The military murder of Mrs. Surratt stirred us profoundly. Too lowly, simple, and obscure in herself to rank with heroic figures, her execution lifts her to the plane where stand all who fell victims to the troubled times. Suspicion of complicity in Mr. Lincoln’s murder, because of her son’s intimacy with Wilkes Booth, led to her death. They had her before a military tribunal in Washington, her feet linked with chains.
Several men were executed. Their prison-life and hers was another tale to give one the creeps. They were not allowed to speak to any one, nor was any one allowed to speak to them; they were compelled to wear masks of padded cloth over face and head, an opening at the mouth permitting space for breathing; pictures said to be drawn from life showed them in their cells where the only resting-places were not beds, but bare, rough benches; marched before judges with these same horrible hoods on, marched to the gallows with them on, hanging with them on.
One of the executed, Payne, had been guilty of the attack on Mr. Seward and his son; the others had been dominated and bribed by Booth, but had failed to play the parts assigned them in the awful drama his morbid brain wrought out.
OUR FRIENDS, THE ENEMY
CHAPTER X
Our Friends, the Enemy