I would like to take a minute to explain another side of the preservation of
Governors Island, over which the Statue of Liberty looks over to the East.

On the south of the island are two monuments, blocks on which are bronze
replicas of a swivel gun. The one I would like to discuss is the one to Peter
Zenger, who arrived from the "Palantine" in what would become Germany at the
age of ten.

At the St. Pauls Church in Eastchester, NY, part of cemetery of which is
actually inside the limits of the City of New York, is a monument to "Freedom
of the Press" and administered by the National Parks Service. The story is
that the bell in the tower is the "sister" bell of the Liberty Bell in
Philadelphia, PA, cast at the same time.

On the "Village Green" in front of the church was held a "contested election"
by Peter Zenger in his paper, the second only to the official one in New
York. In this paper Peter Zenger wrote a story about the Governor of New
York, for which he was tried for libel and slander. Defended by a famous
lawyer, Alexander Hamilton (not the later editor of an NY newspaper, and
George Washington's, "son he never had") the jury weighed "law" and "fact"
and this became an important example of "jury nullification," in that the law
was not applied correctly and Peter Zenger was found "not guilty."

Not only is Governors Island important to New York history as a residence of
New York governors, the place where Gorbachev first met Reagan, available for
$1, containing Fort William across from Fort Clinton on the Island of
Manhattan, containing Fort Jay, built by Columbia University students, but
important to the judicial history of human rights in jury trials in that
Peter Zenger grew up for a while there.

Please lend your support to the acquisition of this important historical site
and its preservation.