CHAPTER III.
The Conduct of the Trial.
The whole conduct of the trial emphasizes this conclusion. The Court, in weighing the evidence, adopted and acted upon the following proposition; that any witness, sworn for any of the prisoners, who had enlisted in the Confederate service, or had at any time expressed secession sentiments, or sympathized in any way with the South, was totally unworthy of credit. The Court went a step farther, and adopted the monstrous rule that participation in the Rebellion was evidence of participation in the assassination! This assertion now seems incredible, but it is fully attested by the record. At one stage of the trial, the Judge-Advocate asked a witness whether or not the prisoner Arnold had been in the military service of the rebels. General Ewing, his counsel, strenuously objected to this question on the ground, that it tended to prove the prisoner guilty of another crime than the one for which he was on trial, and thus to prejudice him in the eyes of the Court.
Judge Holt remarked: “How kindred to each other are the crimes of treason against a nation and assassination of its chief magistrate.
“The murder of the President * * * was preëminently a political assassination.
“When, therefore, we shall show, on the part of the accused, acts of intense disloyalty, bearing arms in the field against the Government, we show with him the presence of an animus towards the Government which relieves this accusation of much, if not all, of its improbability.”
He asserted that such a course of proof was constantly resorted to in criminal courts; and when General Ewing challenged him (as well he might) to produce any authorities for such a position, he called upon the indomitable Bingham to state them.
The Special Judge-Advocate responded, but he courteously, but unmistakably, shied away from his colleague’s position and put the competency of the testimony upon another ground, viz.: that where the intent with which a thing was done is in issue, other acts of the prisoner which tend to prove the intent may be given in evidence. Here he was dealing with a familiar principle, and could cite any number of cases. He then proceeded to apply his good law. How? By claiming that conspiracy to murder having been laid in the charge, “with the intent to aid the Rebellion,” that was the intent in issue here, and therefore to prove that a man was in the Rebellion went to prove that intent.