“I went to the parlor door, and said: ‘Mrs. Surratt, will you step here a minute?’ She came out, and I asked her: ‘Do you know this man, and did you hire him to come and dig a gutter for you?’ She answered,raising her right hand; ‘Before God, sir, I do not know this man, I have never seen him, and I did not hire him to dig a gutter for me.’—Assassination of Lincoln, p. 122.
But it was proved after, by several unimpeachable witnesses, that she knew very well that Payne was a personal friend of her son, who, many times, had come to her house, in company of his friend and pet, Booth. She had received the communion just two or three days before that public perjury. Just a moment after making it, the officer ordered her to step out into the carriage. Before doing it, she asked permission to kneel down and pray; which was granted (page 123.)
I ask it from any man of common sense, could Jeff Davis have imparted such a religious calm, and self-possession to that woman, when her hands were just reddened with the blood of the President, and she was on her way to trial!
No! such sang froid, such calm in that soul, in such a terrible and solemn hour, could only come from the teachings of those Jesuits who, for more than six months, were in her house, showing her a crown of eternal glory, if she would help to kill the monster apostate—Lincoln—the only cause of that horrible civil war! There is not the least doubt that the priests had perfectly succeeded in persuading Mary Surratt and Booth that the killing of Lincoln was a most holy and deserving work, for which God had an eternal reward in store.
There is a fact to which the American people have not yet given a sufficient attention. It is, that, without a single exception, the conspirators were Roman Catholics. The learned and great patriot, General Baker, in his admirable report, struck and bewildered by that strange, mysterious and portentous fact, said:
“I mention, as an exceptional and remarkable fact, that every conspirator in custody, is, by education, a Catholic.”
But those words which, if well understood by the United States, would have thrown so much light on the true causes of their untold and unspeakable disasters, fell as if on the ears of deaf men. Very few, if any, paid attention to them. As General Baker says, all the conspirators were attending Catholic Church services, and were educated Roman Catholics. It is true that some of them, as Atzeroth, Payne and Harold, asked for Protestant ministers, when they were to be hung. But they had been considered, till then, as converts to Romanism. At page 436, of The Trial of John Surratt, Louis Weichman tells us that he was going to St. Aloysin’s Church with Atzeroth, and that it was there that he introduced him to Mr. Brothy (another Roman Catholic).
It is a well authenticated fact, that Booth and Weichman, who were themselves Protestant perverts to Romanism, had proselytized a good number of semi-Protestants and infidels who, either from conviction, or from hope of the fortunes promised to the successful murderers, were themselves very zealous for the Church of Rome. Payne, Atzeroth and Harold were among those proselytes. But when those murderers were to appear before the country, and receive the just punishment of their crime, the Jesuits were too shrewd to ignore that if they were all coming on the scaffold as Roman Catholics, and accompanied by their father confessors, it would, at once, open the eyes of the American people, and clearly show that this was a Roman Catholic plot. They persuaded three of their proselytes to avail themselves of the theological principles of the Church of Rome, that a man is allowed to conceal his religion, nay, that he may say that he is an heretic, a Protestant, though he is a Roman Catholic, when it is for his own interest or the best interests of his church to conceal the truth and deceive the people. Here is the doctrine of Rome on that subject:
“Soepe melius est ad dei honorem, et utiliatatem proximi, tegere fidem quam frateri, ut si latens inter herticos, plus boni facis; vel si ex confessione fidei, plus mali sequeretur, verbi gratia turbatio, neces, exacerbotio tyrannis.”—Ligouri Theologia, b. ii., chap. iii., p. 6.
“It is often more to the glory of God and the good of our neighbor to conceal our religious faith, as when we live among heretics, we can more easily do them good in that way; or if by declaring our religion, we cause some disturbances, or deaths, or even the wrath of the tyrant.”