And now the motive:—
It is known of all men that Andrew Johnson had only fairly settled himself in the presidential chair of the great Lincoln, before he began to dream, to scheme, and to intrigue for an election by the people to that office.
The presidential bee was buzzing under the accidental presidential hat. The Southern leaders, clever diplomats and long-headed politicans as they are, soon took the measure of the man, and began to consider how best they could use him, and his ambition for their own purposes. It was noticed that Andrew Johnson had not been many months in the White House before there was a decided change in the style and type of visitors passing in and out under the great white portico. The men of the North,—the old "Union Republican group" of the House and Senate that were daily visitors there in the days of Lincoln, began to find the atmosphere of the White House less kind and congenial; there was a lack of warmth in the welcome, and a constraint in talk and exchange of ideas, progressing gradually to actual antagonism over the questions of amnesty, reconstruction, and constitutional guarantees to the freedmen. Then the Northern men dropped away; seemed not to go there any more. Men from the South who but lately had borne arms against the government, and who had not yet taken the oath of allegiance, were found plentiful about the White House, and apparently basking in the sunshine of presidential favor, as in the rays of a southern sun. It became the reign of the unreconstructed and unreconciled. Somebody had whispered loud enough for Mr. Johnson to hear,—perhaps the bee buzzed it,—that if the Southern States could be reconstructed previous to the presidential convention of 1868, and he (President Johnson) should be found friendly and faithful to the South in that work, there were fifteen Southern States whose electoral votes might be found solid for him as the Democratic nominee, and he would only need the votes of two or three Northern States in addition to carry off the nomination. You know how the poison took—how from the most radical of Union Republicans he became the most extreme—the leader—of the "strictest sect" of the Democrats; how the words "treason should be made odious," "traitors should take back seats," "a few traitors should be hung," with which his mouth was filled when elected, and were still sounding in the air when he sat down in Lincoln's vacant chair, had hardly died away before he had turned against and upon all those who had upheld the Union cause—all his old Union friends; how he fought the Congress with a bitterness and a boldness unparalleled in history. He took issue with it on every measure by which the Congress sought to fix in statute and in the fundamental law what the sword had achieved, what war had enacted. Thus he stood.
And now turning to Mrs. Surratt and her case. Over her execution a great clamor was raised throughout the country, not only by those who were lately in rebellion, and those in the North who were in sympathy with that rebellion, but almost universally by the Roman Catholics of the country, she being a member of that Church, they believing her innocent and a martyr. Mr. Johnson heard this clamor, and "his startled ambition grew sore afraid." He bethought him of some means to turn this wrath away from himself. The press kept referring to the fact that a recommendation to mercy had been signed by a majority of the Court; and his new friends and allies were calling upon him with a loud voice to know why he had not heeded the appeal for mercy, and saved this hapless woman. His fears whispered that the storm might grow so fierce and strong as to sweep away his carefully constructed political fabric. How could he turn away this wrath and clamor? How turn the fury of the storm? Were here not motive and interest enough? He doubtless remembered that, when he examined the record, he and Judge Holt had been alone. How easy to shift the blame, to turn the storm of wrath and execration upon another head by having it circulated that the recommendation had been suppressed by Judge Holt, and that he had never seen nor heard of it up to the time of the execution! Here was a sufficient motive—the motive of ambition—the motive which, as we have seen, changed the whole nature of the man,—changed his political thought and attitude—spoiled the purpose of his life.
Of Judge Holt's life little need be said. Born and reared in Kentucky, of the best blood of the State, he had achieved fame and stood in the front rank with the great lawyers and orators of that State before the rebellion began, and before he was called to the Cabinet of James Buchanan, first, as Postmaster-General, and afterward as Secretary of War, to fill the place made vacant by the retirement of the traitor John B. Floyd. Judge Holt was a man of collegiate education, a student and a scholar of wide and varied reading, and a rhetorician and logician second to few men in the country. Of the next generation after Henry Clay, he was of the time and type in intellectual grasp and power of the Marshalls, the Breckinridges, and the Crittendens of that State. He breathed in the spirit of loyalty, patriotism, and love of the Union of Clay, and never doubted, never swerved in giving all his powers—in dedicating his life to the work of saving the Union. It is related by the historian that at one of the Cabinet meetings of President Buchanan, when several of the Southern secretaries were still occupying their places and were boldly demanding that the forts at Charlestown should be evacuated, and Mr. Buchanan was too weak to take a position against them, Mr. Stanton, who had been called to fill the office of Attorney General, sprang to his feet and said, "Mr. President, it is my duty, as your legal adviser, to say that you have no right to give up the property of the government, or abandon the soldiers of the United States to its enemies, and the course proposed by the Secretary of the Interior, if followed, is treason, and will involve you and all concerned in treason!" For the first time in this Cabinet treason had been called by its true name. Floyd and Thompson, who had had everything their own way, sprang fiercely to their feet, while Mr. Holt sprang to Mr. Stanton's side, indorsing his utterances, and ready to uphold him in any struggle. Mr. Buchanan begged that there would be no violence, and for the gentlemen to resume their seats. Thus bolstered by Mr. Stanton and Judge Holt, the President determined not to withdraw Major Anderson. Soon after this meeting, Floyd resigned, and Judge Holt was appointed Secretary of War in his place.
Save this charge of Andrew Johnson, no stain or blot, nor the least spot or soilure, has ever rested on the fair name and fame of Joseph Holt. For the last year or two of the war I was brought in close official and personal relations with him. I learned to know him well. He was most refined and sensitive in his nature, gentle and kindly in his intercourse, and in all his relations with those about him, pure in his private life, exalted in his ideas and ideals, dignified, and courtly in his bearing, yet always thoughtful, considerate, and courteous. He had traveled much, read much, and held as his friends, strongly attached to him, the best men of the land. I can now as little associate him in my mind with the commission of a dishonorable action as any man I have ever known.
One of the interesting episodes connected with this charge against Judge Holt is his appeal to Mr. Speed, Mr. Lincoln's Attorney General, to "speak out" and state the fact whether or not the recommendation to mercy was before President Johnson and his Cabinet, and considered by them. The correspondence between Judge Holt and Mr. Speed is published in the North American Review for July, 1888. It will be remembered that Mr. Speed, in his letter to Judge Holt of March 30, 1873, had said:—
"After the finding of the military commission that tried the assassins of Mr. Lincoln, and before their execution, I saw the record of the case in the President's office, and attached to it was a paper, signed by some of the members of the commission, recommending that the sentence against Mrs. Surratt be commuted to imprisonment for life; and according to my memory the recommendation was made because of her sex."
As I have heretofore said, this settled, so far as the testimony of James Speed could settle it, that the charge of Andrew Johnson that Judge Holt had withheld the recommendation to mercy was false. It settled the fact that previous to the execution the recommendation to mercy was in the President's office, and was attached to the record. But in this letter Mr. Speed added: "I do not feel at liberty to speak of what was said at Cabinet meetings. In this case I know I differ from other gentlemen, but feel constrained to follow my own sense of propriety."
Judge Holt had learned, through the statements of Mr. Seward and Mr. Stanton to Judge Bingham, that the recommendation to mercy had been presented to the President, and had been considered by him and members of the Cabinet before the execution. But when this information came to him, both Mr. Seward and Mr. Stanton were dead, and the statement of Judge Bingham of what they told him was secondary evidence; and Judge Holt was anxious, therefore, to get the direct evidence of Mr. Speed that his recommendation was, to his personal knowledge, before Mr. Johnson and his Cabinet, and considered by them. His appeals to Mr. Speed are pathetic in the earnestness and depth of feeling they reveal. What could be more profoundly sorrowful or touching than this, in his letter of April 18, 1883: "Allow me to add that we are now, each of us, far advanced in years, so that whatever is to be done for my relief should be done quickly. While, however, it is sadly apparent that I can remain here but a little while longer, I have not been able to bring myself to the belief that you will suffer the closing hours of my life to be darkened by a consciousness that this cloud, or even a shred of it, is still hanging over me—a cloud which can be dissipated at once and forever by a single word spoken by yourself in defense of the truth and in rebuke of a calumny, the merciless cruelty of which none can better understand than yourself. I make this final appeal to your honor as a man to do me the simple justice, which, under the same circumstances, I would render to you at once and joyfully."