down Dyer Avenue are the...mill houses that all the workers lived in.

GONZÁLEZ: The Sprague family is fairly liberal for the time. They seek out Irish immigrants to work in their mills at a time when many businesses were turning away the Irish, especially the Catholics, because the ruling Protestant elite view the Irish as lowly, untrustworthy, and pagan. At its height, the Sprague mill employs over 500 workers, most of them Irish immigrants who flood into the port of Providence in the mid-1800s to escape British colonization back home and find work, in their minds, in the land of endless opportunity.

PAUL: The Irishmans were considered dogs. They weren't even considered white.

GONZÁLEZ: John Gordon’s oldest brother, Nicholas, is one of these immigrants. He comes to Cranston in 1836 to try and find a better life for his mother, sister, and three younger brothers back in Ireland.

PAUL: And over the course of the next few years, he was able to learn his way around and work hard and save enough money to actually buy a piece of land for $200. ...On that land, over the course of the next couple of years...he built a storefront with an apartment on the second floor.

GONZÁLEZ: Nicholas does not work in the mills so , unlike so many of his Irish peers. But he’s still part of the mill system. 19-century mills operate like a fiefdom. If you work in the mill, you live in mill housing. The rent comes out of your paycheck. When you do get paid, it’s next to nothing, and most of it is in “script”, like monopoly money for the mill-owned stores. Nicholas Gordon opens his store within the Sprague mill village in Cranston, but outside of the script system. He starts selling his goods at lower costs than the mill stores. And, he realizes he can make even more money if he starts selling alcohol.

PAUL: And he did that for a while. He made a lot of money, enough money to be able to send for his family.

GONZÁLEZ: But before we get to that part of the story, it’s important to understand the world outside of the mill house bubble.

ERIK CHAPUT: There was intense fears of Catholics.

GONZÁLEZ: This is Dr. Erik Chaput with us over Zoom. He studies 19th-century labor and immigration.

ERIK: You know, we live in a world today where that's not common. ...But when you link the fear of immigrants, particularly the Irish in Rhode Island, and coupled that with this profound fear of Catholicism, and kind of deep-seated hatred, it became a very powerful political force in the state.

GONZÁLEZ: Rhode Island in the 1800s is still ruled by descendants of the original English families who colonized the land in the 1600s. Not only that, they’re still using the Colonial Charter granted to them by the King of England in 1663 as the state constitution.This Colonial Charter only gives the right to vote to white men who were born in the country and who own a substantial amount of real estate. Immigrants have no political power. No way to fight conditions in the mills.

ERIK: It made it very difficult for workers to take a position – who could vote – to take a position that was going to run counter to the mill owner. The Sprague complex in Cranston is a perfect example of that they own the land, they own houses that you were renting. It was a complex. It was hard for laborers to break free of the grasp of a mill owner.

GONZÁLEZ: In 1842, just one year before the Gordons would arrive in Cranston, this tension between the disenfranchised working classes and the comfortable ruling class boils over in a series of events that historians call “the Dorr Rebellion”.

Thomas Wilson Dorr is a young attorney from a wealthy family in Providence who wants to expand voting rights in Rhode Island. By 1841, Dorr and thousands of disenfranchised Rhode Island residents – white, black, immigrant, and native-born, men and women – come together to hold an alternative convention. They call it “The People’s Convention”. They draft a new state constitution and thousands of people vote in favor of it. But the state rejects it. In April, 1842, the Dorrites, as they’re called, hold their own insurgent election for Governor. They elect Dorr. But there’s already a governor of Rhode Island. So, this is like a mini revolution. And it’s a threat to the elite.

ERIK: Another reason why Dorr was so threatening I think to them was that he was from the upper class, he was one of them, he was a Whig, his dad was one of the wealthiest men in the state... And he was a very charismatic and forceful figure. So I think they were afraid of that. So in their formation of a group to stop them, I think they, well, left no stone unturned. I think they pulled out all the stops.

GONZÁLEZ: The ruling class paints Dorr as a dangerous man through a barrage of broadsides, which are these vicious and effective posters and leaflets. They also have the help of the Providence Journal, a daily newspaper run by an old Whig stalwart, Henry Bowen Anthony. They run weekly headlines against Dorr and his followers. The most consistent and condemning critique of Dorr is that he would give voting rights to Irish Catholic immigrants.

ERIK: And you can read about the Dorr Rebellion that specifically mentioned that Dorr’s effort would enfranchise the Catholics, and you should be afraid of that, because it's going to bring into play the Pope. The Pope is going to come in and start to control the state.

GONZÁLEZ: Erik says the Pope angle is only part of the pushback against Dorr.

ERIK: You do see, from their standpoint, a profound belief that Catholicism is dangerous, right, profound fear of the Irish. But that also, in this is true of modern politics is a little bit of a political cover, because of what Dorr was proposing, an enfranchisement of a larger group of citizens of the state, would diminish their own power.

GONZÁLEZ: Dorr is forced into exile and, eventually, arrested for treason and thrown in prison. But his work resonates. The government writes a new constitution that year. While it removes the real estate requirement for native-born citizens, it keeps it in place for immigrants. Irish Catholics are still lower class citizens in Rhode Island.

ERIK: What also is happening concurrently with that debate that's going on is this question: Are the Irish white? Are they going to be of the same status? Is their skin color going to allow them to be at the same status of Protestants? And in Rhode Island, the answer was very clearly “No.”

GONZÁLEZ: So, this is really a civil rights issue. And it creates this palpable anti-immigrant sentiment when Nicholas Gordon applies for a renewal of his liquor license in Cranston in hopes of continuing to make enough money to support his entire family once they arrive in the US.

PAUL: The town council...voted not to renew his liquor license, because they blamed him for Irish workers in the mill coming in drunk and late and increase in accidents and lack of productivity and all the things that went along with being, you know, drinking. And Amasa Sprague made it public that he was going to take away his liquor license.

GONZÁLEZ: Nicholas Gordon is in disbelief. He’s not the only bar in town, by any means, but he’s the only Irish owner. Amasa Sprague, on the other hand, is a former council member and the younger brother of a former senator and governor. It feels like an injustice. Six months from now, witnesses will take the stand in the Rhode Island Supreme Court and testify that they heard Nicholas Gordon threaten to kill Amasa Sprague in this meeting. But nothing happens. Not yet.

Instead, some good news. Nicholas is still able to pay for the passages of his mother, Ellen, his sister Margaret, and his brothers, Robert, William and John Gordon from Ireland. In July of 1843, the Gordon family is reunited for the first time in nearly a decade.

PAUL: And I couldn't imagine how euphoric the whole family was, when they all came here. And, you know, because of Nicholas's success in business, were able to come here. He paid for their travel. They had nothing. And then, you know, make a life you know, be able to start over. It must have been euphoric. And everything was going pretty good over the six, seven months until December 31st.

GONZÁLEZ: It’s a Sunday. New Year’s Eve. At St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Providence, a baby is being christened. William, Nicholas, and John spend the morning at the mass and then slowly begin their 3-mile trek home. Each of them stops at various friends’ houses to share bread and wine and relish in the freedom of the sabbath. It’s one of those brisk and clear winter days where snow stays frozen on the ground, even in the bright light of noon. It’s peaceful. That is, until word leaks through the mill village that Amasa Sprague has just been found face down in the woods, bludgeoned to death.

PAUL: You saw the description of the murder. It was pretty brutal. I mean, he was unrecognizable, even to people that worked for him that found the body had no idea when they turned him over who this was.

GONZÁLEZ: The night of the 31st, Amasa Sprague’s wife, Fanny, says he left their mansion to check on the livestock before nightfall. The normal route would take him past the mill, through the woods, and over a footbridge to cross the Pocasset River into Johnston. Right as he reaches the other side of the river, he’s shot in the wrist. Injured and bleeding, he attempts to run. The assailant’s gun jams, so he knocks Sprague to the ground. The attacker bludgeons Amasa with the butt of the gun until the gun shatters and the almighty mill owner crumples into the snow.

PAUL: So right away...the Yankee residents, the establishment, went to work trying to find out who did it. But they really didn't want to find out who did it. They wanted to pin the blame on who they wanted to pin the blame on.

GONZÁLEZ: Dozens of people flood to the murder scene. Two doctors. Mill workers and friends of the Spragues. There are no police or forensics units. It’s 1843. They find the shattered gun with a bit of newspaper from an Irish publication shoved inside, a large overcoat stained with what they think is blood, and footsteps that walk from the scene of the crime at the bridge right up to the Gordon house.

PAUL: Now, that footbridge was a pretty heavily used bridge to get across the Pocasset river. Everybody used it. There were probably thousands of tracks. But they only follow the ones that went to Gordon store. I'm sure the Gordons used it several times. It's the only way to cross the river.

GONZÁLEZ: John is at his friend’s house drinking when he hears the news of the murder. He runs home to sober up and regroup with his brothers. William remembers that his older brother has a gun behind the counter. He bought it last year. Back in Ireland, owning a gun would be proof enough for their arrest. He goes upstairs and hides it beneath the floorboards. But it doesn’t matter; the wheels of the Yankee establishment have already decided who killed Amasa Sprague.

PAUL: They saw an opportunity not only to make an arrest in a high profile murder. Murder case of the century – this was like the OJ Simpson case of that day–...but then they could create a situation where the could fuel more bigotry against the Irish, if you blame it on an Irishman. So, they found their perfect guy in John Gordon.

GONZÁLEZ: The whole town knows that Nicholas blamed Amasa Sprague for the loss of his liquor license and income. And even though William and John Gordon have only been in the country for 6 months now, they already have reputations in the village.

PAUL: John was kind of a, they were all kind of a life of the party group. They partied pretty hard. And William was found, you know, drunk – so was John – drunk and on his back, you know, trying to get up, more times than not.

GONZÁLEZ: On the day of the murder, all of the Gordon men had been drinking. Very publicly, too. Enough to do something stupid. The investigators of the murder piece together the overcoat, the gun, the footsteps, and Nicholas’s lingering resentment of Amasa Sprague. On January 1st, 1844, officials march into the Gordon store and arrest Nicholas and John Gordon. Nicholas for conspiracy to commit murder and John for the bloody murder of Amasa Sprague.

SCOTT: They are indicted, with some fairly strong circumstantial evidence.

GONZÁLEZ: This is Scott Molloy. He’s a former URI professor who’s spent his career studying labor and Irish history. The Gordon trial is right in the middle of the venn diagram of his work. He explains that the murder of Amasa Sprague and the arrest of the Gordon brothers sticks out in US history.

SCOTT: I mean, murder in those days was unheard of. I mean, you go people go a decade or 15 years before a murder would pop up again.

GONZÁLEZ: The State is desperate to make a conviction. After they arrest Nicholas and John, officials also arrest William in connection with the murder. Every member of the Gordon family is questioned. Officials even bring in the family dog to take paw prints. John and William are scheduled to be tried together in Rhode Island Supreme Court on April 8, 1844 for murder.

SCOTT: The state decided to try John and William first and together, and then Nicolas, after that trial, as the mastermind. So they wanted to kind of establish guilt here, and then kind of push it over onto Nicholas...

GONZÁLEZ: The Supreme Court sets up two trials: one for John and William and one for Nicholas.

SCOTT: 12 jurors on each one. Everyone was a Yankee. There wasn't one Irish Catholic among any of them.

GONZÁLEZ: Presiding over the trials and their Yankee jurors is another tried and true Yankee. An anti-Dorr, anti-immigrant Whig. Chief Justice Job Durfee.

SCOTT: Chief Justice Job Durfee, who's the head of the Rhode Island Supreme Court….will say to the jury, which is unbelievable, that if you find yourself listening to a native-born witness versus an Irish Catholic immigrant witness, you should give greater credence to the native-born individual, rather than the newcomer. Today, my God, a defense lawyer would jump up in the air screaming “Hooray!” because he just won the case with that kind of discrimination.

GONZÁLEZ: After these instructions, the trial of William and John Gordon begins. The prosecution’s opening remarks describe, in great detail, the murder of Amasa Sprague and how they are going to prove that John and William acted on their brother’s orders to murder the mill owner as revenge for taking away his liquor license.

I just want to read a portion of this for you, so you can begin to put yourself in the 1844 courtroom. Prosecution lawyer William Potter opens the trial by saying: A crime, gentlemen, of the greatest magnitude, a murder most cruel and atrocious in its character, has been committed. A life most valuable, has been violently and illegally taken….Dramatic, right? After this, the testimonies begin.

GONZÁLEZ: As the trial comes to a close, the defense has been battered by the prosecution and Justice Durfee, who’s practically working for the prosecution. In his closing remarks, defense attorney Thomas Carpenter all but cries out to the jury when he says, “It is very extraordinary that these men are not to be believed. Why are they not? Because they are Irishmen?”

SCOTT: They never had a witness who could say, ‘Yes, I saw John Gordon do it.’ That wasn't there. There was circumstantial evidence that, you know, I wouldn't want against me, but who knows? You know, it's just, it just wasn't fair. That's all.

GONZÁLEZ: The circumstantial evidence of the footsteps and the coat found at the murder scene are flimsy: everyone in mill village wears practically the same clothes bought from the mill stores or nearby tailors. Anyone could have made those tracks or owned that coat. There’s a scene in the trial where they ask John to try on the coat, a lot like OJ with the glove, and it wraps around his tiny frame. But then there’s the gun. The prosecution is able prove that Nicholas bought a gun last year, and now, it’s nowhere to be found. The Yankee jury deliberates and comes back to the courtroom with a verdict.

SCOTT: Everything was stacked against them, but to the jury's credit, they did a few right things. So they come back with a verdict of William, innocent, and John, guilty.

GONZÁLEZ: A Yankee witness gave William an alibi, and it frees him. But not John. The youngest Gordon brother is sentenced to death by hanging. As he leaves the courtroom, John turns to William and says, “It’s you who have hanged me.”

PAUL: Only the two of them knew what he was talking about. But it was the fact that William hid the guns and didn't say anything. And if he just said, ‘No, the guns are upstairs. That couldn't be his gun,’ then that would have been clear evidence that they didn't do it. Somebody else's gun did it.

GONZÁLEZ: But William doesn’t do that. At least, not until it’s too late. John Gordon spends the rest of 1844 incarcerated and trying to appeal his death sentence. But the appellate court in 1844 is the same body as the Supreme Court. So Chief Justice Job Durfee reviews his own trial. He, obviously, holds up his decisions. John Gordon’s lawyers approach the governor, Governor Fenner. He rejects all new evidence. John Gordon is sentenced to be hanged on February 14th, 1845. Nicholas is to be tried for conspiracy.

SCOTT: Nicholas comes up and, my God, they come back with a blockbuster of a hung jury. ...They can't believe it. So the state immediately steps right back in and reschedules another trial... So the problem was the trial, the second trial of Nicholas Gordon would not be held until two months after the execution of John Gordon. William Gordon's free . He's innocent. John Gordon, guilty of conspiracy to murder. And now you're going to execute him before his brother who's got a hung jury already and who knows what's going to happen now? You might want to wait to make sure there was a conspiracy. But of course they didn't want that. They wanted to, the powers that be, wanted to teach the Irish. I really think they do. They want to make an example.

John Gordon, an Irish immigrant who really can’t help himself, he's going off to be hanged on Valentine's Day. Don't tell me Rhode Island doesn't have a sense of humor.

GONZÁLEZ: The news of John Gordon’s execution spreads through the entire Irish immigrant community in the Northeast. On Valentine’s Day, 1845, hundreds of Irish immigrants from New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut gather in Providence dressed in mourning. They surround the gallows, where, inside, a private crowd of politicians is gathering to watch John Gordon hang. He’s not even 30 years old.

SCOTT: They had about 40, 50 people come in to see him hanged! It was like public theater.

GONZÁLEZ: An Irish Catholic priest, Father John Brady, also comes to John Gordon to hear his last confession. And this is where Scott Molloy says, John Gordon’s innocence becomes almost certain. Because, for a devout Catholic, confessing one’s sins is the only way to save your soul.

SCOTT: He understood, I believe, that the only way he could avoid the fires of hell and damnation was to come clean in that confession.

GONZÁLEZ: Father Brady hears Gordon’s confession. But Catholic priests are sworn to never share what anybody confesses, so he never reveals what John says to him. Instead, he accompanies John Gordon past the elite observers, but before they make it to the gallows, Father Brady stops and turns towards the crowd.

SCOTT: And then Father Brady does a fascinating thing. He in a sense, scolds the powers that be there. And he says, ‘John, forgive your enemies. They don't know what they're doing.’ He said, ‘because you're going to join a myriad of other Irish martyrs who have been killed for the same thing: Nothing.’

GONZÁLEZ: This doesn’t change anything for John, though. Minutes later, the floor drops out from under him. His body leaves the gallows in a funeral wagon, headed for the Catholic church for a funeral mass. The throngs of fellow Irish Catholic immigrants follow the wagon as it intentionally passes the Statehouse, just to make sure every legislator sees the black parade of mourners. After Mass, John Gordon is placed in an unmarked grave next to St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Pawtucket.

Nicholas Gordon dies less than a year later of natural causes. His brother William spends the 15 years of his life in and out of prisons and asylums due to alcoholism and debt. He dies in 1862. It’s clear that John Gordon’s execution destroys his family. It also changes the Irish community.

PAUL: Because of... the bigotry, prejudice, a whole group, a whole culture lost something. You know, to them, America was no longer viewed as a land of opportunity. And the court system was no longer viewed as a place we go to administer justice. And the government itself wasn't trusted by anybody of Irish descent or Catholic faith at that time, because of this.

GONZÁLEZ: The public backlash against John’s execution has one bittersweet consequence: it stirs up anti-death penalty activism. And seven years after John Gordon’s execution, Rhode Island abolishes the death penalty entirely. It’s the first state in the country to do this. John Gordon’s execution is Rhode Island’s last. But the legacy of John Gordon’s case, the injustice of it, never goes away. It penetrates the folklore of Rhode Island’s Irish community for generations.

KEN DOOLEY TEASER: I can remember my grandmother, my father's mother... she used to rock me and sing me songs. I must have been like five years old. And she sang a little song about “Poor Johnny Gordon.”

PETER MARTIN: Justice has no statute of limitations.

GONZÁLEZ: In the next episode of Mosaic, part II of John Gordon’s story takes us to a local theatre in 2009, where a play rehashes all the drama of the 1840s and inspires a whole new generation of Irish Rhode Islanders to seek justice.

Mosaic is a production of The Public’s Radio. Edited by Sally Eisele. With production help from Aaron Selbig and James Baumgartner. Our theme music is by Bryn Bliska. Our intern is Michelle Liu. Torey Malatia is the general manager of The Public’s Radio. I’m Ana González: thank you for listening. If you want to see some of the anti-catholic braod sides from the 1830s and 40s, check out our website, thepublicsradio.org/mosaic. While you’re there, you can listen to every episode of Mosaic ever, and see some incredible photos, videos, and historical documents. And, as always, subscribe to Mosaic wherever you get your podcasts.