"'Avaunt and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee;Thy bones are marrowless; thy blood is cold.'
"'Avaunt and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee;Thy bones are marrowless; thy blood is cold.'
But the cold blood and marrowless bones are still beside him, and her whisperings are presaging that great judgment day when all men shall stand equal before the throne of God, and when Mrs. Surratt is called to testify against Joseph Holt, what will he in vindication say?...
"Mr. Carrington, your honor, has gone outside of this record, and I must follow him to some extent, at least. He has gone outside of it in speaking of the military commission, defending the major generals and others. I am glad I recurred to it, for it reminds me of a statement of his that I desire to correct. He says we accused those honorable men of murder. No, sir; I refrain from any expression of opinion on that subject. It is true the most exalted judicial tribunal in the world, vindicating the liberty of American citizens and their constitutional rights against military authority, and maintaining the supremacy of the courts over military law, have pronounced that, and all other commissions similarly constituted, to be illegal; but what I denounce here is not the men who in judgment sat there, but the men conducting the trial, and who with this diary of Booth in their hands could have proved Mrs. Surratt's innocence by showing this conspiracy to have been organized on the 14th day of April, but who, though producing the toothpick and the penknife found on Booth, yet never so much as disclosed the fact that such a diary existed.
"They never made it known to those men or to the country. Do they not deserve to be denounced? Now that it has become known to the country, they come in before this jury to get them, with the diary in evidence before them, to find the same verdict that the military commission found.
"I put a question to a witness on that stand (referring to Father Walter) and asked him, 'Did you administer the consolations of religion to Mrs. Surratt?' 'I did. I gave her communion on Friday, and prepared her for death.' I asked him, 'Did she tell you as she was marching to the scaffold that she was an innocent woman?' I told him not to answer the question before I directed him to. He nodded his head, but he did not answer the question, because he had no right to, as the other side objected. If you are going to try that woman, and she being dead is unable to be hereto defend herself, can you not at least have charity enough to let her last words come in in her defence? Will you try one who is not only absent from the court, but is dead? While trying one that is dead, will you deny to her the poor privilege of having the last word she uttered on earth spoken in her vindication? Were you afraid of it? Did you feel that the words would sink deep into the hearts of everybody that was here in this room, and in the United States, and cause to well up from that heart a fountain of mercy, rich and pure as the fountain that sprang from the rock at the bidding of the sacred rod? Shame on you! Prepared for the world to come, and marching to the scaffold, with her God before her and the world behind her, and a load of sin laid at the feet of Almighty God, and no hope but in that eternal mercy upon which we must all rely, I ask whether she cannot at such an hour speak for herself? No! you answer. Why not? is it likely she would lie? No, gentlemen, they will not say that. Then why is it? They did not want to hear it. Oh, they must indeed be hardened of heart, reckless of guilt, and indifferent to justice. But although they had no desire to hear it, they do hear it, and you hear it, for as that voice spoke then, it speaks now, and will continue to speak until justice is meted out. It whispers and is heard. It descends upon the head of that boy, and breathes on each of your hearts. Yes, gentlemen, that woman in the nameless grave in yonder arsenal yard, the cerements of which have been broken by the government, comes here to vindicate her child. 'A nameless grave' did I say? Yes, alas! too true. Aye, sir, it would seem as if the ordinary feelings of humanity and common respect for the dead, to say nothing of regard for the honor of our country and sympathy for the sufferings of a distracted and loving daughter, would suggest to those pressing the prosecution (and who have charge of the matter) to allow this poor girl the privilege of paying a simple tribute to a mother's love by having her remains removed from a felon's grave. Yes! there that mother lies in a nameless grave, on which no flower is allowed to be strewn by that heart-broken daughter, who for the past two years has been earnestly pleading that she might have the privilege of placing those last sad, and to her, sacred relics, where filial love might weep the tear, and a filial hand plant a flower on the tomb."
Mr. Merrick then went on to meet the argument that Surratt had confessed his guilt by flight by declaring that the mad passions of the hour, and tyrannical usurpations of the government in its method of dealing with those charged with this crime, by sending them before a military commission instead of a civil court for trial, justified him in his flight.
He then went on to vindicate the Catholic Church, which he claimed had been assailed in this matter. The only reference to the Catholic Church in connection with this trial had been made in the public press. The prosecution had carefully abstained from any assault on that church, and had tried to exclude religious prejudices from the minds of the jurors.
Mr. Merrick, however, seized the occasion to pass an eulogium on that church, in which he showed as much disregard for the facts of history as he did for the proven facts in this case. Perhaps he felt this vindication to be called for from the fact that most of the conspirators were Catholics in religion, and the further fact that the friends who waited and watched for the return of his client to Montreal after the assassination, and who, on his return, spirited him away and kept him secreted for five months and then helped him off to Italy, where he was found in the ranks of the Pope's army, and who voluntarily came before the court on his trial to testify, and to procure testimony in his behalf, were priests of that church. In his eulogium on that church he forgot to mention the fact that the Pope at an early period of the war acknowledged the Southern Confederacy and wrote a sympathizing letter to Jefferson Davis, in which he called him his dear son and denounced President Lincoln as a tyrant. He could scarcely have forgotten that the Pope of Rome had sought to take advantage of the arduous struggle in which our government was engaged for the preservation of its life, to establish a Catholic Empire in Mexico, and had sent Maximillian, a Catholic prince, to reign over that, at that time, unhappy people, under the protection of the arms of France, lent to the furtherance of his unholy purpose by the last loyal son of the church that ever occupied a throne in Europe. Perhaps he did not realize that it was God who frustrated that last grasp of the drowning man at a straw that eludedhis grasp, by preparing for his holiness, the Pope, and for Louis Napoleon just at that moment the Franco-Prussian war, which resulted in the final loss of his temporal power to the Pope and with it his grip on the world, and of his empire and crown to the last servile supporter of his temporal pretensions. To claim for that church, as Mr. Merrick did, friendship to civil liberty, respect for the rights of conscience and of private judgment, and love for our republican institutions, is to ignore, or set at naught, all the dogmas of that church on the above questions and all the claims of the Papacy. Mr. Merrick manifestly thought that the attitude of the Catholic clergy toward the assassination of the President could be hidden from public view by his fulsome eulogy.
The appeals made by the eminent counsel for the prisoner to the political and religious prejudices of jurors was ably seconded all through the trial by the Jesuit priesthood of Washington City and the vicinity. It will be recalled by scores of people who attended the trial that not a day passed but that some of these were in the court-room as the most interested of spectators. That they were not idle spectators may be inferred from the fact that whenever it seemed necessary to the prisoner's counsel to find witnesses to contradict any testimony that was particularly damaging to their cause they were always promptly found, and were almost uniformly Catholics in religion, as shown by their own testimony on their cross-examination. It was a remarkable fact, also, that these witnesses were scarcely ever able to come from under the fire of Judge Pierrepont's searching cross-examinations uncrippled, and also that when they took the risk of bringing two witnesses in rebuttal of the same testimony their witnesses uniformly killed each other off before they got through the ordeal that tests the truthfulness of witnesses—the cross-examination. Other outside influences were brought to bear on jurors, such as these: Father John B. Menu, from St. Charles College, spent a day in the court-room, sitting beside the prisoner all day, thus saying to the jury, "You see which side I am on." A great many of the students from the same college also visited the trial, it being vacation, and they uniformly took great pains to show their sympathy with the prisoner by shaking hands with him. The press also was prostitutedalmost daily by publishing cunningly devised paragraphs impugning the motives of the government in the prosecution and management of the case. Thus were the prejudices of jurors appealed to and efforts also made to pervert public opinion.
I have quoted thus at length from Mr. Merrick's argument to show, first the animus of the defense toward the government, and especially toward the Judge Advocate General, Joseph Holt, and the Secretary of War at time of the assassination, Edwin M. Stanton. These two officers of the government need no vindication at my hands before the loyal people of this country, as they were never denounced by any but rebels, whose especial venom against them would be the strongest presumptive evidence of their virtue and efficiency. A purer man, a truer patriot, a braver, more intelligent and able officer than Gen. Joseph Holt never will grace the pages of American history. He was only hated and denounced by rebels because of his faithfulness to duty and efficiency in its performance. Of Edwin M. Stanton, also, it is needless for me to say a word. His place is fixed in history, and his record cannot be blurred by the false and vile charges or insinuations of his enemies, for his enemies were only found amongst the enemies of his country, and precisely for the same reason that they were enemies of the Judge Advocate General. The charges here so boldly made that they stood between Mrs. Surratt and an appeal to the Executive for clemency, was shown to be false by Judge Pierrepont, who produced the official record of the trial of the conspirators, together with a paper signed by some members of the court recommending commutation of the sentence of Mrs. Surratt to imprisonment for life on account of her age and sex, and showed that this whole record had been laid before the President and a full cabinet, and that after mature discussion and consideration it had received their unanimous approval, with the exception of the request for the commutation of Mrs. Surratt's sentence which, though not a part of the record, was presented with it; and that the President's order for the execution of the sentence of the court had been written on the back of this very record.
These papers containing this whole record were handed to Mr. Merrick, who tossed them from him indignantly, afterwards assigning as his reason for doing so that he had learned to distrust everythingthat came from the Bureau of Military Justice. His real reason was that he did not desire to be estopped from reiterating the falsehoods he had so boldly proclaimed.
His denunciation of the Judge Advocate General for assisting the prosecution by furnishing them with witnesses, to prove facts found on his records, if he did indeed thus assist, is unmerited; as it is not only the duty of every private citizen, but of every public officer as well, to assist, if it be in his power to do so, in securing the ends of justice where crimes have been committed, and the safety, peace, and welfare of society put in jeopardy. His deliberate false assumption that the prosecution had put Mrs. Surratt on trial is worthy of note, as he himself dragged her case in even before a jury was impaneled; and his colleague, Mr. Jos. H. Bradley, Jr., in his opening speech, had also brought it up in such a way that the District Attorney was forced to notice it. It was evidently a premeditated scheme of the defense, and was done for the purpose of appealing to the prejudices of jurors, and of making political capital.
Mr. Merrick's portrayal of the scenes incident to the execution of Mrs. Surratt was a fine piece of eloquent and pathetic declamation. We cannot but deplore, however, that the fine sensibilities of the counsel had not found occasion for their display in the case of the widow and orphan child of the martyred President, rather than in the person of one proven guilty of complicity in his assassination, and of being so actively engaged in that tragedy that she had traveled twenty miles on that fatal Friday afternoon to carry, at Booth's request, a field glass which he had delivered to her for the purpose, to Surrattsville, to be deposited and delivered by Lloyd, at her request, along with the carbines and the whiskey, to the assassins on that night, when fleeing from the seat of their crime, and from offended justice. It is to be deplored that he had no tears for the crazed widow and orphan child of the murdered President, when he could find such a generous fountain for his murderers. Such, however, is the deplorable effect of political and religious prejudice on frail human nature, that it perverts our moral sensibilities and warps our judgment. Mr. Merrick could see nothing but innocence in the prisoner and his mother, although the proof of their guilt was piled mountain high. It will have been noticed thathe unequivocally asserts that the Supreme Court of the United States had decided that the commission that tried the assassins was an illegal tribunal. We shall have occasion hereafter to show that this is untrue.
If the counsel for the defense was not aware of this fact, it was because they had failed to grasp the meaning of the decision to which they referred, and on which they relied.
It was neither fair nor honest in them, after dragging into the trial the question of Mrs. Surratt's guilt or innocence, and that for the purpose we have above indicated, to endeavor, in the face of the facts, to shift the burden of the responsibility for this on to the prosecution. It was equally dishonest to insinuate that the prosecution of John H. Surratt was not entered upon alone for the purpose of ascertaining his guilt or innocence, but in order that the false stories that had been published in regard to the course of the government in executing Mrs. Surratt might be set at rest. The most eloquent counsel for the defence, ably assisted by his colleagues, endeavored to put the government, and not the prisoner, on trial before the jury, and before the country. They uniformly and boldly asserted his innocence, whilst they arraigned the government for having murdered, according to one, and butchered according to another, an innocent woman; and also of being in this trial engaged in an endeavor to cover up the guilt of shedding her innocent blood, by shedding the blood of her innocent son. To cap the climax of their audacity Mr. Bradley, after reiterating the charges made by Mr. Merrick and Joseph H. Bradley, Jr., asked the jury, in making up their verdict, to make a written statement at the same time of their belief that Mrs. Surratt had been unjustly condemned, and found guilty upon insufficient evidence.
They charged the government with dishonesty in withholding Booth's diary from the commission; claiming that it would have proven Mrs. Surratt's innocence. They could not have failed to know, as able lawyers, that this diary was of no account whatever as evidence. It was no more admissible than was Atzerodt's confession, as every entry that was made in it was made with the almost certainty of his capture in view, and for the purpose of concealing the greatness of the conspiracy and its personnel.It was of no more value than was his declaration in favor of his fellow-conspirator, Herold, that he was an innocent man, made a few moments before he was shot.
In his argument on the defense of analibiset up by the prisoner, Mr. Merrick makes great account of the evidence of the detectives who visited and searched Mrs. Surratt's house at two o'clock on the morning of the 15th of April, that Mrs. Surratt declared that John was not there, and that she had not seen him for two weeks.
She claimed that he was in Montreal, and that she had received a letter from him on the day previous. They well knew that her declarations had no value as testimony, and that there was evidence flatly contradicting her statements.
That she had received the letter as claimed, was true; but that that letter had been written for the very purpose of being used in the defence of analibiis evident from its contents, when considered in connection with the evidence in the case. It will be remembered that Wiechmann, who was a boarder in the house, answered the door-bell, when the detectives rang it for the purpose of demanding admittance, that they might search the house. He rapped at Mrs. Surratt's door and informed her as to who was at the door and what they had come for. Her answer was, "For God's sake, let them come in; I have been expectingthem."31When they inquired for her son she said, "He is not here; I have not seen him for two weeks." This was a sufficient answer, but her guilty conscience would not let her stop here, she had to add, "There are a great many mothers who do not know where their sons are." Let us ask ourselves at this point, how many mothers in Washington City at that hour of that eventful night were lying awake expecting their houses to be searched by detectives? Our inner consciousness will unerringly dictate the answer, "Not one who was innocent of crime." It is only necessary to say, further, in regard to this defense set up, of analibi, that although there is no more common defense resorted to by criminals, because there is none more easy of establishment, there was never perhaps in all the history of jurisprudence a weaker and more unsuccessful effort made to establish it than in this defense. The effort made by the prisoner to establish analibishowed plainlythat he had endeavored to prepare for it, in anticipation for his defense, and that, in this preparation he had had able help. There is good reason to conclude that he and a half dozen other of his friends in Canada had found an opportunity to visit Canandaigua in disguise, for the purpose of doctoring up a hotel register to be used in evidence. The effort after all, proved a miserable failure.
That he went from Montreal to Elmira, N.Y., leaving the former place at two o'clock on the morning of the 12th of April, was admitted. There was evidence that he was in Elmira on the morning of the 13th, and two or three credible witnesses were found who swore that they saw him there either on the 13th or 14th. They were willing to conclude that it might have been on the 14th; but would not positively swear that it was. On the other hand the government produced two witnesses who identified him as a man whom they saw on the road making his way towards Baltimore, on the 13th, one of whom ferried him over the Susquehanna river, and stopped mid-stream to collect his fare, and so talked with him and had a good look at him. It was then proven by nearly a dozen witnesses that they saw him in Washington City on the 14th. So that the great preponderance of evidence was against thealibi; and so it legally failed. The defense was lame and weak at every point in the light of the evidence, which all tended to show the prisoner's guilt. It was only strong in the bold efforts of his counsel to scout all the testimony against him, and to have the jury accept their assertions of his innocence, backed by their weight of character as lawyers, in lieu of evidence, to establish his innocence, and in contumning and rejecting that which established his guilt.
They also made great complaint that they were not allowed to prove by John Matthews, the contents of the paper which he alleged was put into his hand by Booth, a few hours before the commission of his crime, with the request that he would, on the following day, upon certain contingencies, give it to the editor of theNational Intelligencerfor publication, and which Matthews claimed to have destroyed. Of course they knew that nothing could be proven by this paper, much less by evidence as to its contents, yet, when it was not admitted by the court, they reserved an exception, and then in argument claimed that had they beenallowed the benefit of this, they could have shown that the purpose of assassination was not formed until that day, and that neither the prisoner nor his mother was in it.
Matthews afterwards published what he said he desired to testify to, but was not permitted to do so by the Court. The statement that he claimed to be of Booth in this paper, gave the lie to Atzerodt's confession. These able lawyers knew full well that culprits, anticipating arrest and trial, could not be permitted to manufacture evidence in their own favor in advance. Yet they did not scruple to use, in an indirect way, in argument before the jury, this very testimony that had been excluded. Booth's diary, Booth's statement for publication, Atzerodt's confession, and the lecture of John H. Surratt, in which he makes his confession and statement of the affair, are all of a piece, and alike unworthy of credit, because they are all contradicted by sufficient and reliable testimony in every important particular. The eloquence of counsel in regard to the grave of Mrs. Surratt, who was buried in the grounds of the old arsenal, being a nameless grave, is wasted eloquence in the mind of every loyal man and woman in the country, as the heniousness of the crime of which she was convicted, made it fitting that she should sleep in a nameless grave, and that the spot of her resting-place be unknown, as an admonition to all traitors to their country, and its free institutions of government, and whose disloyalty fits them for the highest crimes that man can commit, of the infamy that awaits them in the just verdict of an outraged people. Mrs. Surratt's remains were given up to her daughter two years later, in 1869.
We will now give a few of the opening paragraphs of Judge Pierrepont's argument for the prosecution, in which he disposes of the outside and irrelevant matter that had been lugged into the defense, and out of which they had endeavored to make so much capital.
"May it please your honor, and gentlemen of the jury, I have not, in the progress of this long and tedious cause, had the opportunity as yet of addressing to you one word. My time has now arrived, 'Yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.' When the book of Job was written, this was true, and it is just as trueto-day. A man, in order to save his life, will give his property, will give his liberty, will sacrifice his good name, and will desert his father, his brother, his mother and his sister. He will lift up his hand before Almighty God and swear that he is innocent of the crime with which he is charged. He will bring perjury upon his soul, giving all that he hath in the world, and be ready to take the chances and jump the life to come; and so far as counsel place themselves in the situation of their client, and just to the degree that they absorb his feelings, his terror, and his purposes, just so far will counsel do the same.
"I am well aware, gentlemen, of the difficulties under which I labor in addressing you. The other counsel have all told you that they know you and that you know them. They know you in social life, and they know you in political affairs. They know your sympathies, your habits, your modes of thought, your prejudices even. They know how to address you, and how to awaken your sympathies, whilst I come before you a total stranger. There is not a face in those seats that I have ever beheld until this trial commenced, and yet I have a kind of feeling pervading me that we are not strangers.
"I feel as though we had a common origin, a common country, and a common religion, and that, on many grounds, we must have a common sympathy. I feel as though, if hereafter I should meet you in my native city, or in a foreign land, I should meet you, not as strangers, but as friends. It was not a pleasant thing for me to come into this case. I was called into it at a time ill-suited in every respect. I had just taken my seat in the convention called for the purpose of forming a new constitution for my State, and I was a member of the judiciary committee. The convention is now sitting, and I am now absent where I ought to be present. I feel, however, that I had no right to shirk this duty.
"The counsel asked whether I represented the Attorney General in this case. They had, perhaps, the right to ask, and so asking I give you the answer. There surely is no mystery about the matter. The District Attorney, feeling the magnitude of this case, felt that he ought to apply to the Attorney General for assistance in the prosecution of it, and he accordingly madethe application. I have known the Attorney General for more than twenty years. Our relations have been most friendly, both in a social and professional point of view. The Attorney General conferred with the Secretary of State, who is, as you know, from my own State, and they determined to ask me to assist in the prosecution of this cause. On receiving a letter from the Secretary of State, I came to Washington, when I met him and the Attorney General. This is the way I happened to be here engaged in this case; and I may say that I am assured that there was no member of the cabinet but those two who ever heard or knew of my retainer until after my arrival here. I have simply tried to perform my duty as I best could, but I have, no doubt, failed to a great extent. A trial, protracted as this has been, and in such oppressive weather, is indeed a trial. It is a trial to the court, it is a trial to you, it is a trial to the counsel, it is a trial to health, it is a trial to patience, and it is a trial to temper.
"When the President of the United States was assassinated, I was one of a committee sent on by the citizens of New York to attend his funeral. When standing, as I did stand, in the east room by the side of that coffin, if some citizen sympathizing with the enemies of my country had, because my tears were falling in sorrow over the murder of the President, there insulted me, and I had at that time repelled the insult with insult, I think my fellow-citizens would have said to me that my act was deserving of condemnation; that I had no right, in that solemn hour, to let my petty passions or my personal resentments disturb the sanctity of the scene. To my mind the sanctity of this trial is far above that funeral occasion, solemn and holy as it was, and I should forever deem myself disgraced if I should ever allow any passion pf mine or personal resentment of any kind to bring me here into any petty quarrel over the murder of the President of the United States. I have tried to refrain from anything like that, and God helping me, I shall so endeavor to the end.
"To me, gentlemen, this prisoner at the bar is a pure abstraction. I have no feeling toward him whatever. I never saw him until I saw him in this room, and then it was under circumstances calculated to awaken only my sympathy. I never knew one of hiskindred, and never expect to know one of them. To me he is a stranger. Toward him I have no hostility, and I shall not utter any word of vituperation against him. I came to try one of the assassins of the President of the United States, as indicted before you. I laid personal considerations aside, and I hope I shall succeed in keeping them from this cause, so far as I am concerned. I believe, gentlemen, that what you wish to know in this case is the truth. I believe it is your honest desire to find out whether the accused was engaged in this plot to overthrow this government and assassinate the President of the United States. My duty is to try to aid you in coming to a just conclusion. When this evidence is reviewed, and when it is honestly and fairly presented, when passions are laid aside, and when other people who have nothing to do with the trial are kept out of the case, you will discover that in the whole history of jurisprudence no murder was ever proved with the demonstration with which this has been proven before you. The facts, the proofs, the circumstances all tend to one point, and all prove the case, not only beyond a reasonable, but beyond any doubt.
"This has been, as I have already stated, a very protracted case. The evidence is scattered. It has come in link by link, and as we could not have witnesses here in their order when you might have seen it in its logical bearings, we were obliged to take it as it came; and now it becomes my duty to put it together and show you what it is. I shall not attempt, gentlemen, to convince you by bold assertions of my own. I fancy I could make them as loudly and as confidently as the counsel on the other side, but I am not here for that purpose. The counsel are not witnesses in the cause. We have come here for the purpose of ascertaining whether under the law and on the evidence presented, this man arraigned before you is guilty as charged. I do not think it proper that I should tell you what I think about everything that may arise in the case, or that I should tell you that I know that this thing is so, and that the other is another way. My business is to prove to you from this evidence that the prisoner is guilty. If I do that I shall ask your verdict. If I do not do that, I shall neither expect nor hope for it."
"I listened, gentlemen, to the two counsel who have addressed you for several days, without one word of interruption. I listened to them respectfully and attentively. I knew their earnestness, and I know the poetry that was brought into the case, and the feeling and the passion that was attempted to be excited in your breasts, by bringing before you the ghost trailing her calico dress and making it rustle against these chairs. I have none of these powers which the gentlemen seem to possess, nor shall I attempt to invoke them. I have come to you for the purpose of proving that this party accused here was engaged in this conspiracy to overthrow this government, which conspiracy resulted in the death of Abraham Lincoln, by a shot from a pistol in the hands of John Wilkes Booth. That is all there is to be proven in this case.
"I have not come here for the purpose of proving that Mrs. Surratt was guilty or that she was innocent, and I do not understand why that subject was lugged into this case in the mode that it has been; nor do I understand why the counsel denounced the military commission who tried her, and thus indirectly censured, in the severest manner, the President of the United States. The counsel certainly knew when they were talking about that tribunal, and when they were thus denouncing it, that President Johnson, President of the United States, ordered it with his own hand; that President Johnson, President of the United States, signed the warrant that directed the execution; that President Johnson, President of the United States, when that record was presented to him, laid it before his cabinet, and that every single member voted to confirm the sentence, and that the President with his own hand, wrote his confirmation of it, and with his own hand signed the warrant. I hold in my hand the original record, and no other man, as it appears from that paper, ordered it. No other one touched this paper; and when it was suggested by some of the members of the commission that in consequence of the age and the sex of Mrs. Surratt it might possibly be well to change her sentence to imprisonment for life, he signed the warrant for her death with the paper right before his eyes—and there it is (handing the paper to Mr. Merrick). My friend can read it for himself.
"My friends on the other side have undertaken to arraign thegovernment of the United States against the prisoner. They have talked very loudly and eloquently about this great government of twenty-five or thirty millions of people being engaged in trying to bring to conviction one poor young man, and have treated it as though it was a hostile act, as though two parties were litigants before you, the one trying to beat the other. Is it possible that it has come to this, that, in the city of Washington, where the President has been murdered, that when under the form of law, and before a court and jury of twelve men, an investigation is made to ascertain whether the prisoner is guilty of this great crime, that the government are to be charged as seeking his blood, and its officers as lapping their tongues in the blood of the innocent? I quote the language exactly. It is a shocking thing to hear. What is the purpose of a government? What is the business of a government? According to the gentleman's notion, when a murder is committed the government should not do anything towards ascertaining who perpetrated that murder; and if the government did undertake to investigate the matter and endeavor to find out whether the man charged with the crime is guilty or not guilty the government and all connected with it must be expected to be assailed as 'blood hounds of the law,' and as seeking 'to lap their tongues in the blood of the innocent.' Is that the business of government, and is it the business of counsel under any circumstances thus to charge the government? What is government for? It is instituted for your protection, for my protection, for the protection of us all. What could we do without it? Tell me, my learned and eloquent counsel on the other side, what would you do without a government? What would you do in this city? Suppose, for instance, a set of young men, who choose to lead an idle life, say to themselves that it is not right that some rich man living here should be enjoying his hoarded wealth, and they break into his house at night and steal therefrom. My learned friend would say, when you came to prosecute them for that robbery, 'What! would you have this great and generous government of twenty-five or thirty millions of people pursue these poor young men, who merely tried to break into the house of one of your citizens and steal his money? Should not this government begenerous and let them go? Oh, yes! Let them off. Well, they are let off, and a few days afterward they break into the house of my friend, Mr. Merrick, for the purpose of stealing his money, when he, a brave man, undertakes to resist them, and in doing so they strike him down in death. Oh, generous government! with twenty-five or thirty millions of people, let the young men off. Why should a great and generous government with all its powers be pursuing the young men who thus murdered Mr. Merrick while attempting to prevent a robbery at his house?
"Why should the officers of the government be 'lapping their tongues in the blood of the innocent?' Suppose this view as to the duty of a government were universally entertained, what would be the result? How long would your government last? How long would you hold a dollar of property? How long would the safety of your daughters be secure? How long would the life of your sons, who stand in resistance to lust and rapine, be safe? I have never heard such shocking sentiments uttered in relation to the duty of government from any human lips, or from any writer on the face of the earth. We have been told here that our government has nothing of divinity that hedges it about; that it is only the government of man's making. The Bible tells us that all government is of God; that the powers that be are ordained of God; and I can tell you, gentlemen, if such are the sentiments of this country that there is no divinity and no power of God that hedges about this government, its days are numbered, its condemnation is already written, and it will lie in the dust before many years have rolled by. No government that is not of God will last. It will soon come to naught. No other government ever did long exist. No other government can exist. Every government which is a government of the people is of God, and the powers that be are ordained of God. When you come together to the polls, and you elect as the ruler of this great nation a President, he is made so by the sanction of your votes, and in that act the voice of the people becomes the voice of God. I repeat, a government which is thus instituted is ordained of God, and it is as much hedged about as that of any king that ever reigned on England's throne. Is it possible that our countrymen will say that the governmentwhich we thus have made, which our fathers established, and which we are thus cherishing, has nothing of divinity hedging it about?
"Does it rest alone on human whim, without having anything sacred about it, and without any protection of the Almighty over it? If so, let me again repeat, its days are numbered; it will soon pass away. Once there was an empire in Rome. It was an empire which was in its day the greatest which the human mind had ever reared; but it did not believe, or rather ceased to believe, that there was a God who ruled; that government was of God; and they ceased to punish great crimes, such as treason, rapine, and murder, and it happened a very short time after they ceased to inflict punishment for such crimes—ceased to exercise the powers which belong to government—that the Roman empire tumbled into ruins.
"It was trampled down by the barbarians, and now not a son of the Cæsars lives on the face of the earth, and not a descendant of a Roman matron exists anywhere in this wide universe. The empire perished, and crumbled into dust; nothing but its ashes remain. And thus will it ever be whenever a people cease to obey God, and cease to think that government is of God. Let us see what the Bible says on this subject; what views were entertained in the Old Testament, and what in the New." Mr. Pierrepont then read from 1st Samuel, chapter xv, asfollows:—
"'Samuel also said unto Saul, the Lord sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel; now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the Lord.
"'Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.
"'Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
"'And Saul gathered the people together, and numbered them in Telaim, two hundred thousand foot-men, and ten thousand men of Judah.
"'And Saul came to a city of Amalek, and laid wait in the valley.
"'And Saul said unto the Kenites, go, depart, get you down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them; for ye showed kindness to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of Egypt. So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.
"'And Saul smote the Amalekites, from Havilahuntilthou comest to Shur, that is over against Egypt.
"'And he took Agag, the king of the Amalekites, alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.
"'But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and of the lambs, and allthat wasgood, and would not utterly destroy them; but every thingthat wasvile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.
"'Then came the word of the Lord unto Samuel, saying, It repenteth me that I have set up Saulto beking; for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel, and he cried unto the Lord all night.
"'And when Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning, it was told Samuel, saying, Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set him up a place, and is gone about, and passed on, and gone down to Gilgal.
"'And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said unto him, blessed be thou of the Lord; I have performed the commandment of the Lord.
"'And Samuel said, what meaneth then this bleating of sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?
"'And Saul said, they have brought them from the Amalekites; for the people spared the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God, and the rest we have utterly destroyed.
"'Then Samuel said unto Saul, stay, and I will tell thee what the Lord hath said to me this night. And he said unto him say on.
"'And Samuel said, when thouwastlittle in thine own sight,wastthou notmadethe head of the tribes of Israel, and the Lord anointed thee king over Israel?
"'And the Lord sent thee on a journey, and said, go and utterlydestroy the sinners of the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be consumed.
"'Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of the Lord, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst evil in the sight of the Lord.
"'And Saul said unto Samuel, yea, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have gone the way which the Lord sent me, and have brought Agag, the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites.
"'But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things, which should have been utterly destroyed to sacrifice to the Lord thy God in Gilgal.
"'And Samuel said, hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.
"'For rebellionis asthe sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry; because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.
"'And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and thy words; because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice.
"'Now, therefore, I prayed thee, pardon my sin, and turn again with me that I may worship the Lord.
"'And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee; for thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord hath rejected thee from being king over Israel.
"'And as Samuel turned about to go away, he laid hold upon the skirt of his mantle, and it rent.
"'And Samuel said unto him, the Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbor of thine,that isbetter than thou.
"'And also the strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; for he is not a man that he should repent.
"'Then he said, I have sinned;yethonor me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel, and turn again with me, that I may worship the Lord thy God.
"'So Samuel turned again after Saul, and Saul worshiped the Lord.
"'Then said Samuel, bring ye hither to me Agag, the king of the Amalekites. And Agag came unto him delicately. And Agag said, surely the bitterness of death is past.
"'And Samuel said, as thy sword has made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.
"'Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house to Gibeah of Saul.
"'And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death; nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul; and the Lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel.'"
Mr. Pierrepont then read from the eighteenth chapter of St. Matthew asfollows:—
"'Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come; but woe unto that man by whom the offence cometh.... It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.'
"Such was the order in the times of this Book. All government is of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. Now, from whom come those words? Not from the Old Testament, but they come from the meek and lowly Jesus, the Saviour of the world, who died for you, for me, for all. It is true as the counsel have said, that God is a God of mercy; but he says: 'Though I am a God of mercy, I will by no means clear the guilty.' Now the counsel who has addressed you, you will remember, said in his speech, with great earnestness: 'We have had blood enough; let us have peace.' The question before you, gentlemen, is not about blood. The question is not about peace. The question before you is whether you have not had murder enough, and assassination enough, and crime enough, to enable us to have at least once before a civil tribunal in this land a trial and a verdict. Not a single one of all those engaged in the conspiracy has been tried before a civil tribunal; and the question now is, have you not had enough of this murder, enough of this assassination, to have at least one jury of the country say so, and to say that we will stop it? You and I have nothing to do with the consequences. All we have to do is to do our duty, and ascertain whether the man is guilty. You donot punish the man; I do not punish the man. I have not a feeling toward him of punishment, and you have no such feeling. The duty does not lie with you, nor with me; we have nothing to do with that. The question for us is to see whether this man is guilty of this violation of the law of the land as charged; and if so, to so declare; and then, if for any cause, the Executive sees fit to show leniency, he will show it. If he does not, he will not. It is not for you or for me to have to say what the leniency should be. It is not for you or for me to have anything to say upon that question. Our business is, I repeat, to ascertain whether he is guilty of this violation of the law, and if he is guilty, so to say, and then afterward to say whatever we thought fit to be said with regard to any leniency. Our duty is, and the duty of the court is, to find out that one fact, and to have you pronounce your verdict, under your oath, according to the facts as you find them.
"There are one or two other things that I must notice before I come to the main question. One of these is in regard to the attacks which were made by counsel yesterday upon the learned District Attorney and myself. Have you seen anything in the conduct of the District Attorney in this case that was improper? Have you seen anything but an earnest desire to discharge his duty? If I understood the counsel aright yesterday, he said that if he should stand in the place and should have done as the District Attorney had, he would expect the women, as they passed him, to gather their skirts and pull them aside, lest they be contaminated by the touch. I did not at that time know why there was so much bitterness of feeling thus expressed, but I have been shown since last night this record called the 'Rebellion Record,' and I find in it that on the 5th of January, 1861, Edward C. Carrington, now District Attorney, issued to the public a stirring letter calling out the militia of this District for the purpose of aiding in the protection of the government of the United States; calling upon them to rally; and they did rally at his call. The fact of this native born citizen of Virginia, one of your own number and living in your midst, having thus early and practically taken the side in favor of the government, when even his own State had deserted him, of course would be likely to call down the greatest bitterness and hatred against this loyal andnoble citizen on the part of a certain class. We have been told, gentlemen, by the counsel upon the other side, that the Judge Advocate General had done a great many wrong things in his life. We have been told that the military commission which Mr. Johnson had established, and he alone, had done wrong things in their prosecution; and we have been told, likewise, that the Supreme Court of the United States had decided that this commission was illegal. Now you would hardly expect an eminent lawyer to make such a statement unless he believed it. But he is wholly mistaken. No court in the United States has declared this commission to have been illegal. There is no such decision on record—not any.
"Some of these very persons are now in confinement, and if the Supreme Court of the United States had declared the commission that tried them illegal, why should they now, in a time of profound peace, be kept in prison? If such were the case would not an application have been immediately made by my learned brother for a writ ofhabeas corpusto release them? But nothing of the kind is done. And why? Because no such decision has ever been pronounced. No court has, and in my judgment no court will, pronounce this commission, thus formed by the President of the United States, to have been illegal."
As this is a question of the gravest importance we all ought to know whether, as claimed twice in the arguments of defendant's counsel, the military commission which tried the conspirators and assassins has been decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to have been an illegal tribunal. Judge Pierrepont, as we have seen, asserts boldly that in his judgment no such decision had ever been given by that tribunal, or ever would be. That the counsel for the defense did not really so understand it he clearly shows by the fact that they had never asked for a writ ofhabeas corpusin behalf of those who were working out the sentence of the commission. To his opinion I will now add that of Judge Fisher as given in his charge to the jury. It is asfollows:—
"You have been told, gentlemen, in the argument of this case, that those who were tried before that military commission, and hung upon its findings, were themselves the victims of a base and disgraceful conspiracy to murder. Brave, gallant, and honest soldiersof their country have been held up before you as inhuman butchers of innocent men. It has been said in support of this denunciation, that the Supreme Court of the United States have, in the case of Milligan, declared that the military court which tried Herold and others for the murder of Abraham Lincoln was an illegal tribunal, organized without law, without right, and without warrant in the Constitution—a mere convocation of military men, having no right to try the cause committed to them by President Johnson; and it has been said that it was convoked not to try but to condemn.
"In my humble judgment the Supreme Court has made no such decision. If so, why have not the prisoners now confined upon the Dry Tortugas for complicity in the greatest crime of the age been released from their confinement? They have sympathizing friends enough to have applied any such decision in the direction of their deliverance, and they would not have remained there a week after the decision had been made to the effect that they were unlawfully restrained of their liberty. If I understand the decision in Milligan's case aright, it went upon the ground that the commission which tried Milligan was not organized in obedience to the act of Congress providing for the punishment of such crimes as he was charged with committing, and the opinion of the majority of the court went upon the additional ground that no hostile foot had ever pressed the soil of Indiana at the time when he was arraigned before a military tribunal there, and that, therefore, that tribunal which condemned him for acts of treason committed in that State had no authority to try him, notwithstanding the whole nation was involved in the most terrible struggle for its life. The majority opinion being thus predicated upon a misapprehension of historic truth, we could not, perhaps, have looked for a more rightful deduction.
"Unprepared, however, as all loyal hearts were for such an announcement, the American people would be even yet more astounded to have it declared by any court in this country that the commander-in-chief of the army and navy, the President of the United States, has not the power in time of war to institute a military commission for the purpose of trying a gang of spies andtraitors who have found their way within the intrenched encampments of the nation's capital to take the life of the chief of the army and navy, to assassinate all the heads of the executive departments, in the interest of the pretended government with which the federal government was engaged in war. They who maintain such a doctrine profess to defend it upon the ground that no such power is delegated by the constitution, astheydid who could find no warrant there to coerce seceding States into submission to the federal authority; but the day has passed by when honest statesmen will longer, if they ever did, regard the sovereignty of the federal Union as possessing no powers save those expressly enumerated in the Constitution.
"The government of the United States was doubtless created by the adoption of the Constitution. But when it had once been spoken into being it stood upon the same level with other nations, and was clothed with all the powers incident to an independent sovereignty under the laws of nature and of nations, and among these was the power, in time of war or great public emergency, to arrest and inflict upon spies and traitors the most summary punishment, whenever and wherever the strong hand of military justice can be laid upon them. It is a power incident to the right and duty of self preservation, and ought to be exercised, just as the individual owes it to himself to strike down the assassin who is feeling for his heartstrings, without waiting to lose his own life, in order that the courts of justice may, at their leisure, proceed to try the felon according to the formularies of the law and the Constitution. The right of self-defense needs not to be inscribed upon parchment, either for individuals or for sovereign states. The Almighty impressed this right and duty upon the hearts and minds of men long before he wrote the decalogue upon the tables of stone. To say that this government has not the power in time of war to exercise this great duty of self-preservation, for want of warrant in the Constitution, is to condemn the action of the government in acquiring from France and Spain and Mexico and Russia territory lying far beyond the limits of the original thirteen States, because such power of acquisition and growth is not provided for by the Constitution. Both these powers are but the incidents of sovereignty,requiring no warrant in written governmental charter; they are derived from the common law of nations, and are co-existent with sovereignty.
"But with this military commission, gentlemen, you have no concern at this time; whether it was a legal or illegal tribunal, is not the matter on which you are now called to decide. The oath that you have taken requires that you shall 'well and truly try, and true deliverance make between the United States of America and John H. Surratt, the prisoner at the bar, whom you have in charge, and a true verdict give according to your evidence.' The prisoner stands before you indicted for the murder of Abraham Lincoln on the 14th day of April, 1865, in this city. About the time and place and manner of the death of your late President no controversy has been made in the case. If there had been your recollection of a nation in tears, and of a whole civilized world in mourning would have revived your memory of the sad and terrible fact. The only question, therefore, for you to determine is, whether the prisoner at the bar participated with John Wilkes Booth and the others named in the indictment, or either or any of them, in the diabolical crime. If, from all the evidence in the case, your minds shall be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt growing out of that evidence that the prisoner did co-operate with them; if that shall have produced a moral conviction in your minds that the prisoner did participate in the conspiracy to murder, or in a plot to do some unlawful act which resulted in this foul murder, no consideration as to the legality or illegality of the tribunal which tried the prisoner's mother; no feelings of sympathy for other members of the family; no consideration of his youth, or that other lives have already been forfeited for the crime, should for a single moment, tempt you to step aside from the plain pathway of duty."
The last paragraph quoted is directed to some of the many artful appeals made to the political prejudices or to the feelings of the jury to swerve them from the duty devolved upon them by their oath. The former paragraphs may well be said to set at rest forever the question of the right of a government to defend its life when the occasion requires it by sending offenders against its lifebefore a military commission for trial. This question may be taken as settled, as is the question of the right of the federal government to coerce into submission a refractory State. The opportunity thus sought by the prisoner's counsel to foist upon the public mind the assertion that the Supreme Court of the United States had made a decision denying to the government this right, thus gave occasion not only for denying that such opinion had ever been delivered, but also for showing that it never could be.
It will be remembered that for reasons heretofore given the crime charged in the indictment was simply that of murder—the murder of Abraham Lincoln.
The fact of his being, at the time of his murder, the President of the United States was not mentioned. The treasonable purpose of that murder was also omitted no reference being made to the political reasons that moved the conspirators to the commission of the crime. The counsel for the defense contended most earnestly that because of these omissions the fact of the official position of Abraham Lincoln and of the political motives that inspired the crime could not be taken into consideration in the trial of the prisoner. They argued that it must be regarded in law simply as the murder of a man, and as a crime no more henious in character than the murder of the humblest citizen. Had the crime of treason been alleged in the indictment the defense would have been entitled to have a list of the witnesses by whom the government expected to prove the crime in advance of the trial; and it would have taken two witnesses to have established an overt act. The defense contended that because they were not entitled to these advantages under this indictment the prosecution could derive no advantages from the consideration of these facts; and that the case must be treated simply as a case of murder. The spirit of their argument would rather indicate that they really regarded it in the same light that Miss Anna Surratt did, as "nothing more than the death of the meanest nigger in the Unionarmy."32The following is Mr. Pierrepont's reply to their argument on thispoint:—
"Our learned friends on the other side have told us, in the progress of their argument, that they could not subscribe in the leastdegree to the doctrine that it was a higher crime to conspire against the government of the United States, and through that conspiracy commit a murder upon the Chief Magistrate, than it was to murder the humblest vagabond in the streets, or words to that effect. Now that is not the doctrine of a statesman; it is not the doctrine of the Bible; it is not the doctrine of the law. It is a far more heinous crime to conspire against the government of the United States and to murder its President for the purpose of bringing anarchy and confusion on the land, than to murder a single individual. It is because its consequences are so much more terrible. It is because it is involving the lives of hundreds and of thousands. It is because it is involving considerations affecting the stability, the protection, the life, and the liberty, it may be, of a nation. The law of England, which I have cited, but which it would seem, my friends have not read, lays it down, and without a statute, but as the common law, that it is a crime of such heniousness as to admit of no accessories.
"They, however, undertake to say that the crime of the murder of the President of the United States in time of war or great civil commotion, is not as henious a crime as it would be in England to murder the Chief of their country; and that there is no divinity about our government. What is its origin? All government is either of God or the devil, and they will have to take their choice. I say that the government is of God, and that no other government will stand. What says the civilized world upon this subject? I wrote a note to the Secretary of State two days ago, asking him to send me the letters that were transmitted from the different governments of the civilized world upon the subject of this murder, and what do you think he sent me? He sent me the note I hold in my hand and with it this large printed volume. It takes every line and word of that book, a book of 717 pages, closely printed, to contain the letters of condolence that were written to this government from the foreign governments of the world. Entire Christendom wrote, entire Christendom looked upon it as one of the most horrible of crimes—one that required every nation, even to the Turk, to write for the purpose of expressing their abhorrence of the crime. And, gentlemen, I hold in my hand the original papersent by some 13,000 rebel prisoners, and our prisoners, at Point Lookout. Here is the paper in which these rebel prisoners, met together, passed their resolutions of condemnation, and their curse upon this crime. I would try this case before any twelve of those rebel prisoners, and feel certain of a verdict, and yet the gentlemen tell us this murder is like that of the commonest vagabond that ever walked the streets, and the crime no higher. Not so thought the rebels; not so thought any honorable man in arms against us; not so thinks any right-minded man upon the face of the earth."
The judge in giving his charge to the jury, addressing himself to this point, spoke asfollows:—
"Historians and text writers on the law may treat of the heinousness of the crime of imagining the death of a weak or a wicked king or of a wise or benignant monarch, but you know, gentlemen, as well as you know that you exist, that to murder the duly elected President of the most powerful people on earth, is not less atrocious in its character than to compass the death of a king, or an emperor, albeit he may have sprang from the loins of the people, who have made him their representative head, and may have no royal blood coursing through his veins. You may be told that it is a crime surpassingly heinous to take or compass the life of him who has occupied a throne simply because he may be the king of an enslaved people, but that to take the life of the President of a free republic is an offense of no greater magnitude than to murder the 'veriest vagabond that walks your streets'; but an American jury will only believe this doctrine when the people have become so demoralized and corrupt, so devoid of the love of liberty and patriotic feeling, as to prefer to have a king and ruler foisted upon them by the accident of birth or fortunate adventure, rather than have the making of their own selection of him who is to execute their laws, and, for the time being, to stand as the representative head of their collective sovereignty.
"It is a mistake to suppose that a free people in any country will ever consider it a more henious crime to kill a king, or even to desire his death, than it is to assassinate a President. It is of no avail to tell you that to surround the life of a President of a republic with safeguards as sacred and powerful as those which, in monarchies,are thrown about a king, as you have been told in the argument, is a modern idea, 'entertained only by those whose eyes have been dazzled by visions of stars and garters, and who are desirous of changing our free institutions for a monarchical form of government.'
"On the contrary, they can only be opposed to guarding with sacred vigilance the life of the President of a free people who are themselves prepared to submit to the rule of a despot. Why should the people be less proud or less regardful of the life of a ruler selected by themselves, from among themselves, than they would be of the life of him who claimed to rule over them of his own right? When this question can be sensibly answered, I shall be willing to admit that the life of a President is less worth preserving than that of a king, and that to destroy the life of a President is a crime of less atrocity than to merely desire the death of a prince; but not till then; nor do I believe you will."
The practical legal bearing of this question on the trial was as to whether the prisoner, being proven to have been a member of the conspiracy which resulted in the death of President Lincoln by the hands of a fellow-conspirator, should be held as a principal in the crime, or only an accessory before the fact. In other words whether the court and jury could take cognizance of the official position of Abraham Lincoln without its being alleged in the indictment. If he could be regarded as a principal and not as an accessory he could be held equally guilty with Booth although he might not have been present and assisting in the assassination.
Practically, however, this was not a matter of any consequence in this trial, because it was proven beyond a doubt that the prisoner was actually present, acting a conspicuous part in the execution of the plot. It was also proven by the testimony of one witness whose testimony was in no way impeached that it was he, and not Spangler, who prepared and fitted the bar to the door to prevent Booth being followed into the box at the theatre. The summing up of the evidence by Judge Pierrepont in his concluding speech is one of the most admirable and masterly efforts that can be anywhere found. In the first place it is a model of judicial fairness andhonesty. To him the prisoner was evidently a pure abstraction toward whom he had no feelings. His only effort was to weigh impartially the evidence in the case, and to give to it a fair and common sense interpretation. He brushed away all side issues and every effort of the prisoner's counsel to bring the trial under the influence of political and of religious prejudices, and held them strictly to the question of the guilt or innocence of the prisoner, as shown by the evidence. Again it was a model effort in its logical ability in bringing the evidence before the jury. He had so completely analyzed the testimony that he was able to present it in its logical connection as to time, purpose, and circumstances; tracing the plot through the evidence before him, from its incipiency to its completion, step by step, showing the bearing and relation that one thing sustained to another in a most conclusive and unanswerable way.
He had systematically and logically arranged the testimony, which had necessarily been presented in a most desultory and unsatisfactory way, from the fact that the evidence had to be taken just as witnesses were found to be present. By great care and labor the judge had arranged the evidence just in the order in which he would have chosen to introduce it had the witnesses all been at his command at the moment he would have chosen to use them. Having thus arranged the testimony, he simply read it to the jury, stopping when necessary to comment on it and interpret it. His fair, natural, common sense interpretation of the facts proven could not fail to bring conviction to every intelligent, and candid mind. That the proof before him had brought to the mind of this eminent and experienced advocate and jurist the most complete conviction of the prisoner's guilt, is shown throughout his argument. He did not, however, leave the matter of his own convictions to be the subject merely of inference, but left himself on record on this point asfollows:—
"In this case I feel justified in saying, that the prisoner is proved to be guilty, and in as overwhelming a manner as any man was ever proven guilty in the history of jurisprudence. I appeal to any judge, any lawyer, any man who has had experience, if there was ever a case where the guilt of the party, was more clearlydemonstrated. He is proven guilty not only beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond the possibility of any doubt. There is not a man of you who can doubt it. It has been a strange case. It was a strange providence that brought the man back here to be tried. And now that he is here, you, the twelve men who in the providence of God have been selected to try the case, are to say whether what he has done is right or not right; whether he is guilty or not guilty.
"That is for you to say, not for me. I know he is proved guilty. About that there can be no doubt. I do not believe that any of you have any doubt whatever on that subject."
That the purpose of this conspiracy was to assassinate the heads of the government from its very first inception, is made clear by the whole run of the evidence brought out on the two trials. Atzerodt, in his confession, which he had gotten up to be used in his defence, claims that he was a member of a conspiracy to kidnap the President, and carry him to Richmond. John H. Surratt, in his Rockville lecture, claims the same thing. They both claim that when Booth laid aside this plan as impracticable, and proposed to change it to a conspiracy to assassinate, that they withdrew, and would have nothing further to do with it. It is evident that the statements of both are false, both as regards the original purpose of the conspiracy, and also their abandonment of it. Surratt in his confessions to McMillen stated that he received a letter from Booth in Montreal on the 10th of April. This letter was written from New York, and summoned him to Washington at once, as it had become necessary for them to change their plans and to act quickly.
He left Montreal in obedience to this summons on the 12th of April, and was in Elmira on the morning of the 13th. In his defense of analibi, he tried to prove that he remained at Elmira until after the 15th, and then returned to Montreal, where he arrived on the 18th.
His counsel argued that the plan up to that time had been to capture, and that it was then for the first time that Booth had determined to assassinate; that this was the change of plan referred to in his letter, and that, as Surratt, according to their plea, neversaw him after this change of plan had been determined upon, he knew nothing about it, and was never a member of a conspiracy to assassinate. He admitted that he left Montreal in response to Booth's letter, but claimed that he did not go any further than Elmira, in his defense.
This, also, is his story in his Rockville lecture, in which he admits that he was a member of the conspiracy to capture the President, but asserts that he was never a member of the conspiracy to assassinate him. Why did he obey Booth's summons which required him to come at once to Washington? Why did he come by way of Elmira? He says in his lecture that he went to Elmira in the interest of a plan to liberate the rebel prisoners that were held at that place. He had just been to Richmond, carrying dispatches from Davis and Benjamin to their agents in Canada. Active measures were at once resorted to to accomplish the assassinations that had been planned without delay, and had the scheme been fully realized it was no doubt a part of this plan to bring into active service at once all the secret treasonable military organizations throughout the North, liberate all the rebel prisoners held in Northern prisons, and inaugurate a new rebellion in the North, in aid of the existing rebellion in the South. Surratt admits that he went to Elmira on this business. He went there no doubt to arrange with other conspirators there for carrying out this purpose when notified of the success of the assassination plot. No doubt similar arrangements had been made at Chicago to liberate the prisoners at Camp Douglass; and perhaps at other places. The partial failure of the assassination plot, and the signal triumph of our arms, admonished these Northern traitors that they had better not enter the arena of actual war, and frustrated all the plans of Jefferson Davis and his Canada Cabinet. Surratt's admissions are right in the line of our theory, and tend to prove its correctness; but his claim that he was only a member of a conspiracy to capture is manifestly untrue. Let us hear the conclusion of that eminent jurist, Judge Pierrepont, founded on a careful consideration of all the evidence on this point. "Now you see gentlemen, what is meant by a change of plan. In the spring of 1864 the plan was to murder Mr. Lincoln. They laid various plans for its accomplishment.They thought to do it as he went to the Soldiers' Home, by the telescopic rifle, and they did not intend, in the event of concluding to carry out that plan, to let his wife or his child stand in their way. They then thought to do it by having Payne call upon Mr. Lincoln, get into conversation with him, listen to his stories, seem to be interested in them, and then, at that moment, to strike the knife home, deep into his heart. They at another time thought to poison him, and for this purpose tried the cup; but it seemed that that failed them once, and, as Booth said, might fail them again. They finally concluded they would try to kill him in the theatre, instead of on his way to the Soldiers' Home, and have Payne kill Secretary Seward at his house. That plan they carried out. But, gentlemen, notwithstanding this change of plan, never was there for more than a year any other purpose than to murder. They had long since abandoned the idea of kidnapping, for that required too much machinery, too many men, and subjected them to too much danger; and the changes in plan that had taken place recently were simply as to the mode of killing, and the men who should strike the fatal blow." Here we have the mature opinion of an eminent jurist, founded on a thorough and careful examination of all the evidence, and we feel confident that no candid, intelligent man who studies all the evidence with care can come to any other.