Petition—To His Excellency Rutherford B. Hayes President of the United States. I see by the New York Herald & press of the country generally that John D Lee who has recently been executed for his participation in the crime known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre has made a statement which if true directly implicates me as accessory after the fact by implication makes me liable as an accessory before the fact. I have before now publicaly [stated] that I was & had been at all times ready to render [any] aid I could to bring to justice the perpetrators of that great crime & especially did I on more than one occasion proof er my services & influence to the later Governor Cumming my successor in office to aid in obtaining the evidence necessary to furnish the guilty ones. These proffered services whatever they may have been worth have never been accepted. In view of the magnitude of the offense I now most respectfully ask you as the chief magistrate of the great nation in justice to the people who inhabited this Territory at that period if you have the power & if not to call the attention of Congress to the matter when it meets in June to appoint a commission fully authorized to investigate that inhuman slaughter & with jurisdiction to try & punish the offenders thereof.