Assassination of Lincoln: a History of the Great Conspiracy / Trial of the Conspirators by a Military Commission, and a Review of the Trial of John H. Surratt

by T. M. Harris

Mr. Merrick then went on to meet the argument that Surratt had confessed his guilt by flight by declaring that the mad passions of the hour, and tyrannical usurpations of the government in its method of dealing with those charged with this crime, by sending them before a military commission instead of a civil court for trial, justified him in his flight.

He then went on to vindicate the Catholic Church, which he claimed had been assailed in this matter. The only reference to the Catholic Church in connection with this trial had been made in the public press. The prosecution had carefully abstained from any assault on that church, and had tried to exclude religious prejudices from the minds of the jurors.

Mr. Merrick, however, seized the occasion to pass an eulogium on that church, in which he showed as much disregard for the facts of history as he did for the proven facts in this case. Perhaps he felt this vindication to be called for from the fact that most of the conspirators were Catholics in religion, and the further fact that the friends who waited and watched for the return of his client to Montreal after the assassination, and who, on his return, spirited him away and kept him secreted for five months and then helped him off to Italy, where he was found in the ranks of the Pope's army, and who voluntarily came before the court on his trial to testify, and to procure testimony in his behalf, were priests of that church. In his eulogium on that church he forgot to mention the fact that the Pope at an early period of the war acknowledged the Southern Confederacy and wrote a sympathizing letter to Jefferson Davis, in which he called him his dear son and denounced President Lincoln as a tyrant. He could scarcely have forgotten that the Pope of Rome had sought to take advantage of the arduous struggle in which our government was engaged for the preservation of its life, to establish a Catholic Empire in Mexico, and had sent Maximillian, a Catholic prince, to reign over that, at that time, unhappy people, under the protection of the arms of France, lent to the furtherance of his unholy purpose by the last loyal son of the church that ever occupied a throne in Europe. Perhaps he did not realize that it was God who frustrated that last grasp of the drowning man at a straw that eluded his grasp, by preparing for his holiness, the Pope, and for Louis Napoleon just at that moment the Franco-Prussian war, which resulted in the final loss of his temporal power to the Pope and with it his grip on the world, and of his empire and crown to the last servile supporter of his temporal pretensions. To claim for that church, as Mr. Merrick did, friendship to civil liberty, respect for the rights of conscience and of private judgment, and love for our republican institutions, is to ignore, or set at naught, all the dogmas of that church on the above questions and all the claims of the Papacy. Mr. Merrick manifestly thought that the attitude of the Catholic clergy toward the assassination of the President could be hidden from public view by his fulsome eulogy.

The appeals made by the eminent counsel for the prisoner to the political and religious prejudices of jurors was ably seconded all through the trial by the Jesuit priesthood of Washington City and the vicinity. It will be recalled by scores of people who attended the trial that not a day passed but that some of these were in the court-room as the most interested of spectators. That they were not idle spectators may be inferred from the fact that whenever it seemed necessary to the prisoner's counsel to find witnesses to contradict any testimony that was particularly damaging to their cause they were always promptly found, and were almost uniformly Catholics in religion, as shown by their own testimony on their cross-examination. It was a remarkable fact, also, that these witnesses were scarcely ever able to come from under the fire of Judge Pierrepont's searching cross-examinations uncrippled, and also that when they took the risk of bringing two witnesses in rebuttal of the same testimony their witnesses uniformly killed each other off before they got through the ordeal that tests the truthfulness of witnesses—the cross-examination. Other outside influences were brought to bear on jurors, such as these: Father John B. Menu, from St. Charles College, spent a day in the court-room, sitting beside the prisoner all day, thus saying to the jury, "You see which side I am on." A great many of the students from the same college also visited the trial, it being vacation, and they uniformly took great pains to show their sympathy with the prisoner by shaking hands with him. The press also was prostituted almost daily by publishing cunningly devised paragraphs impugning the motives of the government in the prosecution and management of the case. Thus were the prejudices of jurors appealed to and efforts also made to pervert public opinion.

I have quoted thus at length from Mr. Merrick's argument to show, first the animus of the defense toward the government, and especially toward the Judge Advocate General, Joseph Holt, and the Secretary of War at time of the assassination, Edwin M. Stanton. These two officers of the government need no vindication at my hands before the loyal people of this country, as they were never denounced by any but rebels, whose especial venom against them would be the strongest presumptive evidence of their virtue and efficiency. A purer man, a truer patriot, a braver, more intelligent and able officer than Gen. Joseph Holt never will grace the pages of American history. He was only hated and denounced by rebels because of his faithfulness to duty and efficiency in its performance. Of Edwin M. Stanton, also, it is needless for me to say a word. His place is fixed in history, and his record cannot be blurred by the false and vile charges or insinuations of his enemies, for his enemies were only found amongst the enemies of his country, and precisely for the same reason that they were enemies of the Judge Advocate General. The charges here so boldly made that they stood between Mrs. Surratt and an appeal to the Executive for clemency, was shown to be false by Judge Pierrepont, who produced the official record of the trial of the conspirators, together with a paper signed by some members of the court recommending commutation of the sentence of Mrs. Surratt to imprisonment for life on account of her age and sex, and showed that this whole record had been laid before the President and a full cabinet, and that after mature discussion and consideration it had received their unanimous approval, with the exception of the request for the commutation of Mrs. Surratt's sentence which, though not a part of the record, was presented with it; and that the President's order for the execution of the sentence of the court had been written on the back of this very record.

These papers containing this whole record were handed to Mr. Merrick, who tossed them from him indignantly, afterwards assigning as his reason for doing so that he had learned to distrust everything that came from the Bureau of Military Justice. His real reason was that he did not desire to be estopped from reiterating the falsehoods he had so boldly proclaimed.

His denunciation of the Judge Advocate General for assisting the prosecution by furnishing them with witnesses, to prove facts found on his records, if he did indeed thus assist, is unmerited; as it is not only the duty of every private citizen, but of every public officer as well, to assist, if it be in his power to do so, in securing the ends of justice where crimes have been committed, and the safety, peace, and welfare of society put in jeopardy. His deliberate false assumption that the prosecution had put Mrs. Surratt on trial is worthy of note, as he himself dragged her case in even before a jury was impaneled; and his colleague, Mr. Jos. H. Bradley, Jr., in his opening speech, had also brought it up in such a way that the District Attorney was forced to notice it. It was evidently a premeditated scheme of the defense, and was done for the purpose of appealing to the prejudices of jurors, and of making political capital.

Mr. Merrick's portrayal of the scenes incident to the execution of Mrs. Surratt was a fine piece of eloquent and pathetic declamation. We cannot but deplore, however, that the fine sensibilities of the counsel had not found occasion for their display in the case of the widow and orphan child of the martyred President, rather than in the person of one proven guilty of complicity in his assassination, and of being so actively engaged in that tragedy that she had traveled twenty miles on that fatal Friday afternoon to carry, at Booth's request, a field glass which he had delivered to her for the purpose, to Surrattsville, to be deposited and delivered by Lloyd, at her request, along with the carbines and the whiskey, to the assassins on that night, when fleeing from the seat of their crime, and from offended justice. It is to be deplored that he had no tears for the crazed widow and orphan child of the murdered President, when he could find such a generous fountain for his murderers. Such, however, is the deplorable effect of political and religious prejudice on frail human nature, that it perverts our moral sensibilities and warps our judgment. Mr. Merrick could see nothing but innocence in the prisoner and his mother, although the proof of their guilt was piled mountain high. It will have been noticed that he unequivocally asserts that the Supreme Court of the United States had decided that the commission that tried the assassins was an illegal tribunal. We shall have occasion hereafter to show that this is untrue.

If the counsel for the defense was not aware of this fact, it was because they had failed to grasp the meaning of the decision to which they referred, and on which they relied.

It was neither fair nor honest in them, after dragging into the trial the question of Mrs. Surratt's guilt or innocence, and that for the purpose we have above indicated, to endeavor, in the face of the facts, to shift the burden of the responsibility for this on to the prosecution. It was equally dishonest to insinuate that the prosecution of John H. Surratt was not entered upon alone for the purpose of ascertaining his guilt or innocence, but in order that the false stories that had been published in regard to the course of the government in executing Mrs. Surratt might be set at rest. The most eloquent counsel for the defence, ably assisted by his colleagues, endeavored to put the government, and not the prisoner, on trial before the jury, and before the country. They uniformly and boldly asserted his innocence, whilst they arraigned the government for having murdered, according to one, and butchered according to another, an innocent woman; and also of being in this trial engaged in an endeavor to cover up the guilt of shedding her innocent blood, by shedding the blood of her innocent son. To cap the climax of their audacity Mr. Bradley, after reiterating the charges made by Mr. Merrick and Joseph H. Bradley, Jr., asked the jury, in making up their verdict, to make a written statement at the same time of their belief that Mrs. Surratt had been unjustly condemned, and found guilty upon insufficient evidence.