COMPLETING THE ACT OF FORGIVENESS
About the year 1830, a man named George Wilson killed a government employee who caught him in the act of robbing the mails. He was tried and sentenced to be hanged. However, the President of the U. S., Andrew Jackson, sent him a pardon. But Wilson did a strange thing. He refused to accept the pardon and no one seemed to know what to do. So the case was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States. Chief Justice Marshall, perhaps one of the greatest Chief Justices we ever had, wrote the opinion. In it he said, “A pardon is a slip of paper, the value of which is determined by the acceptance of the person to be pardoned. If it is refused, it is no pardon. George Wilson must be hanged.” And he was. From A Reader’s Notebook, G. Kennedy, editor.
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