Macklin, Louisville Courier-Journal, July 8, 1868

The case of Father Lamber Young drags, and will not be finally disposed of for two or three months to come. He was fined fifty dollars and costs by Judge Ballard, day before yesterday, for contempt of court, and held in a large sum to answer on the 14th or October. He has paid his fine, given bond as required, and yesterday returned to Frankfort. We give below a copy of the letter addressed to Judge Ballard by Hon. John Scott, Commonwealth’s Attorney of the Eighth Judicial District of Kentucky, which letter Father Young’s legal advisers asked leave to read to the court. The privilege, we believe, was refused, whereupon they sought and obtained permission to file it with other documentary evidence. It speaks for itself:

Frankfort, Ky., June 11, 1868

Hon. Bland Ballard:

As Reverend Lambert Young, the Catholic priest of this place, is now confined in jail at Louisville, charged with contempt of your court in declining to answer certain inquiries before the grand jury concerning the breaking the jail, and hanging a negro man in Frankfort last winter by a mob, I deem it due to Father Young, as well as to all concerned, to state the circumstances under which he went to the jail to endeavor to disperse the mob and prevent the black man from being hung. What effect these facts will have upon the question of privilege claimed by the priest will be for your honor to determine.

About noon of the day preceding the hanging of the colored man, I learned that the Irish friends of the girl said to have been violated were mediating the violence, and that they would probably attempt to break the jail and hang him that night. I went to a number of the leading Irishmen of the city, and besought them to lend their aid in an effort to quell the mob spirit, so that the law might take its course. Quite a number of them promised to do so, and about supper time I began to think the effort had been successful.

About 8 o’clock at night I saw persons gathering about the jail, and at once perceived that the crowd was no other than a mob collecting. to break the jail and hang the colored man, Jim Macklin.

I at once determined to send for Father Young, and request him to use his priestly office and influence in an effort to disperse the mob. He boarded less than a square from my residence. I sent for him. He immediately came to my room. I told him that I was Commonwealth’s Attorney for the district I felt that my official duty compelled me to use every effort in my power to prevent the mob violence that was about to be perpetrated at the jail, and the last and only effort remaining in my judgement was to get him to go into the crowd, and in his capacity as priest to address the mob and dissuade them from the perpetration of the contemplated outrage. He at once consented to do so, and started from my house for that purpose. I feel assured that but for his priestly office he would have been permitted to enter the jail yard and address the infuriated mob.

Whether these facts are sufficient to exhonerate [sic] him from deposing as to whom or what he saw at the jail, is a matter about which I express no opinion, but merely wish to state the circumstances under which he went to the jail, being quite sure that he went there at my request, as a civil officer, for the sole purpose of using his priestly office and influence to disperse the mob, and thus preserve the life of the unfortunate colored man.

I volunteer these statements in behalf of the priest, who is my personal friend, because he went to the jail to quell the mob at my request as a civil officer.

Very respectfully,

John L. Scott

Com. Attorney Eighth District