Viewing H. L. Gordon Recalls Trials in the 1860s and 1870s. (1911).H. L. Gordon Recalls Trials in the 1860s and 1870s. (1911).Hanford Lennox Gordon (1836-1920), a Civil War veteran, practiced law in Wright and Stearns Counties in the 1860s and 1870s, and later in Minneapolis in the 1880s. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of verse, most pertaining to Minnesota. In 1915 he donated his papers to the Minnesota Historical Society. Among them is a fourteen-page letter dated September 18, 1911, to a family friend in which he recalled several trials in the 1860s and 1870s. As he describes these trials, he relives them. He recalls his summation in a murder case he prosecuted as Wright County Attorney as if he delivered it yesterday. Defense counsel, Eugene Wilson, had given an emotional plea to the jury. Gordon writes:
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