Davis received this telegram whilst haranguing in his grandiloquent style the crowd that had gathered about him, trying to convince them that they were not whipped, and would yet succeed. At the conclusion of his speech, he read the telegram to his auditors; and after the manifestations of delight at the news had subsided, he made this comment: "Well, if it were done, it were better it were well done."
On the following day, when dining at the house of the witness, Mr. Lewis F. Bates, with General Breckinridge, who had come to pay him a visit, upon General Breckinridge saying in regard to the assassination that he regretted it very much—that it was very unfortunate for the people of the South at that time—Davis replied, "Well, General, I don't know; if it were done at all, it were better that it were well done; and if the same had been done to Andy Johnson, the beast, and Secretary Stanton the job would then be complete." Mark the disappointment of the man, and his bitter dissatisfaction with the result of the plot to which he had so recently given his sanction! The telegram informed him of the death of President Lincoln at the hands of an assassin, and gave him strong grounds to conclude that Secretary Seward had been put out of the way in the same way, and was dead; but this does not satisfy him. The work had not been well done because "Andy Johnson" still lived, and so they had failed in their purpose to subvert the government. Hear him growl, "It were better it were well done; and if the same had only been done to Andy Johnson, the beast, and to Secretary Stanton, the job would then have been complete," and we might have taken fresh courage. His co-conspirators in Canada, when informed of the result, gnashed their teeth in rage and disappointment. They expressed their regret that "the boys had not been allowed to act when they wanted to," and swore "they were not done with them yet." At first their attitude was that of defiance, and their expressions of regret at their failure to completely carry out their plot were mingled with threatenings as to what they would yet do. They boasted while the trial was going on that they had their friends at court, and were kept posted from day to day as to what was going on. The promptness of the government in bringing its prisoners before a military commission for trial, making it obvious that there was to be no fooling in the case, together with their continued disasters in the field, ending in the speedy collapse of the rebellion and the capture of Jefferson Davis, brought them to their senses, and to a realization of their own danger; and so they at once commenced to destroy all documentary evidence of their guilt. They declared in the presence of Montgomery, and also of Merritt, that they had destroyed all their papers, lest some Yankee should steal them and they should be brought up in a possible future trial as evidence against them.
Now, let us consider what is lacking in this testimony to make the evidence of Davis's complicity in this crime complete. Nothing, manifestly, but the letters referred to in the testimony; the first, that read by Sanders, and credited by him to Davis, inciting his friends in Canada to the commission of this crime, and pointing out specifically whom he would have them put out of the way; and the second, carried by Surratt to Thompson, on which Thompson laid his hand and exclaimed, "This makes the thing all right!" But the absence of this missing link in the chain of evidence against him is accounted for, and that in a way that makes the chain even stronger, if possible, than if we were able to produce these documents.
His co-conspirators in Canada declare to two witnesses and in the presence of a third, George B. Hutchinson, that they have destroyed all their papers; giving as the reason for so doing, the fear that some "Yankee son of a b—h" might steal them, and they should be used as evidence against them.
They burn their papers and then silently steal away. Exeunt omnes.
[CHAPTER XII.]
THE GOVERNMENT WITNESSES AGAINST DAVIS AND HIS ASSOCIATES IN THIS CRIME.
Inasmuch as the testimony given above so completely sustains the charge and specifications made by the government against Jefferson Davis, George N. Sanders, Jacob Thompson, Beverly Tucker, Clement C. Clay, William C. Cleary, et al, that had they been before the Commission their successful defense could only have been made by impeachment of the witnesses against them, I will now show that this could not have been done. The principal witnesses in this department of the trial, in which the Commission was only used as a medium through which to present to the world, before whom the charges were made, the evidence on which they rested, were Richard Montgomery, Sanford Conover, and Dr. James B. Merritt. Richard Montgomery was originally a citizen of the city of New York, and was in the employ of the government in its department of secret service. He was sent to Canada, in the summer of 1864, to acquire information of the plans and purposes of the rebels assembled in Canada.
He acted faithfully toward the government in this service, imparting to it all the information he obtained from time to time that was of any importance.