CHAPTER VII.
The Death Warrant and the Execution.
From Friday afternoon, the thirtieth of June, through Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, the first four days of July, the record of the findings and sentences remained under the seal of sworn secrecy in the custody of the Judge-Advocate-General. To consummate the work of the Commission, the signature of the President to a warrant approving its action and directing the execution of its judgment was necessary. But, during this interval, as it was given out from the White House, President Johnson was too ill to attend to public business. In the meantime, the city, and even the whole country to its very borders, were agitated by the question: What is to be the fate of Mrs. Surratt? The doom of the male culprits was for the moment forgotten in the intense anxiety over hers.
Despite the seven-fold seal of secrecy which covered the proceedings of the secret sessions, whispers of a recommendation of mercy filled the air. In the War Department, the main source of anxiety, at the same time, must have been this superfluous paper—the distressing outcome of an unsuspected sentimental weakness in five of our chosen men. After the final adjournment of the Commission, the unobtrusive, unaddressed half-sheet had been fastened to the record of the sentences by the same narrow yellow silk ribbon which held its own sheets together, and to which it now dangled as a last leaf, or back. A safety-valve to the misplaced chivalry of the Court—it had served its purpose, and was henceforth useless. That it should now turn itself into an implement of evil, minister to the cause of rebellion and assassination, cause “Our Own Andy” to flinch at last and thus the she-fiend of the Bureau escape her doom! It would be treason to suffer it. Upon that resolve, the Triumvirate of Stanton, Holt and Bingham had once for all determined. Indestructible, inconcealable, omnipotent, indeed, must that paper be, which could thwart their united purpose.
At length, on the morning of Wednesday, the fifth, Preston King, who, in those days, was a favored guest at the White House, announced in the Judge-Advocate’s office that the President was so much better as to be able to sit up; and at a later hour in the day, General Holt, in pursuance of an appointment, started on his solemn errand. The volumes of testimony taken before the Commission by official stenographers, daily reports of which had been furnished, he, of course, did not carry with him. In the interview that was to come, there would be no time and no inclination to read over bulky rolls of examinations and cross-examinations of witnesses. From aught that appears, the President was not expected to read over the evidence, nor was it customary in such cases. It may have been the duty of the Secretary of War or the Attorney-General to scrutinize the testimony, either from day to day or at the close of the trial. But all that the President was supposed to know about the merits of the case appears to have been derived from what any of his Cabinet saw fit to inform him, from what he himself casually and unofficially read, but, especially and principally, from what the Judge-Advocate was now coming to tell him. As to the guilt of the accused, and especially of Mrs. Surratt, his mind had long ago been made up for him by his imperious War Minister, from whose despotic sway he had not as yet recovered energy enough to free himself. He was still in that brief introductory period of his Presidency which may be called his Stanton Apprenticeship; still eager “to make treason odious;” full of threatenings to hang Davis and other Southern leaders. He had not yet awakened from the state of semi-stupefaction into which his sudden and awful elevation seems to have thrown him; and, in this state, he must have been extremely averse to dwelling on any of the circumstances of the assassination to which he owed his high place. The idea of clemency to any one of the band of assassins, male or female, which his War-Secretary’s court might convict, would have been intolerable to his imagination and sickening to his sense of security. What Andrew Johnson, at this moment, wanted was to push away from his mind all thoughts of the tragic end of his predecessor, and to allow retributive vengeance to take the most summary course with the least possible knowledge and trouble to himself. And this mood of the presidential mind was well known to the Judge-Advocate-General, as he entered the President’s room. He brought with him so much of the record of the proceedings of the Commission as was necessary to the accomplishment of his errand—viz.: the record of the findings and sentences, which the President was to endorse. This document consisted of a few sheets of legal-cap paper fastened together at the top, written on both sides in the fashion of legal papers, i. e., beginning at the top of the first page and, on reaching the bottom, turning up the paper and writing on the back from the bottom to top. It was a document complete in itself, the written record ending on the first page of the last half-sheet—thus leaving blank the remainder of that page and the whole of the obverse side; ample room for the death-warrant. To this record, but forming no part of it, the Petition, as we have said, had been affixed, but in such a manner as to be easily separable without mutilation. He must also have brought with him his official report of the trial—styled “The formal brief review of the case,” which was subsequently appended to the regular Report of the Judge-Advocate-General to the Secretary of War and transmitted to the Congress in December following—because it is addressed “To the President,” is dated “July 5, 1865,” and is signed “J. Holt.” It recites the verdicts and sentences; justifies its brevity by referring to “the full and exhaustive” argument of Judge Bingham; certifies to the regularity and fairness of the proceedings; and recommends the execution of the sentences; but it makes no mention of the Petition, or any “suggestion” of mercy.
The Judge-Advocate could have anticipated no difficulty in obtaining the approval of the President, conscious as he was that the grounds of such approval were to be furnished to the President by himself. The approval being had, the fixing of the day of execution could cause no disagreement. His only possible source of embarrassment was the petition for commutation. But it would be strange, indeed, if a few apt words could not further emasculate the mild, hypothetical language in which his colleague, Bingham, had seen fit to clothe that paper.
He found the President “alone,” and (as he himself says) “waiting for” him, “very pale, as if just recovered from a severe illness.”
“Without delay” he “proceeded to discharge the duty which brought” him “into his presence.” What took place at this “confidential interview” (as Holt calls it) can never be precisely known; the distinguished interlocutors having subsequently risen into unappeasable quarrel over the presence or absence of the petition, and given contradictory versions. Whatever the truth may be, it is evident that everything went smoothly at the moment. The Judge-Advocate was not disappointed. No difficulty was encountered. What was done was done quickly and at once. The record may have been read over; but this was hardly necessary, as the bare mention of the several sentences would convey a correct summary of its contents. He may have read the “brief review of the case” he had prepared. As Judge Holt relates, he said to the President, “frankly, as it was his official duty to do,” that in his judgment “the proceedings of the Court were regular, and its findings and sentences justified by the evidence, and that the sentences should be enforced.” And this was what he had written in his “Brief Review.” What more could the successor of the murdered Lincoln want? His approval must have been spontaneous and immediate. As Holt says, “at that time Mr. Johnson needed no urging.” Mention may have been made of the curious weakness infecting some members of “our Court” towards the wicked woman, who, as Johnson seems then to have thought, “had kept the nest that hatched the egg;” but only to be scouted by both Judge-Advocate and President as most reprehensible and actually disloyal.
Their unanimity over the salutary effect of the hanging of this one woman on the female rebels was more than fraternal. And it is probable that no more explicit mention of an actual petition was made by Judge Holt in his conversation with the President than was made in his written report to the President, dated the same day, and which he had with him at the time.
The day of execution was fixed upon with the same alacrity. “Make it as soon as possible, so that the disagreeable business may be over; say the day after to-morrow—Friday, the seventh.” And, thereupon, everything being agreed upon, Judge Holt turns over the papers to the last page of the record and spreads it upon the table. Beginning, a few lines below the signature of “D. Hunter, President” which closes the record, with the date,