She was now ready to return, and expressed anxiety to Wiechmann to reach home before nine o'clock, saying that she had an engagement for that hour. She reached her home just before nine, and a few moments later Wiechmann, from his place at the table in the dining-room below, heard the door-bell ring, and some one enter the parlor. The interview was very short—just long enough for Mrs. Surratt to say that all was right—when Wiechmann heard retreating footsteps, but did not know who the visitor was. In view, however, of all the foregoing, we cannot resist the conclusion that Booth was the person, and that this was their last interview. Mrs. Surratt was able to produce the letter of Mr. Calvert which she claimed required her to go to Surrattsville that day to see Mr. Nothey, but she had no appointment to meet him there, did not see him, and could just as well have written to him from her home in Washington. This excuse for her visit was a mere fabrication. Her real business was with Lloyd, and she was not ready to return until after she had an interview with him, and delivered her message from Booth, and the field-glass which he had given her. It is evident that her show of private business was gotten up as a cover to her real errand.
Again, Payne had visited the Surratt house on several occasions. The first time he came he called for John H. Surratt, and on being told by Wiechmann that John was not at home, he requested to see Mrs. Surratt. He passed this time under the alias of Wood, and was received by Mrs. Surratt, and kept over night, when he departed for Baltimore. About three weeks later, say about the 20th of March (as his first visit was about the 1st of March), he made his second visit, passing under the name of Payne, and remained three days. It was during this visit that the episode already referred to as having in all probability been an attempt to murder the President on his visit to the Soldier's Home, occurred, and from which Surratt, Booth, and Payne returned under such excitement and evident disappointment.
LEWIS PAYNE.
To such members of the family as had not been initiated into the plot, this man of many aliases—Wood, Payne, and Powell—passed as a Baptist preacher. He said that he had taken the oath whilst in Baltimore, and intended henceforth to be a good, loyal man. When this man came to the house of Mrs. Surratt on the night of the 17th of April, as heretofore related, and was placed under arrest, Mrs. Surratt, who had also upon a knowledge of the facts just recited been arrested a few minutes before, when she was called into the hall and confronted with Payne, having heard his story as to why he had come and what he had come for, holding up her hands exclaimed, "Before God, I do not know this man, and never saw him before." He had been a guest at her table for three days only a few days previous to this, and was a man of such a marked personality that having seen him once it would have been impossible to have failed to recognize him on seeing him again, even though he might have been partially disguised. With a woman's intuitive perception, she saw the compromising effect that his visit at that time of night, and under such circumstances, was calculated to have on her own case, and so felt the necessity of this solemn disavowal of any knowledge of him. Before the government felt justified in arresting this woman, only, indeed, two or three hours after the assassination, it being known that Booth was the assassin, and that he and John H. Surratt were intimate friends, the detectives went to the house of Mrs. Surratt to see whom they could find there. When they rang the bell Wiechmann, who occupied an upstairs room, opened the window and inquired what they wanted. Upon their demanding admittance, stating that they had been sent to that house to see whom they could find in it, Wiechmann went and rapped at Mrs. Surratt's door, informing her who it was that demanded admittance, and asking her if he should let them in, when she replied, "Yes, let them in; I have been expecting them." Now, why should Mrs. Surratt at that hour, about three o'clock on the morning of the 15th, and only three or four hours after the assassination, have been expecting a visit from the detectives? A guilty conscience is its own accuser.
As Wiechmann and Lloyd were the principal witnesses against Mrs. Surratt, and their evidence so conclusively established her guilt, her counsel made an effort to discredit their testimony, but utterly failed to do so. Wiechmann was a young man who established a good character for veracity and general moral deportment by witnesses who had been intimately associated with him for months in General Hoffman's department. His manner was that of a man who was deeply affected by the fact that he found himself in a situation in which his duty to his God and his country required him to state facts that had been thrust upon him, and that were now found to be so damaging to those with whom he had been associating and whom he had regarded as friends. The attempt made by counsel for the defense in their arguments to break the force of his testimony by throwing out the unfounded insinuation that he probably knew of the existence of the conspiracy, was done for the purpose of engendering a doubt of the simple truth of his utterances which were corroborated by other testimony than his own, and of which he could have had no previous knowledge. Wiechmann's testimony, taking into consideration the lies told to him and the deceptions practiced upon him for nearly four months, is in itself absolute proof of his integrity and of his innocence. In the words of Judge Bingham in all that dread issue, "There was not a breath of suspicion found against his character, nor was a single fact to which he testified contradicted. The defense tried to kill him off with lies and insinuations, but they could not and did not do it." Wiechmann admitted that he had been puzzled to account for some of these occurrences. He could not understand why such persons as Payne and Atzerodt should be received and enjoy the privileges accorded to them by Mrs. Surratt and her son; but particularly he had had his suspicions aroused by the conduct of Surratt, Payne, and Booth upon their return from their ride as heretofore recited. He had related this occurrence to Captain Gleason, an officer with whom he was associated in his daily work. He referred to a report or rumor, which had found its way into the papers, of a plot to capture the President, and asked the Captain if he thought it could be possible that this could have been the object of their expedition. Wiechmann's character and actions in the matter could not be discredited by insinuations that had no evidence to rest on for their support.
Lloyd had rented Mrs. Surratt's farm and tavern at Surrattsville, and so was her tenant. He was a man of intemperate habits, and there was, I think, taking all things into consideration, strong reason to conclude that he had been entrusted with the secret of the plot; but of this there was no direct proof, and much less of his having been any further a party to the conspiracy. Even admitting that he had this guilty knowledge, it does not disqualify him for telling the truth as to what occurred at the private interviews referred to between himself and Mrs. Surratt, and that these private interviews did take place under the circumstances already related we have the positive testimony of Wiechmann. Lloyd's testimony was drawn out of him by questions suggested by what Wiechmann had previously stated before the Commission. The defense failed entirely to prove that he was a man not to be believed upon his oath.
They endeavored to break the force of the testimony of Major Smith in regard to Mrs. Surratt solemnly disclaiming any knowledge of Payne by claiming that her eyesight was very defective, but failed to establish any evidence of infirmity of sight beyond what was common to a person of her age of forty-five years.
The evidence of Major Smith was that the hall was well lighted when she was confronted with Payne, and her haste to disavow any knowledge of him with such unnecessary solemnity was itself evidence of guilt. Her eminent volunteer counsel, Hon. Reverdy Johnson, at that time a United States senator from Maryland, did not attempt to assail the testimony against her or to make any reference whatever to her case; but confined himself to an argument against the constitutionality of her trial by a military commission and against the jurisdiction of the court. In view of all the facts above narrated, all of which were proven by the witnesses brought before the Commission by the government, the author thinks it would be impossible for any candid mind to escape from the conclusion that Mrs. Surratt was fully informed of the purposes of Booth and her son, and gave to them her hearty approval and earnest co-operation. We have now presented in narrative form the evidence on which Mrs. Surratt was found guilty and sentenced by the Commission to be hung. Her case was evidently one of those deplorable cases, of which the rebellion furnished so many examples, of a woman so entirely under the influence of disloyalty to her government and so desirous of its overthrow, that she was ready to resort to any means whatever to accomplish that purpose, and so entered heart and soul into the schemes of Booth and her son, hoping thereby to serve the cause of the confederacy.