The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth

by George Alfred Townsend

The misery of the pretty and heart-broken daughter of Mrs. Surratt is the talk of the city. This girl appears to have loved her mother with all the petulant passion of a child. She visited her constantly, and to-day made so stirring an effort to obtain her life that her devotion takes half the disgrace from the mother. She got the priests to speak in her behalf. Early to-day she knelt in the cell at her mother's feet, and sobbed, with now and then a pitiful scream till the gloomy corridors rang. She endeavored to win from Payne a statement that her mother was not accessory, and, as a last resort, flung herself upon the steps of the White-House, and made that portal memorable by her filial tears. About half-past 8 o'clock this morning, Miss Surratt, accompanied by a female friend, again visited the White-House, for the purpose of obtaining an interview with the President. The latter having given orders that he would receive no one to-day, the door-keeper stopped Miss Surratt at the foot of the steps leading up to the President's office, and would not permit her to proceed further. She then asked permission to see General Muzzy, the president's military secretary, who promptly answered the summons, and came down stairs where Miss Surratt was standing. As soon as the general made his appearance, Miss Surratt threw herself upon her knees before him, and catching him by the coat, with loud sobs and streaming eyes, implored him to assist her in obtaining a hearing with the President. General Muzzy, in as tender a manner as possible, informed Miss Surratt that he could not comply with her request, as President Johnson's orders were imperative, and he would receive no one. Upon General Muzzy returning to his office, Miss Surratt threw herself upon the stair steps, where she remained a considerable length of time, sobbing aloud in the greatest anguish, protesting her mother's innocence, and imploring every one who came near her to intercede in her mother's behalf.

While thus weeping she declared her mother was too good and kind to be guilty of the enormous crime of which she was convicted, and asserted that if her mother was put to death she wished to die also. She was finally allowed to sit in the east room, where she lay in wait for all who entered, hoping to make them efficacious in her behalf, all the while uttering her weary heart in a woman's touching cries: but at last, certain of disappointment, she drove again to the jail and lay in her mother's cell, with the heavy face of one who brings ill-news. The parting will consecrate those gloomy walls. The daughter saw the mother pinioned and kissed her wet face as she went shuddering to the scaffold. The last words of Mrs. Surratt, as she went out of the jail, were addressed to a gentleman whom she had known.

"Good-bye, take care of Annie."

To-night there is crape on the door of the Surratt's, and a lonely lamp shines at a single window, where the sad orphan is thinking of her bereavement.

The bodies of the dead have been applied for but at present will not given up.

Judge Holt was petitioned all last night for the lives and liberties of the condemned, but he was inexorable.

The soldiers who hung the condemned were appointed against their will. I forbear to give their names as they do not wish the repute of executioners. They all belonged to the Fourteenth Veteran Reserve Infantry.

Here endeth the story of this tragedy upon a tragedy. All are glad that it is done. I am glad particularly. It has cost me how many journeying to Washington, how many hot midnights at the telegraph office, how many gallops into wild places, and how much revolting familiarity with blood.

The end has come. The slain, both good and evil, are in their graves, out of the reach of hangman and assassin. Only the correspondent never dies. He is the true Pantheist—going out of nature for a week, but bursting forth afresh in a day, and so insinuating himself into the history of our era that it is beginning to be hard to find out where the event ends and the writer begins.

Next week Ford's Theater opens with the "Octoroon." The gas will be pearly as ever; the scenes as rich. The blood-stained foot-lights will flash as of old upon merry and mimicking faces. So the world has its tragic ebullitions; but its real career is comedy. Over the graves of the good and the scaffolds of the evil, sits the leering Momus across whose face death sometimes brings sleep, but never a wrinkle.