They know of Booth's dramatic leap from the presidential box to the stage, his cry as he ran of "Sic Semper Tyrannus! Far fewer Americans, however, know that Booth's evil deed was part of a larger conspiracy of Confederate sympathizers--a conspiracy whose targets included Vice President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward and which had as its goal destabilization of the entire federal government.
Fewer Americans yet know the fascinating story of the trial of eight conspirators before a specially appointed military commission in Washington. The government would allege that O'Laughlen, wearing black clothes and a slouch hat and claiming to be a lawyer, entered this contention would later be hotly disputed by his defense attorney the home of the Secretary of War on the night before the assassination.
George Atzerodt. George Atzerodt's arrest came on April 20 at the home of his cousin in Germantown, Maryland. Atzerodt had aroused suspicion by asking a bartender on the day of the assassination at the Kirkwood Hotel in Washington about the Vice President Andrew Johnson's whereabouts.
The Vice President had taken a room at the hotel. The day after Lincoln's assassination, a hotel employee contacted authorities concerning a "suspicious-looking man" in "a gray coat" who had been seen around the Kirkwood.
John Lee, a member of the military police force, visited the hotel on April 15 and conducted a search of Atzerodt's room. The search revealed that the bed had not been slept in the previous night. Lee discovered under a pillow a loaded revolver, a large bowie knife, a map of Virginia, three handkerchiefs, and a bank book of John Wilkes Booth. Meanwhile, efforts to apprehend Lincoln's assassin continued. Military investigators tracking Booth's escape route south through Maryland reached the farm of Dr.
Samuel Mudd home on April Mudd admitted that two men on horseback arrived at his home about four o'clock on the morning of April The men, it turned out, were John Wilkes Booth--in severe pain with his fractured leg--and David Herold. Mudd said that he welcomed the men into his house, placed Booth on his sofa for an examination, then carried him upstairs to a bed where he dressed the limb. After daybreak, Mudd helped construct a pair of crude crutches for Booth and tried, unsuccessfully, to secure a carriage for his two visitors.
Booth after having shaved off his mustache in Mudd's home and Herold left later on the fifteenth. Mudd told investigator Alexander Lovett that the man whose leg he fixed "was a stranger to him.
Samuel Mudd and Mary Surratt. Lovett returned to the Mudd home three days later to conduct a search of Mudd's home. When Lovett told of his intentions, Mudd's wife, Sarah, brought down from upstairs a boot that had been cut off the visitor's leg three days earlier. Lovett turned down the top of the left-foot riding boot and "saw the name J Wilkes written in it. Shown a photo of Booth, Mudd still claimed not to recognize him--despite evidence gathered from other area residents that Mudd and Booth had been seen together the previous November.
Mudd became the seventh conspirator to be arrested. Near the banks of the Rappahannock River in Virginia, investigators closed in on their prey on April Everton Conger and two other investigators pulled Willie Jett out of a bed in a hotel in Bowling Green to demand, "Where are the two men who came with you across the river?
When Jett had talked with the two conspirators they had made no effort to hide their identity. Herold had boldly declared, "We are the assassinators of the President. Yonder is J. Wilkes Booth, the man who killed Lincoln. Scene at Garrett's farm. Reaching Garrett's farm , the government party ordered an old man, Garrett, out of his home and asked, "Where are the two men who stopped here at your house? Unsatisfied with Garrett's response, Conger told one of his men, "Bring me a lariat rope here, and I will put that man up to the top of one of those locust trees.
Finding the suspects to be in the Garrett barn, Conger gave Booth and Herold five minutes to get out or, he said, he would set fire to it.
Booth responded, "Let us have a little time to consider it. Conger lit the fire minutes later. With flames rising around him, Booth, carrying a carbine, started toward the door of the barn. A shot rang out from the gun of Sergeant Boston Corbett.
Booth fell. Soldiers carried Booth out on the grass. Booth turned to Conger and said, "Tell mother I die for my country. Repeatedly he begged of his captors, "Kill me, kill me.
Two or three hours after being shot, he died. One suspected conspirator would elude investigators for more than a year and would not stand trial with the other eight: John Surratt, Jr. Surratt fled to Canada after the assassination. In September, Surratt traveled to England and later to Rome. Finally arrested in Egypt on November 27, , Surratt was brought back to the United States for trial in a civilian court in Secretary of War Edwin Stanton favored a quick military trial and execution.
According to Secretary of Navy Gideon Welles, who favored trial in a civilian court, Stanton "said it was intention that the criminals should be tried and executed before President Lincoln was buried. Edward Bates, Lincoln's former attorney general, was among those objecting to a military trial, believing such an approach to be unconstitutional.
Understanding the use of a military commission to try civilians to be controversial, President Johnson requested Attorney General James Speed to prepare an opinion on the legality of such a trial. Not surprisingly, Speed concluded in his opinion that use of a military court would be proper. Speed reasoned that an attack on the commander-in-chief before the full cessation of the rebellion constituted an act of war against the United States, making the War Department the appropriate body to control the proceedings.
While debates continued in the Johnson Administration as to how to proceed with the alleged conspirators, the prisoners were kept under close wraps at two locations. Mary Surratt and Dr. Samuel Mudd first were jailed at the Old Capitol Prison, while the other six were imprisoned on the ironclad vessels Montauk and Saugus. Later, as their trial date approached, authorities confined prisoners to separate cells in the Old Arsenal Penitentiary. Four of the male prisoners Herold, Powell, Spangler, and Atzerodt were shackled to balls and chains, with their hands held in place by an inflexible iron bar.
Most strikingly, from the time of their arrest until midway through their trial, all the prisoners except Mary Surratt and Dr. Mudd--under orders from Secretary Stanton--were forced to wear canvas hoods that covered the entire head and face. Hoods worn by Lincoln conspirators. On May 1, , President Johnson issued an order that the alleged conspirators be tried before a nine-person military commission. Some, such as former Attorney General Bates, complained bitterly: "If the offenders are done to death by that tribunal, however truly guilty, they will pass for martyrs with half the world.
The Military Commission convened for the first time on May 8 in a newly-created courtroom on the third floor of the Old Arsenal Penitentiary in Washington. Harris, and Colonel C. H Tomkins. Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt served in the problematic dual roles of chief prosecutor and legal advisor to the Commission. John A. Bingham later an influential member of Congress served on the Commission as Special Judge Advocates and handled examination of witnesses and gave the government's summation.
Burnett was the third member of the prosecution team. The military commission that tried the Lincoln assassination conspirators. On the evening of May 9, General John Hantranft visited each prisoner's cell to read the charges and specifications against them. Hantranft later wrote: "I had the hood [of each prisoner] removed, entered the cell alone with a lantern, delivered the copy, and allowed them time to read it, and in several instances, by request read the copy to them, before replacing the hood.
Testimony began in the Lincoln assassination conspiracy trial on May 12, just three days after the prisoners were first asked if they would like to have legal counsel. The rules of the Commission made the position of the defendants even more grave: conviction could come on a simple majority vote and a majority of two-thirds could impose the death sentence. Over the course of the next seven weeks, the Commission would hear from witnesses.
As the witnesses paraded to the stand, spectators lucky enough to get admission passes from Major General Hunter would move in and out of the nonchalant atmosphere of the courtroom.
The War Department saw the trial as an opportunity to prosecute not only the eight charged conspirators, but also the already-dead Booth, Jefferson Davis, and the Confederate Secret Service. Prosecutors suggested that as the war turned in favor of the federal government, the Confederacy became increasingly willing to support dubious enterprises that would have been rejected under less desperate circumstances.
Witnesses told of Confederate plots to destroy public buildings, burn steamboats, poison the public water supply of New York City, offer commissions to raiders of northern cities, mine a federal prison, starve Union prisoners-of-war, and even mount a biological attack. Jefferson Davis. The Confederate Congress appropriated five million dollars to support a clandestine campaign of subversion in February, Both men would spend, along with a dozen or more other Confederates, most of the duration of the war in Canada coordinating and funding terrorism, according to over a dozen prosecution witnesses.
Bingham "an infamous and fiendish project of importing pestilence"--hatched by the Confederate Secret Service working out of Canada was believed at the time to have been the cause of 2, military and civilian deaths. The attack, according to witness Godfrey Hyams , came in the form of clothing "carefully infected in Bermuda with yellow fever, smallpox, and other contagious diseases.
Hyams said that the operation's mastermind, Dr. Luke P. Blackburn, who he met in Halifax, told him that trunk "Big Number 2" "will kill them at sixty yards distance. For his work, Hyams testified, he received congratulations from Clement Clay. Some of the infected goods were auctioned near a Union base of operations by New Bern, North Carolina shortly before nearly 2, citizens and soldiers died there during a yellow fever outbreak.
Bingham attributed the epidemic to the Confederate plot, not knowing as was discovered in that mosquitoes--not people--cause yellow fever.
The prosecution offered evidence to show that the conspiracy against Abraham Lincoln and other high government officials began sometime after the battle at Gettysburg--probably in the summer of Conover, a former employee of the Rebel war Department, in what is widely believed to be perjurious testimony quoted Thompson as saying there was "no provision in the Constitution of the United States by which, if these men were removed, they could elect another President.
Henry Van Steinacker, a Union soldier convicted of desertion, testified that while on a long horse ride in Virginia with John Wilkes Booth in late summer of Booth opined, "Old Abe must go up the spout [be killed], and the Confederacy will gain its independence. Several witnesses testified that by the fall of a proposal to assassinate or abduct Union leaders, presumably made by Booth, was under active review by Confederate officials in both Canada and Richmond.
Richard Montgomery, a Union double agent in Canada, testified perjuriously, again, according to many historians that Thompson as saying in January that it would be a "blessing" to "rid the world" of Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant. Montgomery testified that Thompson revealed that a "proposition" had been made by a group of "bold, daring men" to do just that. Samuel Chester testified that beginning in November Booth tried to recruit his participation in a plot to abduct Lincoln and take him to Richmond, where he would be held until he could be exchanged for Confederate prisoners-of-war.
Initially, it seems, the proposal either to abduct or assassinate Lincoln was rejected in Richmond, as Montgomery quotes Montreal clique member Beverly Tucker as complaining that it was "too bad that they boys had not been allowed to act when they wanted to.
Henry Finegas testified as to overhearing a conversation, made in "a low tone of voice" in Montreal in mid-February between Confederate clique members George Sanders and William Cleary:.
Sanders: If the boys only have luck, Lincoln won't trouble us much longer. Cleary: Is everything going well? Sanders: Oh, yes. Booth is bossing the job. Louis Weichmann. Surratt returned from Richmond to Washington, before heading north out of the Capital on April 3. On April 6, John Surratt arrived in Montreal carrying with him--according to the prosecution's theory--final approval for Booth's assassination attempt. Sanford Conover, a former employee of the Rebel War Department, testified that he was present at a meeting in the Montreal hotel room of Jacob Thompson when dispatches brought by Surratt from Richmond, including a letter in cipher from Jefferson Davis, were discussed.
According to Conover's testimony--strongly attacked by latter-day supporters of Davis--"Thompson laid his hand [on the dispatches from Richmond] and said, "This makes the thing all right. Special Judge Advocate John Bingham, in his summation for the government , found the evidence against Jefferson Davis damning:.
What more is wanting? Surely no word further need be spoken to show that John Wilkes Booth was in this conspiracy; that John Surratt was in this conspiracy; and that Jefferson Davis and his several agents named, in Canada, were in this conspiracy Whatever may be the conviction of others, my own conviction is that Jefferson Davis is as clearly proven guilty of this conspiracy as John Wilkes Booth, by whose hand Jefferson Davis inflicted the mortal wound on Abraham Lincoln.
Bingham found further confirmation of Davis's guilt in a letter of October 13, , discovered in the possession of Booth after the assassination of Lincoln. The ciphered letter, which notified Booth that "their friends would be set to work as he had directed," was proven to have been typed on a cipher machine recovered from a room in Davis's State Department in Richmond. Finally, Bingham found incriminating Davis's reaction in North Carolina upon learning of the President's assassination: "If it were to be done at all, it were better that it were well done.
Far fewer Americans, however, know that Booth's evil deed was part of a larger conspiracy of Confederate sympathizers--a conspiracy whose targets included Vice President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward and which had as its goal destabilization of the entire federal government. Fewer Americans yet know the fascinating story of the trial of eight conspirators before a specially appointed military commission in Washington.
Redirecting to: www. Close this pop-up window to remain on this page. Famous American Trials. Trial of the Lincoln Assassination Conspirators
0コメント