William Goebel

DESCRIPTION: "Our grand old state is left in shame Since the death of William Goebel." Goebel's wisdom is praised, but the candidate he was running against, "Taylor saw his plan had failed." Someone, perhaps Taylor, arranges Goebel's death
AUTHOR: James W. Day ("Jilson Setters")
EARLIEST DATE: 1939 (Thomas)
KEYWORDS: homicide political
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Jan 30, 1900 - shooting of William Goebel (1856-1900)
Feb 3, 1900 - Goebel dies
FOUND IN: US(Ap)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Thomas-BalladMakingInMountainsOfKentucky, pp. 188-190, (no title) (1 text) (OakEd, pp. 192-194)
NOTES [500 words]: Thomas says that Setters sang this to the tune of "Barbary Ellen," but since she doesn't say *which* tune of "Barbary Ellen," that doesn't help much.
KentuckyEncyclopedia: John E. Kleber, Editor in Chief, The Kentucky Encyclopedia, The University Press of Kentucky, 1992, has an article on William Goebel and another on the Goebel Assassination; the latter, on p. 377, begins:
"After a very close canvass, Republican William S. Taylor was declared governor of Kentucky over Democrat William Goebel and was inaugurated on December 12, 1899. Even after the inauguration, the election results were contested, and in the midst of those deliberations aspirant Goebel was shot and wounded as he approached the state capitol on January 30, 1900. The Democratic majority in the General Assembly declared enough of the ballads fraudulent to make Goebel the victor in the election. He was sworn in as governor on January 31, an action Republicans refused to recognized (sic.) as legal. On February 3, Goebel died, the only governor in American history to die in office of wounds inflicted by an assassin. Eventual court decisions supported the actions of the Democratic majority, and Governor Taylor fled the commonwealth in May, The state of near-civil war between combatants divided by party finally ended, but questions concerning the assassination persist even to this day."
It sounds like quite a conspiracy: Sixteen people were indicted in the assassination, three of whom turned state's evidence. Five of the others went on trial. Three men, Caleb Powers, Henry Youtsey, and Jim Howard, were convicted the first time around, with Howard being the actual assassin and the other two state officials (Powers was the secretary of state!) who planned the murder.
Powers was re-tried three times, with the first three producing convictions but the fourth trial, in April 1903, clearing him. All three were eventually pardoned. The author of the Kentucky Encyclopedia article is frankly not sure what actually happened.
Goebel himself was "A complex, ambitious person... denounced by some as a ruthless, heartless demagogue and hailed by others as a compassionate, dedicated reformer" (Kleber, p. 377). His program sounds pretty promising: civil rights for women and blacks, more workers' rights, an end on textbook monopolies, gambling control, railroad regulation. But he apparently killed a rival, John Sanford, in a political quarrel in 1895. His gubernatorial nomination in 1899 split the Democratic party, which was why Taylor led the initial vote by 193.744 to 191,331 (with another Democrat, John Y. Brown, getting 12,040 votes from Democratic defectors).
Caleb Powers eventually published his version of events, Caleb Powers, My Own Story (with a subtitle that is most of a paragraph long), 1905; I have not seen it, but there are several print-on-demand versions available. Probably more reliable is James C. Klotter, William Goebel: The Politics of Wrath, University Press of Kentucky, 1977.
Last updated in version 6.7
File: ThBa188

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