Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1878 — MEMORIES OF 1865. [ARTICLE]

MEMORIES OF 1865.

The Wengiwg -of Mrs. Surratt—The Evidence Which Condemned Her. . [“ in Cincinnati Kuqnlrer.) There were three reasons why Mrs. Surratt was condemned and was not pardoned: 1. The direct evidence implicating her. 2. The non-return of her son. 3. The moral conviction in Government officers that so causeless and great a crime ought to have the highest sacrifice of those concerned in it—even a woman. The following is the direct evidence against her: 1. Driving to Surratts ville from Washington the day of the murder and taking Booth’s field-glass and ordering a bottle of whisky, the field-glass and two carbines to be ready that night, as they would be called for. Booth paid for her buggy and saw her off subsequent to the time he resolved to kill that night. 2. Harboring Payne (or Powell), the assassin of Lincoln, in her house, to which he returned the night after the murder, when she denied before God that she had ever seen him, in the presence of officers accidentally there when he entered. 3. Maintaining two resorts of spies and secret-agents within the Capital City district, while keeping for much of the time the United States Postoffice at Surrattsville. 4. Harboring Atzerodt, Booth and other lights of the assassination for two or three weeks before the crime, and allowing the house to be used for a manifest scheme of violence of some kind against the President, General and Cabinet. 5. Hiring a room at the Herndon House for the assassin Payne, two weeks before the murder. This house was just behind the theater, where the crime was committed. 6. The absence of her son from home for several days before the murder threw the direct agency of all she did or did not forbid directly upon herself, as the sole host of the house in Washington and landlord of her tenant at Surrattsville.

This last point has not been noticed. It assisted, however, to save Sarratt’s life when he was tried two years afterward. He was less guilty than his mother of knowledge of the assassination, provided Booth resolved to assassinate after Surratt went to Canada. All that happened after that between Booth and Mrs. Surratt was independent of her son’s control. John Surratt in a lecture he delivered said that he had agreed to abduct Mr. Lincoln, but never to kill him. Yet he did kill him, and sent Mrs. Surratt to clear the road. This leaves open to us the question of the influence of Booth on Mrs. Surratt. Weichmann says he believes Mrs. Sarratt was in love with Booth and thought he was going to marry her, and under that feeling was his very trustiest confidante. What she might have shrunk from as a political motive, she went willingly to do for love, and her bridegroom was the halter. Love makes everything seem reasonable and establishes an authority above law; yet love has always been held accountable. The story of patting Booth’s two carbines at Mrs. Sarratt’s tavern is singular: At John 0. Thompson’s Tee Bee Hotel, several miles south of Surrattsville, Herold stopped in March, 1865, and took from his buggy two carbines, two double-barreled shot-guns, ammunition, a rope, a wrench, a knife, and a navy revolver. He said he was going to the Patuxent duck shooting, and expected to meet John Surratt there, but, after staying all night, he started back toward Surrattsville. He met on the road Surratt and Atzerodt, and they all returned to Surratt’s, where John gave the carbines, the wrench and rope to John Lloyd for safe-keeping. April 3d, j ust afterward, Surratt passed Tee Bee in the Leonardstown stage, on his way from Washington to Richmond, Va. Atzerodt also stopped at the bar in March previous to the murder. Why were there but two carbines, if Mr. Lincoln was to have been abducted only, and why does that number coincide with the two retreating men on the night of the murder ? An abduction required a troop. Lloyd asked what to do with the carbines. Sarratt took him upstairs—it was several weeks before the murder—and showed Lloyd how to suspend the carbines between the laths of the house; so that they would not be found on foreign search.

About two weeks after the murder a carbine was found by Lloyd’s directions in the Surratt house, concealed in the plastering next to the kitchen and suspended by a rope. Lloyd moved to Surrattsville in December, 1864, and left there finally October, 1866. He saw Surratt, Atzerodt (whom he called by the name of “ Miserable”) and Herold there on several occasions. When Booth came along tne night of the murder he took one carbine and refused to let Herold have the other; hence it was found where John Surratt placed it. Lloyd was a rebel in feeling. The morning after the murder, when Detective Clarvoe and others, sharp on Booth’s trail, stopped at Surrattsville, they recognized in Lloyd an old policeman. “Johnny,” cried Clarvoe, J‘tell me which road these men took, and I’ll make your fortune!” The rascal directed them off toward Piscataway, instead of eastward toward Bryantown. He never would open his mouth until compelled by fear. Weichmann had already confessed that he drove Mrs. Surratt to Surrattsville the morning of the murder, and on the way she said: “Louis, pray for my intentions !” He saw lier go over to Lloyd at the woodpile and speak to him, but did not know what was said. When Lloyd’s obstinacy gave way, he told: “ She told me to get them shooting-irons and a bottle of whisky ready, as they would be called for that night. She gave me the fieldglass to put with them. She said they would be called for before midnight. ” Then taking the officers into the loft, the remaining hidden carbine told the story. It is evident that John Sarratt was not in Washington the day of the murder. No horse was provided for him to ride. He had sneaked out of the plot to get some safer and more profitable work as a secret agent from Richmond to Canada; and, leaving Elmira for Canada, he hid there, allowing his mother to hang, until he could be spirited off to Europe, On the steamer from Quebec he betrayed himself to the purser, who became witness against him, and at Rome his old school-mate, St. Marie, saw him and gave him up. Surratt was taken into the assassination plot in January. Had he returned to Washington he would, undoubtedly, have been hanged, but would then have died more honorably than any of the set. His mother would have been imprisoned, but not hanged. Sentiment fcr him would have saved her. Booth had, evidently, no real respect for John Surratt, but used him to post the road, and found his mother more cautious and smart than the son.

Mrs. Surratt was subjected to trial. She never recovered from the terrible apparition of the man, Payne, stalking into her house, disguised, at the dead of night, just when the officers were marching her to prison. He had lost his way and came there. Fred. W. Aiken, counsel for Mrs. Surratt, told me that she was not manacled in prison, but had the womb disease, and was put in a cell two and a half by eight feet, with one straw pallet and one bucket, and flooded for three weeks, un-

til removed by additional medical advice, but too late to stop the flooding, which went on till she died. She hoped till the last for respite, and, at the last interview with Aiken, looked up at him imploringly but too weak to speak. He said she was privy to the plot to abduct Lincoln—no more. He said she had good sense and was well educated. Lew Wallace was the chief advocate of her hanging. Aiken thinks she was in a dying condition when hanged.