lvin Fairbank, were not citizens of the State and had
furthermore used all kinds of deceit to accomplish their purpose. For
the sake of aiding one Negro slave boy to reach freedom they went to
the expense and trouble to feign an elopement to Ohio via Maysville,
but the Lexington authorities caught them as they were coming back on
the Lexington Pike near Paris. At the trial it was shown that
Fairbank was in Kentucky for no other reason than to induce slaves to
escape to the North and that Miss Webster had come to Lexington as a
school teacher merely as a cloak for her abolitionist work. The
evidence offered by the prosecution was damaging in the extreme. The
defense put forth no data for her side at all, evidently preferring to
be hailed as a martyr to the cause for which she stood. The jury
brought in a verdict of guilty and she was sentenced to serve two
years in the State penitentiary.[327]

The young accomplice, Calvin Fairbank, proved to be the most
persistent abolitionist the Kentucky authorities ever encountered. He
pleaded guilty to the indictment as charged and was sentenced to serve
15 years in the penitentiary, to which he was taken February 18, 1845.
Evidently convinced that he had been punished sufficiently Governor
John J. Crittenden pardoned him August 23, 1849, on condition that he
leave the State at once.[328] But such an ardent young enthusiast for
the cause of Negro freedom soon found that there were other slaves who
were in need of his aid and on November 3, 1851, he came across from
Jeffersonville to Louisville under the cover of night and "kidnapped"
a young mulatto woman who had been doomed to be sold at auction.[329]
Presumably in the hope of rescuing other slaves he remained in the
vicinity for several days until on the morning of November 9 he was
arrested by the Kentucky authorities. Fairbank was placed in jail
pending his trial, which took place in the following March, when he
was again sentenced to serve 15 years at hard labor in the State
penitentiary. He began his term March 9, 1852.[330] This time he was
not so fortunate in an early release. The chief executives of the
State from time to time refused to pardon him. In April, 1864,
Governor Bramlette was called to Washington by President Lincoln for
a conference and Richard T. Jacobs, the Lieutenant-Governor, became
the acting Governor. This son-in-law of Thomas H. Benton had taken
more or less pity on Fairbank, for he had stated to the pri