



Produced by Carla Foust and the Online Distributed
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  THE JUDICIAL MURDER

  --OF--

  MARY E. SURRATT.


  DAVID MILLER DEWITT.


  Baltimore:
  JOHN MURPHY & CO.
  1895.




COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY DAVID MILLER DEWITT.




"_Oceans of horse-hair, continents of parchment, and learned-sergeant
eloquence, were it continued till the learned tongue wore itself small in
the indefatigable learned mouth, cannot make the unjust just. The grand
question still remains, Was the judgment just? If unjust, it will not and
cannot get harbour for itself, or continue to have footing in this
Universe, which was made by other than One Unjust. Enforce it by never
such statuting, three readings, royal assents; blow it to the four winds
with all manner of quilted trumpeters and pursuivants, in the rear of them
never so many gibbets and hangmen, it will not stand, it cannot stand.
From all souls of men, from all ends of Nature, from the Throne of God
above, there are voices bidding it: Away! Away!_"

PAST AND PRESENT.




CONTENTS.


                                                                   PAGE.

  PRELIMINARY

  CHAPTER I. The Reign of Terror,                                      1

  CHAPTER II. The Bureau of Military (In)Justice,                     15


  PART I. THE MURDER.

  CHAPTER I. The Opening of the Court. Was She Ironed?                23

  CHAPTER II. Animus of the Judges. Insults to Reverdy Johnson
              and General Edward Johnson,                             41

  CHAPTER III. Conduct of the Trial,                                  56

  CHAPTER IV. Arguments of the Defense,                               70

  CHAPTER V. Charge of Judge Bingham,                                 82

  CHAPTER VI. Verdict, Sentence and Petition,                         91

  CHAPTER VII. The Death Warrant and Execution,                      112

  CHAPTER VIII. Was it not Murder? The Milligan Case,                126


  PART II. THE VINDICATION.

  CHAPTER I. Setting Aside the Verdict. Discharge of Jefferson
             Davis,                                                  145

  CHAPTER II. Reversal on the Merits. Trial of John H. Surratt,      165

  CHAPTER III. The Recommendation to Mercy,                          182

  CHAPTER IV. Trial of Joseph Holt,                                  207

  CHAPTER V. Andrew Johnson Signs another Death Warrant,             236

  CHAPTER VI. Conclusion,                                            249




PRELIMINARY.




CHAPTER I.

THE REIGN OF TERROR.


The assassination of Abraham Lincoln burst upon the City of Washington
like a black thunder-bolt out of a cloudless sky. On Monday, the 3d of
April, 1865, Richmond was taken. On the succeeding Sunday (the ninth),
General Lee with the main Army of the South surrendered. The rebellion of
nearly one-half the nation lay in its death-throes. The desperate struggle
for the unity of the Republic was ending in a perfect triumph; and the
loyal people gave full rein to their joy. Every night the streets of the
city were illuminated. The chief officers of the government, one after
another, were serenaded. On the evening of Tuesday, the eleventh, the
President addressed his congratulations to an enthusiastic multitude from
a window of the White House. On the night of Thursday (the thirteenth)
Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War, and Ulysses S. Grant, the
victorious General of the Army of the North, were tumultuously greeted
with banners and music and cannon at the residence of the Secretary. The
next day, Friday the 14th, was the fourth anniversary of the surrender of
Fort Sumter to the South, and that national humiliation was to be avenged
by the restoration of the flag of the United States to its proper place
above the fort by the hand of the same gallant officer who had been
compelled to pull it down. In the evening, a torch-light procession
perambulated the streets of the Federal Capital. Enthusiastic throngs
filled the theatres, where the presence of great officials had been
advertised by huge placards, and whose walls were everywhere festooned
with the American flag. After four years of agonizing but unabating
strain, all patriots felt justified in yielding to the full enjoyment of
the glorious relaxation.

Suddenly, at its very zenith, the snap of a pistol dislimns and scatters
this great jubilee, as though it were, indeed, the insubstantial fabric of
a vision. At half past ten that night, from the box of the theatre where
the President is seated, a shot is heard; a wild figure, hatless and
clutching a gleaming knife, emerges through the smoke; it leaps from the
box to the stage, falls upon one knee, recovers itself, utters one shout
and waves aloft its bloody weapon; then turns, limps across in front of
the audience and disappears like a phantom behind the scenes.
Simultaneously, there breaks upon the startled air the shriek of a woman,
followed close by confused cries of "Water! Water!" and "The President is
shot!"

For the first few moments both audience and actors are paralyzed. One man
alone jumps from the auditorium to the stage and pursues the flying
apparition. But, as soon as the hopeless condition of the President and
the escape of the assassin begin to transpire, angry murmurs of "Burn the
Theatre!" are heard in the house, and soon swell into a roar in the street
where a huge crowd has already assembled.

The intermingling throng surges into the building from every quarter, and
mounts guard at every exit. Not one of the company of actors is allowed to
go out. The people seem to pause for a moment, as if awaiting from Heaven
a retribution as sudden and awful as the crime.

All their joy is turned to grief in the twinkling of an eye. The rebellion
they had too easily believed to be dead could still strike, it seemed, a
fatal blow against the very life of the Republic. A panic seizes the
multitude in and around the theatre, and from the theatre spreads, "like
the Night," over the whole city. And when the frightened citizens hear, as
they immediately do, the story of the bloody massacre in the house of the
Secretary of State, occurring at the same hour with the murder of the
President, the panic swells into a reign of terror. The wildest stories
find the quickest and most eager credence. Every member of the Cabinet and
the General of the Army have been, or are about to be, killed; the
government itself is at a standstill; and the lately discomfited rebels
are soon to be in possession of the Capital. Patriotic people, delivering
themselves over to a fear of they know not what, cry hoarsely for
vengeance on they know not whom. The citizen upon whose past loyalty the
slightest suspicion can be cast cowers for safety close to his
hearth-stone. The terror-stricken multitude want but a leader cool and
unscrupulous enough, to plunge into a promiscuous slaughter, such as
stained the new-born revolution in France. A leader, indeed, they soon
find, but he is not a Danton. He is a leader only in the sense that he has
caught the same madness of terror and suspicion which has seized the
people, that he holds high place, and that he has the power and is in a
fit humor to pander to the panic.

Edwin M. Stanton was forced by the tremendous crisis up to the very top of
affairs. Vice-President Johnson, in the harrowing novelty of his position,
was for the time being awed into passive docility. The Secretary of State
was doubly disabled, if not killed. The General of the Army was absent.
The Secretary of War without hesitation grasped the helm thus thrust into
his hand, but, alas! he immediately lost his head. His exasperation at the
irony of fate, which could so ruthlessly and in a moment wither the
triumph of a great cause by so unexpected and overwhelming a calamity, was
so profound and intense, his desire for immediate and commensurate
vengeance was so uncontrollable and unreasoning, as to distort his
perception, unsettle his judgment, and thus cause him to form an estimate
of the nature and extent of the impending danger as false and exaggerated
as that of the most panic-stricken wretch in the streets. Personally,
besides, he was unfitted in many respects for such an emergency. Though an
able and, it may be, a great War-Minister, he exerted no control over his
temper; he habitually identified a conciliatory and charitable disposition
with active disloyalty; and, being unpopular with the people of Washington
by reason of the gruffness of his ways and the inconsistencies of his past
political career, he had reached the unalterable conviction that the
Capital was a nest of sympathizers with the South, and that he was
surrounded by enemies of himself and his country.

When, therefore, upon the crushing news that the President was slain,
followed hard the announcement that another assassin had made a
slaughter-house of the residence of the Minister's own colleague,
self-possession--the one supreme quality which was indispensable to a
leader at such an awful juncture--forsook him and fled.

Before the breath was out of the body of the President, the Secretary had
rushed to the conclusion, unsupported as yet by a shadow of testimony,
that the acts of Booth and of the assailant of Seward (at the moment
supposed to be John H. Surratt) were the outcome of a widespread, numerous
and powerful conspiracy to kill, not only the President and the Secretary
of State, but all the other heads of the Departments, the Vice-President
and the General of the Army as well, and thus bring the government to an
end; and that the primary moving power of the conspiracy was the defunct
rebellion as represented by its titular President and his Cabinet, and its
agents in Canada. This belief, embraced with so much precipitation,
immediately became more than a belief; it became a fixed idea in his mind.
He saw, heard, felt and cherished every thing that favored it. He would
see nothing, would hear nothing, and hated every thing, that in the
slightest degree militated against it. Upon this theory he began, and upon
this theory he prosecuted to the end, every effort for the discovery,
arrest, trial and punishment of the murderers.

He was seconded by a lieutenant well-fitted for such a purpose--General
Lafayette C. Baker, Chief of the Detective Force. In one of the two
minority reports presented to the House of Representatives by the
Judiciary Committee, on the Impeachment Investigation of 1867, this man
and his methods are thus delineated:

    "The first witness examined was General Lafayette C. Baker, late chief
    of the detective police, and although examined on oath, time and
    again, and on various occasions, it is doubtful whether he has in any
    one thing told the truth, even by accident. In every important
    statement he is contradicted by witnesses of unquestioned credibility.
    And there can be no doubt that to his many previous outrages,
    entitling him to an unenviable immortality, he has added that of
    wilful and deliberate perjury; and we are glad to know that no one
    member of the committee deems any statement made by him as worthy of
    the slightest credit. What a blush of shame will tinge the cheek of
    the American student in future ages, when he reads that this miserable
    wretch for years held, as it were, in the hollow of his hand, the
    liberties of the American people. That, clothed with power by a
    reckless administration, and with his hordes of unprincipled tools and
    spies permeating the land everywhere, with uncounted thousands of the
    people's money placed in his hands for his vile purposes, this
    creature not only had power to arrest without crime or writ, and
    imprison without limit, any citizen of the republic, but that he
    actually did so arrest thousands, all over the land, and filled the
    prisons of the country with the victims of his malice, or that of his
    masters."

In this man's hands Secretary Stanton placed all the resources of the War
Department, in soldiers, detectives, material and money, and commanded him
to push ahead and apprehend all persons suspected of complicity in the
assumed conspiracy, and to conduct an investigation as to the origin and
progress of the crime, upon the theory he had adopted and which, as much
as any other, Baker was perfectly willing to accept and then, by his
peculiar methods, establish. Forthwith was ushered in the grand carnival
of detectives. Far and wide they sped. They had orders from Baker to do
two things:

I.--To arrest all the "Suspect." II.--By promises, rewards, threats,
deceit, force, or any other effectual means, to extort confessions and
procure testimony to establish the conspiracy whose existence had been
postulated.

At two o'clock in the morning of Saturday, the fifteenth, they burst into
the house of Mrs. Surratt and displaying the bloody collar of the coat of
the dying Lincoln, demanded the whereabouts of Booth and Surratt. It being
presently discovered that Booth had escaped on horseback across the Navy
Yard Bridge with David Herold ten minutes in his rear, a dash was made
upon the livery-stables of Washington, their proprietors taken into
custody, and then the whole of lower Maryland was invaded, the soldiers
declaring martial law as they progressed. Ford's theatre was taken and
held by an armed force, and the proprietor and employees were all swept
into prison, including Edward Spangler, a scene-shifter, who had been a
menial attendant of Booth's. The superstitious notion prevailed that the
inanimate edifice whose walls had suffered such a desecration was in some
vague sense an accomplice; the Secretary swore that no dramatic
performance should ever take place there again; and the suspicion was
sedulously kept alive that the manager and the whole force of the company
must have aided their favorite actor, or the crime could not have been so
easily perpetrated and the assassin escaped.

On the night of the fifteenth (Saturday) a locked room in the Kirkwood
House, where Vice President Johnson was stopping, which had been engaged
by George A. Atzerodt on the morning of the fourteenth, was broken open,
and in the bed were found a bowie-knife and a revolver, and on the wall a
coat (subsequently identified as Herold's), in which was found, among
other articles, a bank book of Booth's. The room had not been otherwise
occupied--Atzerodt, after taking possession of it, having mysteriously
disappeared.

On the morning of the seventeenth (Monday), at Baltimore, Michael
O'Laughlin was arrested as a friend of Booth's, and it was soon thought
that he "_resembled extremely_" a certain suspicious stranger who, it was
remembered, had been seen prowling about Secretary Stanton's residence on
the night of the 13th, when the serenade took place, and there doing such
an unusual act as inquiring for, and looking at, General Grant.

On the same day at Fort Monroe, Samuel Arnold was arrested, whose letter
signed "Sam" had been found on Saturday night among the effects of Booth.

On the night of the seventeenth, also, the house of Mrs. Surratt with all
its contents was taken possession of by the soldiers, and Mrs. Surratt,
her daughter, and all the other inmates were taken into custody. While the
ladies were making preparations for their departure to prison, a man
disguised as a laborer, with a sleeve of his knit undershirt drawn over
his head, a pick-axe on his shoulder, and covered with mud, came to the
door with the story that he was to dig a drain for Mrs. Surratt in the
morning; and that lady asseverating that she had never seen the man
before, he was swept with the rest to headquarters, and there, to the
astonishment of everybody, turned out to be the desperate assailant of
the Sewards.

During these few days Washington was like a city of the dead. The streets
were hung with crape. The obsequies, which started on its march across the
continent the colossal funeral procession in which the whole people were
mourners, were being celebrated with the most solemn pomp. No business was
done except at Military Headquarters. Men hardly dared talk of the
calamity of the nation. Everywhere soldiers and police were on the alert
to seize any supposed or denounced sympathizer with the South. Mysterious
and prophetic papers turned up at the White House and the War Department.
Women whispered terrible stories of what they knew about the "Great
Crime." To be able to give evidence was to be envied as a hero.

And still the arch-devil of the plot could not be found!

The lower parts of Maryland seethed like a boiling pot, and the prisons of
Washington were choking with the "suspect" from that quarter. Lloyd--the
drunken landlord of the tavern at Surrattsville, ten miles from
Washington, at which Booth and Herold had stopped at midnight of the fatal
Friday for carbines and whisky--after two days of stubborn denial was at
last frightened into confession; and Doctor Mudd, who had set Booth's leg
Saturday morning thirty miles from Washington, was in close confinement.
All the intimate friends of the actor in Washington, in Baltimore, in
Philadelphia, in New York and even in Montreal were in the clutches of the
government. Surratt himself--the pursuit of whom, guided by Weichman, his
former college-chum, his room-mate, and the favorite guest of his mother,
had been instant and thorough--it was ascertained, had left Canada on the
12th of April and was back again on the 18th.

But where was Booth? where Herold? where Atzerodt?

On the 20th, the Secretary of War applied the proper stimulus by issuing a
proclamation to the following effect:

    "$50,000 reward will be paid by this department for the apprehension
    of the murderer of our late beloved President.

    "$25,000 reward for the apprehension of John H. Surratt, one of
    Booth's accomplices.

    "$25,000 reward for the apprehension of Herold, another of Booth's
    accomplices.

    "Liberal rewards will be paid for any information that shall conduce
    to the arrest of either of the above-named criminals or their
    accomplices.

    "All persons harboring or secreting the said persons, or either of
    them, or aiding or assisting in their concealment or escape, will be
    treated as accomplices in the murder of the President and the
    attempted assassination of the Secretary of State, and shall be
    subject to trial before a military commission and the punishment of
    death."

What is noteworthy about this document is that Stanton had already made up
his mind as to the guilt of the persons named as accomplices of Booth;
that he needed only their arrest, being assured of their consequent
conviction; and that he had already determined that their trial and the
trial of all persons connected with the great crime, however remotely,
should be had before a military tribunal, and that the punishment to
follow conviction should be death.

At four o'clock in the morning of the very day this proclamation was
issued, Atzerodt was apprehended at the house of his cousin in Montgomery
County, Md., about twenty-two miles northward of Washington, by a detail
of soldiers, to whom, by the way, notwithstanding the arrest preceded the
proclamation, $25,000 reward was subsequently paid. With Atzerodt his
cousin, Richter, was taken also. O'Laughlin, Payne, Arnold, Atzerodt and
Richter, as they were severally arrested, were put into the custody of the
Navy Department and confined on board the Monitor _Saugus_, which on the
morning of Saturday, when the President died, had been ordered to swing
out into the middle of the river opposite the Navy Yard, prepared to
receive at any hour, day or night, dead or alive, the arch-assassin. Each
of these prisoners was loaded with double irons and kept under a strong
guard. On the 23d, Atzerodt, by order of the Secretary of War, was
transferred to the Monitor _Montauk_, to separate him from his cousin, and
Payne, in addition to his double irons, had a ball and chain fastened to
each ankle by the direction of the same officer. On the next day Spangler,
who had hitherto been confined in the Old Capitol Prison, was transferred
to one of the Monitors and presumably subjected to the same treatment. On
the same day the following order was issued:

    "The Secretary of War requests that the prisoners on board iron-clads
    belonging to this department for better security against conversation
    shall have a canvass bag put over the head of each and tied around the
    neck, with a hole for proper breathing and eating, but not seeing, and
    that Payne be secured to prevent self-destruction."

All of which was accordingly done.

And still no Booth! It seems as though the Secretary were mad enough to
imagine that he could wring from Providence the arrest of the principal
assassin by heaping tortures on his supposed accomplices.

At length, in the afternoon of the 26th--Wednesday, the second week after
the assassination--Col. Conger arrived with the news of the death of Booth
and the capture of Herold on the early morning of that day; bringing with
him the diary and other articles found on the person of Booth, which were
delivered to Secretary Stanton at his private residence. In the dead of
the ensuing night, the body of Booth, sewed up in an old army blanket,
arrived, attended by the dog-like Herold; and the living and the dead were
immediately transferred to the _Montauk_. Herold was double ironed, balled
and chained and hooded. The body of Booth was identified; an autopsy held;
the shattered bone of his neck taken out for preservation as a relic (it
now hangs from the ceiling of the Medical Museum into which Ford's Theatre
was converted, or did before the collapse); and then, with the utmost
secrecy and with all the mystery which could be fabricated, under the
direction of Col. Baker, the corpse was hurriedly taken from the vessel
into a small boat, rowed to the Arsenal grounds, and buried in a grave dug
in a large cellar-like apartment on the ground floor of the Old
Penitentiary; the door was locked, the key removed and delivered into the
hands of Secretary Stanton. No effort was spared to conceal the time,
place and circumstances of the burial. False stories were set afloat by
Baker in furtherance of such purpose. Stanton seemed to fear an escape or
rescue of the dead man's body; and vowed that no rebel or no rebel
sympathizer should have a chance to glory over the corpse, or a fragment
of the corpse, of the murderer of Lincoln.




CHAPTER II.

THE BUREAU OF MILITARY (IN)JUSTICE.


Mingling with the varied emotions evoked by the capture and death of the
chief criminal was a feeling of deepest exasperation that the foul
assassin should after all have eluded the ignominious penalty of his
crime. Thence arose a savage disposition on the part of the governing
powers to wreak this baffled vengeance first, on his inanimate body;
secondly, on the lives of his associates held so securely in such close
custody; and thirdly, on all those in high places who might be presumed to
sympathize with his deeds. It was too horrible to imagine that the ghost
of the martyred Lincoln should walk unavenged. So stupendous a calamity
must of necessity be the outcome of as stupendous a conspiracy, and must
in the very justice of things be followed by as stupendous a retribution.
A sacrifice must be offered and the victims must be forthcoming. To employ
the parallel subsequently drawn by General Ewing on the trial of the
conspirators: On the funeral pyre of Patroclus must be immolated the
twelve Trojan captives. They were sure of Payne and of Herold. They held
Arnold and O'Laughlin and Atzerodt and Spangler and Doctor Mudd--all the
supposed satellites of Booth, save one. John H. Surratt could not be
found. Officers in company with Weichman and Holahan, boarders at his
mother's house, who in the terror of the moment had given themselves up on
the morning of the fifteenth, traced him to Canada, as has already been
noticed, but had there lost track of him. They had returned disappointed;
and now Weichman and Holahan were in solitary confinement. Notwithstanding
the large rewards out for his capture, as to him alone the all-powerful
government seemed to be baffled. One consolation there was, however--if
they could not find the son, they held the mother as a hostage for him,
and they clung to the cruel expectation that by putting her to the torture
of a trial and a sentence, they might force the son from his hiding place.

In the meanwhile the Bureau of Military Justice, presided over by
Judge-Advocate-General Holt, had been unceasingly at work. General Baker
with his posse of soldiers and detectives scoured the country far and wide
for suspected persons and witnesses, hauled them to Washington and shut
them up in the prisons. Then the Bureau of Military Justice took them in
hand