But there is one other item of testimony that ought, among honest and intelligent people at all conversant with this evidence, to end all further inquiry as to whether Jefferson Davis was one of the parties, with Booth, as charged upon this record, in the conspiracy to assassinate the President and others. That is that on the fifth day after the assassination, in the city of Charlotte, N. C., a telegraphic despatch was received by him, at the house of Mr. Bates, from John C. Breckinridge, his rebel Secretary of War, which despatch is produced here, identified by the telegraph agent, and placed upon your record in the words following:—
"Greensboro', April 19, 1865.
"His Excellency President Davis:—
"President Lincoln was assassinated in the theatre in Washington on the night of the 14th inst. Seward's house was entered on the same night and he was repeatedly stabbed, and is probably mortally wounded.
"John C. Breckinridge."
At the time this despatch was handed to him, Davis was addressing a meeting from the steps of Mr. Bates's house, and after reading the despatch to the people, he said: "If it were to be done, it were better it were well done." Shortly afterwards, in the house of the witness, in the same city, Breckinridge, having come to see Davis, stated his regret that the occurrence had happened, because he deemed it unfortunate for the people of the South at that time. Davis replied, referring to the assassination, "Well, general, I don't know; if it were to be done at all, it were better that it were well done; and if the same had been done to Andy Johnson, the beast, and to Secretary Stanton, the job would then be complete."
Accomplished as this man was in all the arts of a conspirator, he was not equal to the task—as happily, in the good providence of God, no mortal man is—of concealing, by any form of words, any great crime which he may have meditated or perpetrated either against his government or his fellow-men. It was doubtless furthest from Jefferson Davis's purpose to make confession, and yet he did make a confession. His guilt demanded utterance; that demand he could not resist; therefore his words proclaimed his guilt, in spite of his purpose to conceal it. He said, "if it were to be done, it were better it were well done." Would any man ignorant of the conspiracy be able to devise and fashion such a form of speech as that? Had not the President been, murdered? Had he not reason to believe that the Secretary of State had been mortally wounded? Yet he was not satisfied, but was compelled to say, "it were better it were well done"—that is to say, all that had been agreed to be done had not been done. Two days afterwards, in his conversation with Breckinridge, he not only repeats the same form of expression, "if it were to be done it were better it were well done," but adds these words: "And if the same had been done to Andy Johnson, the beast, and to Secretary Stanton, the job would then be complete." He would accept the assassination of the President, the Vice-President, of the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of War, as a complete execution of the "job," which he had given out upon, contract, and which he had "made all right," so far as the pay was concerned, by the despatches he had sent to Thompson by Surratt, one of his hired assassins. Whatever may be the conviction of others, my own conviction is that Jefferson Davis is as clearly proven guilty of this conspiracy as is John Wilkes Booth, by whose hand Jefferson Davis inflicted the mortal wound upon Abraham Lincoln. His words of intense hate and rage and disappointment are not to be overlooked—that the assassins had not done their work well; that they had not succeeded in robbing the people altogether of their constitutional Executive and his advisers; and hence he exclaims, "If they had killed Andy Johnson, the beast!" Neither can he conceal his chagrin and disappointment that the war minister of the republic, whose energy, incorruptible integrity, sleepless vigilance, and executive ability had organized day by day, month by month, and year by year, victory for our arms, had escaped the knife of the hired assassins. The job, says this procurer of assassination, was not well done; it had been better if it had been well done! Because Abraham Lincoln had been clear in his great office, and had saved the nation's life by enforcing the nation's laws, this traitor declares he must be murdered; because Mr. Seward, as the foreign secretary of the country, had thwarted the purposes of treason to plunge his country into a war with England, he must be murdered; because, upon the murder of Mr. Lincoln, Andrew Johnson would succeed to the presidency, and because he had been true to the Constitution and government, faithful found among the faithless of his own State, clinging to the falling pillars of the republic when others had fled, he must be murdered; and because the Secretary of War had taken care, by the faithful discharge of his duties, that the republic should live and not die, he must be murdered. Inasmuch as these two faithful officers were not also assassinated, assuming that the Secretary of State was mortally wounded, Davis could not conceal his disappointment and chagrin that the work was not "well done," that "the job was not complete!"
Thus it appears by the testimony that the proposition made to Davis was to kill and murder the deadliest enemies of the Confederacy—not to kidnap them, as is now pretended here; that by the declaration of Sanders, Tucker, Thompson, Clay, Cleary, Harper, and Young, the conspirators in Canada, the agreement and combination among them was to kill and murder Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Edwin M. Stanton, and others of his advisors, and not to kidnap them; it appears from every utterance of John Wilkes Booth, as well as from the Charles Selby letter, of which mention will presently be made, that, as early as November, the proposition with him was to kill and murder, not to kidnap.
Since the first examination of Conover, who testified, as the court will remember, to many important facts against these conspirators and agents of Davis in Canada—among others, the terrible and fiendish plot disclosed by Thompson, Pallen, and others, that they had ascertained the volume of water in the reservoir supplying New York City, estimated the quantity of poison required to render it deadly, and intended thus to poison a whole city—Conover returned to Canada, by direction of this court, for the purpose of obtaining certain documentary evidence. There, about the 9th of June, he met Beverley Tucker, Sanders, and other conspirators, and conversed with them. Tucker declared that Secretary Stanton, whom he denounced as "a scoundrel," and Judge Holt, whom he called "a bloodthirsty villain," "could protect themselves as long as they remained in office by a guard, but that would not always be the case, and, by the Eternal, he had a large account to settle with them." After this, the evidence of Conover here having been published, these parties called upon him and asked him whether he had been to Washington and had testified before this court. Conover denied it; they insisted, and took him to a room where, with drawn pistols, they compelled him to consent to make an affidavit that he had been falsely personated here by another, and that he would make that affidavit before a Mr. Kerr, who would witness it. They then called in Mr. Kerr to certify to the public that Conover had made such a denial. They also compelled this witness to furnish for publication an advertisement offering a reward of five hundred dollars for the arrest of the "infamous and perjured scoundrel" who had recently personated James W. Wallace under the name of Sanford Conover, and testified to a tissue of falsehoods before the military commission at Washington, which advertisement was published in the papers.
To these facts Mr. Conover now testifies, and also discloses the fact that these same men published, in the report of the proceedings before Judge Smith, an affidavit purporting to be his, but which he never made. The affidavit which he in fact made, and which was published in a newspaper at that time, produced here, is set out substantially upon your record, and agrees with the testimony upon the same point given by him in this court.
To suppose that Conover ever made such an affidavit voluntarily as the one wrung from him as stated is impossible. Would he advertise for his own arrest and charge himself with falsely personating himself? But the fact cannot evade observation, that when these guilty conspirators saw Conover's testimony before this court in the public prints, revealing to the world the atrocious plots of these felon conspirators, conscious of the truthfulness of his statements, they cast about at once for some defense before the public, and devised the foolish and stupid invention of compelling him to make an affidavit that he was not Sanford Conover, was not in this court, never gave this testimony, but was a practicing lawyer in Montreal! This infamous proceeding, coupled with the evidence before detailed, stamps these ruffian plotters with the guilt of this conspiracy.
John Wilkes Booth having entered into this conspiracy in Canada, as has been shown, as early as October, he is next found in the city of New York on the 11th day, as I claim, of November, in disguise, in conversation with another, the conversation disclosing to the witness, Mrs. Hudspeth, that they had some matter of personal interest between them; that upon one of them the lot had fallen to go to Washington—upon the other to go to New Berne. This witness, upon being shown the photograph of Booth, swears "that the face is the same" as that of one of those men, who, she says, was a young man of education and culture, as appeared by his conversation, and who had a scar like a bite near the jaw-bone. It is a fact proved here by the Surgeon General that Booth had such a scar on the side of his neck. Mrs. Hudspeth heard him say he would leave for Washington the day after to-morrow. His companion appeared angry because it had not fallen on him to go to Washington. This took place after the presidential election in November. She cannot fix the precise date, but says she was told that General Butler left New York on that day. The testimony discloses that General Butler's army was on the 11th of November leaving New York. The register of the National Hotel shows that Booth left Washington on the early morning train, November 11, and that he returned to this city on the 14th. Chester testifies positively to Booth's presence in New York early in November. This testimony shows most conclusively that Booth was in New York on the 11th of November. The early morning train on which he left Washington would reach New York early in the afternoon of that day. Chester saw him there early in November, and Mrs. Hudspeth not only identifies his picture, but describes his person. The scar upon his neck near his jaw was peculiar and is well described by the witness as like a bite. On that day Booth had a letter in his possession which he accidentally dropped in a street car in the presence of Mrs. Hudspeth, the witness, who delivered it to Major General Dix the same day, and by whom, as his letter on file before this court shows, the same was transmitted to the War Department, November 17, 1864. That letter contains these words:—
"Dear Louis:—The time has at last come that we have all so wished for, and upon you everything depends. As it was decided, before you left, we were to cast lots, we accordingly did so, and you are to be the Charlotte Corday of the nineteenth century. When you remember the fearful, solemn vow that was taken by us, you will feel there is no drawback. Abe must die, and now. You can choose your weapons—the cup, the knife, the bullet. The cup failed us once, and might again. Johnson, who will give this, has been like an enraged demon since the meeting, because it has not fallen upon him to rid the world of the monster.... You know where to find your friends. Your disguises are so perfect and complete that without one knew your face no police telegraphic despatch would catch you. The English gentleman, Harcourt, must not act hastily. Remember, he has ten days. Strike for your home, strike for your country; bide your time, but strike sure. Get introduced; congratulate him; listen to his stories (not many more will the brute tell to earthly friends); do anything but fail, and meet us at the appointed place within the fortnight. You will probably hear from me in Washington. Sanders is doing us no good in Canada.
"Chas. Selby."