"What rights do accused persons enjoy ?"
The boy wrote out, very carefully, this answer:
"Death by hanging."
The boy would have been correct had the question applied to accused persons before a court-martial.
Spangler, the scene-shifter and stage-carpenter, has the face and bearing of a day-laborer. His blue woollen shirt does not confuse him, as he is used to it. He has an oldish face, wrinkled by fearful anticipations, and his hair is thin. He is awkwardly built, and watches the trial earnestly, as if striving to catch between the links of evidence vistas of a life insured. This man has a simple and pleading face, and there is something genial in his great, incoherent countenance. He is said to have cleared the stage for Booth's escape, but this is indifferently testified to. He had often been asked by Booth to take a drink at the nearest bar. Persons who drink assure me that the greatest mark of confidence which a great man can show a lesser one is to make that tender; this, therefore, explains Booth's power over Spangler.
Spangler is the first scene-shifter who may become a dramatis personę.
A soldier sits between Spangler and Doctor Mudd. The soldier would like Spangler to get up and go away, so that he could have as much of the bench as he might sleep upon. This particular soldier, I may be qualified to say, would sleep upon his post.
Doctor Mudd has a New England and not a Maryland face. He compares, to those on his left, as Hyperion to a squatter. His high, oval head is bald very far up, but not benevolently so, and it is covered with light red hair, so thin as to contrast indifferently with the denseness of his beard and goatee. His nose would be insignificant but for its sharpness, and at the nostrils it is swelling and high-spirited. His eyes impinge upon his brows, and they are shining and rather dark, while the brows themselves are so scantily clothed with hair that they seem quite naked. Mudd is neatly dressed in a green-grass duster, and white bosom and collar; if he had no other advantages over his associates these last would give it to him. He keeps his feet upon the rail before him in true republican style, and rolls a morsel of tobacco under his tongue.
The military commission works as if it were delegated not to try, but to convict, and Dr. Mudd, if he be innocent, is in only less danger than if he were guilty. He has a sort of home-bred intelligence in his face, and socially is as far above his fellows as Goliah of Gath above the rest of the Philistines.
On the right of Doctor Mudd sits a soldier, who is striving to look through his legs at the judge-advocate, as if taking a sort of secret aim at that person, with the intent to fetch him down, because he makes the trial so very dry, and the soldier so very thirsty.