In his opening for the defense, Mr. Joseph H. Bradley, Jr., said: "We have at last arrived at that stage of this case when an opportunity is afforded the prisoner for saying something by way of defense, not only of his own character, his own reputation, his life and his honor, but also as it shall rise incidentally in this discussion of this evidence before you, something in the way of vindicating the pure fame of his departed mother." Again. "As to Mrs. Surratt we hope to satisfy you that a grave error has been made in her case." Again Mr. Merrick, in his argument on the motion to strike out certain testimony, said: "The counsel had said, if it was anything favorable, the defense would insist on it; if anything unfavorable, they would not desire it. All he had to say in reply was, that he would insist on the free confession of all who had testified in the case, if he could get it. He would like to have had the privilege of putting in whatever this poor boy's butchered mother said, but had not. When he offered what she said, counsel on the other side said, 'No, you cannot prove that. We can prove what she said that will benefit the state, but you shall not throw the mantle of a mother's declarations over the child standing in the prisoner's dock.' Had we been allowed, we would have proved her declarations—proved them when tottering from the dungeon to the scaffold, with the world behind her, and nothing in the front but that God before whom she was shortly to appear, and before whom she solemnly asseverated that she was innocent of the crime for which she was being killed."
To all these charges and assumptions the District Attorney, in his argument upon the evidence, replied as follows: "Well, I do most kindly but most respectfully and emphatically repudiate the unjust imputation that Mary E. Surratt has been murdered, as was alleged by one of the counsel, and butchered as alleged by another. Where is the evidence to justify it? If they have a right to make this accusation, have we not a right to reply to it? For what purpose was it introduced before this jury? Is it to appeal to your prejudices? I make no such accusation against the gentlemen; they charge it home upon us when they say a murdered and a butchered woman. I deny it, and I undertake to prove to the contrary."
Mr. Bradley, interrupting, said "he supposed this threw the whole subject open for discussion." The District Attorney rejoined: "It had been introduced by the learned gentlemen on the other side." Mr. Bradley replied "that he was not aware what evidence there was on which this question could be discussed. But if it was understood that the whole subject was open, and that the counsel for the prisoner could not be interrupted in their discussion of it, he was satisfied."
The District Attorney. "Then why make allusion to it in the first instance? Who cast the first stone in the presence of this jury?
"I regret that it should have been necessary for an American woman to be executed by the judgment of an American tribunal. That verdict has been rendered by an American tribunal, and the consequence of it was the execution of an American woman. I know the character of the American people. I know that imagination revolts at the execution of one of the tender sex. But when the daughter of Herodias murdered John the Baptist, she deserved death. When Lucretia Borgia darkened the history of her country by her horrid crimes, she deserved death. And when Mary E. Surratt murdered Abraham Lincoln, the great moral hero of the age in which he lived, the patriot and philanthropist of the nineteenth century, she deserved death. There is no man who has a heart more capable of love for woman than myself. But when she unsexes herself, when she conceives, when she encourages, when she urges on, and is instrumental in committing the crime of murder, she places herself beyond the pale of protection. The best wife who ever lived, according to Milton, our great mother Eve, is thus represented as speaking to her husband:—
"'What thou biddest,
Unargued I obey; so God ordains:
God is thy law, thou mine.'
"I believe in submission on the part of women; submission to her God, to the laws of her country and to her husband. But when a woman opens her house to murderers and conspirators, infuses the poison of her own malice into their hearts, and urges them to the crime of murder and treason, I say boldly, as an American officer, public safety, public duty, requires that an example be made of her conduct. Murder! gentlemen of the jury. Who composed that military commission? They are no better men than you are, but you will not be offended with me if I say they are as good men as you are, or I, or any of us." Naming over the officers who constituted the tribunal by which Mrs. Surratt was tried, he continued: "I say, gentlemen of the jury, that they are good men, holding commissions under the government of the United States, and they are presumed to be honorable men. The law declares that every private citizen, and every public officer who is a servant of the American people, is presumed to be honorable until the contrary is proved.
"Your officers, your men, your representatives in the American army, in an accusation which will travel upon the telegraph wires perhaps to the four quarters of the world have been denounced, if not expressly, by implication, as murderers and butchers who took the life of an innocent woman. If so, when you come to try them, and you believe it, say it, but it is not the question submitted to you now. She may be innocent and the prisoner at the bar be guilty; the subject was introduced collaterally by the learned counsel, for what purpose I know not, except for effect. Before you brand these gentlemen with the character of murderers, see that you have relevant grounds to act upon. Take care, or you may be placed in the same situation; I have not charged it, and I do not think my friends would, upon reflection, charge men who are placed in such a solemn obligation with such a dereliction of duty. It has been said that this has been pronounced by the Supreme Court of the United States an illegal tribunal. What has that to do with the action of these officers? What has that to do with your action? What pertinency can it have to the issue now submitted to you for your decision? But, gentlemen of the jury, let us first consider the character of this crime, and then I will consider briefly the connection of Mrs. Surratt with it. I do not desire to say much about her; she has gone to her grave, and her spirit has passed before her Eternal Judge."
After recounting the character of the crime, the District Attorney thus refers to Mrs. Surratt's connection with it: "Now, gentlemen of the jury, let us view the connection of Mrs. Mary E. Surratt with this assassination. I feel the delicacy of the ground upon which I stand. I know the situation. I know that you dislike to consider this question, which has been forced upon you. I do not want to do it. My duty is to prosecute the prisoner, but one of the counsel has said she was murdered, and another that she was butchered, and it therefore becomes my duty to trace her connection with this crime, and then leave it to you to say whether she was guilty (though not relevant to this case), of the crime for which she suffered. First, I call your attention to a fact to which we have already adverted; that her house, 541, was the rendezvous for these conspirators. Now, gentlemen, will you pause for a moment, and let me ask you how you can reconcile it with innocence? You remember the law, that it is not how much a party did, but whether she had anything to do with it. Can you, I say, reconcile it with innocence that this woman's house should have been the rendezvous of John Wilkes Booth, Lewis Payne, Atzerodt, Herold, and John H. Surratt? Would you not know by intuition? Would you not know by their conversation? Would not your judgment and your hearts tell you who they were and what they contemplated?
That is the great central truth, which I defy the learned counsel for the defense successfully to assail. Secondly, who furnished the arms with which the bloody deed was done?... The woman who puts an arm into the hand of her lover, her son, her brother, or her husband, who urges him on to the deed, by the law of God and of man is equally guilty with the one who with his own hand perpetrates the crime. According to the testimony of John M. Lloyd this is shown. Do you believe him or disbelieve him? My friend, Mr. Bradley, who opened this case said he was a common drunkard; but mark you, he was an attendant and friend of Mrs. Surratt."