[CHAPTER XVI.]
FATHER WALTER.
From the time of the trial of the conspirators by a military commission, and of the execution of Mrs. Surratt by the order of President Johnson, Father Walter, a secular priest of Washington City, has made himself conspicuous by his efforts to pervert public opinion on the result of the trial of the conspirators by the Commission. Whilst rebel lawyers, editors, and politicians have boldly assailed the lawfulness of the Commission, and have denounced it as an unconstitutional tribunal, and have characterized the trial as a "Star Chamber" trial, as a contrivance for taking human life under a mockery of a judicial procedure, but with no purpose of securing the ends of justice, Father Walter and other priests whose sympathies were with the Southern Confederacy have earnestly seconded their efforts by the invention and circulation of cunningly devised falsehoods. Father Walter has every now and then bobbed up with the assertion of Mrs. Surratt's entire innocence. Knowing that not one in a thousand of our people has ever read the testimony on which she was convicted, he feels that he can boldly assert that "there was not evidence enough against her to hang a cat." He has also become bold enough to state as facts what the evidence shows to be falsehoods. As an example of this: in an article in the "Catholic Review" he asserts in regard to Mrs. Surratt's trip to Surrattsville on the afternoon of the day of the assassination that she had ordered her carriage for the trip, which was purely on private business, on the forenoon of that day, and before it was known that the President would go to the theatre. Why, if this was true, was it not proven in her defense? There was no such testimony produced. The testimony on this point against her was that shortly after two o'clock on that afternoon she went up stairs to Wiechmann's room, tapped at the door, and when it was opened she said to Mr. Wiechmann, "I have just received a letter from Mr. Calvert that makes it necessary for me to go to Surrattsville to-day and see Mr. Nothey. Would you be so good as to get a conveyance and drive me down?" Upon Wiechmann's consenting to do so, she handed him a ten dollar bill with which to procure a conveyance. Surely there is no evidence here that a carriage had been ordered already, as Wiechmann was left free to procure a conveyance where he might see fit.
Wiechmann went down stairs, and as he opened the front door he saw John Wilkes Booth, who was in the act, as it were, of pulling the front door bell. Booth entered the house.
When young Wiechmann returned, after having procured the buggy, he went up to his own room after some necessary articles of clothing, and as he again descended the stairs and passed by the parlor door he observed that Booth was in the parlor conversing with Mrs. Surratt. In a little while Booth came down to the front door steps, and waved his hand in token of adieu to Wiechmann, who was standing at the curb.
When Mrs. Surratt came and was in the act of getting into the buggy, she remembered that she had forgotten something, and said, "Wait a moment, until I go and get those things of Mr. Booth's." She returned from the parlor with a package which was done up in brown paper, the contents of which the witness did not see, but which was afterwards shown to have been the field-glass which Booth carried with him in his flight. This glass Booth sent to Lloyd by Mrs. Surratt, with a message to have it, with the two carbines and two bottles of whiskey, where they would be handy, as they would be called for that night. Lloyd swore that this was the message delivered to him by Mrs. Surratt in the private interview she sought with him in his back yard on his return home that evening, and that in accordance with these instructions he delivered them to Booth and Herold about midnight that night.[26] Now let us see about the private business on which she professed to be going, and on which she claimed on her trial that she went. The letter from Mr. Calvert was a demand for money that she owed him, and was written at Bladensburg on the 12th of April. On the afternoon of the 14th she presented herself to Wiechmann and claimed that she had just received it. It would seem very strange that it took this letter two days to reach her at a distance of only six miles. She claimed that she must go and see Mr. Nothey, who owed her, and get money from him to pay her debt to Mr. Calvert. Mr. Nothey lived five miles below Surrattsville, and as she claimed that she had just received Mr. Calvert's letter it was impossible that she could have made any arrangement with Nothey to meet her at Surrattsville that day. She did not meet him there, neither did she go to his house to see him. When she arrived at Surrattsville she took Wiechmann into the parlor at the hotel and asked him to write a letter for her to Mr. Nothey, which he did at her dictation; and this she sent to Mr. Nothey by a Mr. Bennett Gwinn, a neighbor of his, who happened to be passing down.
Now, in view of all these facts, can any one see how her private business was in any way subserved by her trip to Surrattsville on that afternoon? She could as easily have written to Mr. Nothey from Washington as from Surrattsville. A postage stamp, a sheet of paper and an envelope would have saved her six dollars, the cost of her trip, and would have served her business just as well. The truth is that this talk of going on private business of her own was all a fabrication, first to deceive Mr. Wiechmann as to the object of her trip, and then to be used, should it become necessary, in her defense. We have already seen what her real business was.
Father Walter falsifies again in the article referred to in saying that she did not see Lloyd on that afternoon, but delivered the things to his sister-in-law, Mrs. Offutt.[27] Both Lloyd and his sister-in-law testified to her interview with him in his back yard, and Lloyd testified as to what passed between them on that occasion.
It would seem that Father Walter is going on the theory that we have gotten so far past the time, and that the testimony has been so far forgotten that he can foist upon the public any statement that he may please to fabricate. We would kindly remind the reverend Father that no ultimate gain can be derived from an effort to suppress the truth. Neither can it be obliterated by our prejudices. We may misconstrue facts, but we cannot wipe them out by a mere stroke of the pen; and a fact once made can never be recalled. But I am not yet done with this Father. He prefaces his article in the "Review" with the statement that he heard Mrs. Surratt's last confession, and that whilst his priestly vows do not permit him to reveal the secrets of the confessional, yet from knowledge in his possession he is prepared to assert her entire innocence of this most atrocious crime. He means that we shall understand that were he at liberty to give her last confession to the world he could say that she then and there asserted her entire innocence.
Will Father Walter deny that under the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church he had an absolute right, with her consent, to make her confession public on this point? Nay more, could not Mrs. Surratt have compelled him to do so in vindication of her own good name, and of the honor of the church of which she was a member? And having this consent, was it not his most solemn duty to proclaim her confessed innocence in every public way, through the press, and even from the very steps of the gallows?