The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt. DeWitt David Miller
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, and, when necessary, by promises, hopes of reward and threats of punishment, squeezed out of them the testimony they wanted. Colonel Henry L. Burnett, who had become an expert in such proceedings from having recently conducted the trial of Milligan before a military tribunal at Indianapolis, was brought on to help Judge Holt in the great and good work. In the words of General Ewing in his plea for Dr. Mudd:
“The very frenzy of madness ruled the hour. Reason was swallowed up in patriotic passion, and a feverish and intense excitement prevailed most unfavorable to a calm, correct hearing and faithful repetition of what was said, especially by the suspected. Again, and again, and again the accused was catechised by detectives, each of whom was vieing with the other as to which should make the most important discoveries, and each making the examination with a preconceived opinion of guilt, and with an eager desire, if not determination, to find in what might be said the proofs of guilt. Again, the witnesses testified under the strong stimulus of a promised reward for information leading to arrest and followed by convictions.”
The Bureau conducted the investigation on the preconceived theory, adopted, as we have seen, by the Secretary of War, that the Confederate Government was the source of the conspiracy; and, by lavishing promises and rewards, it had no difficulty in finding witnesses who professed themselves to have been spies on the rebel agents in Canada and who were ready to implicate them and through them the President of the defunct Confederacy in the assassination. Richard Montgomery and Sanford Conover, who had been in personal communication with these agents during the past year, were eagerly taken into the employ of the Bureau, and made frequent trips to Canada, to return every time laden with fresh proofs of the complicity of the rebels.
To illustrate how the Bureau of Military Justice dealt with witnesses who happened to have been connected more or less closely with Booth, and who were either reluctant or unable to make satisfactory disclosures, here are two extracts from the evidence given on the trial of John H. Surratt in 1867.
The first is from the testimony of Lloyd, the besotted keeper of the Surratt tavern:
“I was first examined at Bryantown by Colonel Wells. I was next examined by two different persons at the Carroll prison. I did not know either of their names. One was a military officer. I think some of the prisoners described him as Colonel Foster. I saw a man at the conspiracy trial as one of the Judges who looked very much like him. * * * I told him I had made a fuller statement to Colonel Wells than I could possibly do to him under the circumstances, while things were fresh in my memory. His reply was that it was not full enough, and then commenced questioning me whether I had ever heard any person say that something wonderful or something terrible was going to take place. I told him I had never heard anyone say so. Said he I have seen it in the newspapers.
“He jumps up very quick off his seat, as if very mad, and asked me if I knew what I was guilty of. I told him, under the circumstances I did not. He said you are guilty as an accessory to a crime the punishment of which is death. With that I went up stairs to my room.”
The next is from the testimony of Lewis J. Carland, to whom Weichman confessed his remorse after the execution of Mrs. Surratt:
“He [Weichman] said it would have been very different with Mrs. Surratt if he had been let alone; that a statement had been prepared for him, that it was written out for him, and that he was threatened with prosecution as one of the conspirators if he did not swear to it. He said that a detective had been put into Carroll prison with him, and that this man had written out a statement which he said he had made in his sleep, and that he had to swear to that statement.”
Let us add another; it is so short and yet so suggestive. It is from the testimony of James J. Gifford, who was a witness for the prosecution on both trials.
“Q. – Do you know Mr. Weichman?
“A. – I have seen him.
“Q. – Were you in Carroll prison with him?
“A. – Yes, sir.
“Q.