Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1886 — The Search for Wilkes Booth. [ARTICLE]

The Search for Wilkes Booth.

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was a military crime. Whi!e actually in command of the national forces, he was' killed in a city which was his headquarters, strongly so tified and garrisoned, with a military governor, and a provost marshal whose patrols were abroad night and day a: resting all persons found violating the “rules of war.” Not only was the murdered commander-in-chief, to use the words of the Constitution, “in actual service in time of war,” but it was a time of “public danger,” in which the assassins were constitutionally excluded from any right to a trial in the civil courts. Peace had not then been conquered ; there was a powerful enemy in arms, to whom “aid and comfort” could be given; the leader of the rebellion was still at large; many loyal men were becoming disheartened by the conscriptions and by the prolonged expenditure of blood and treasure; and there are good reasons for believing that many e»emies of the Union, having traversed all the stages of crime, confidently hoped by this assassination to inaugurate anarchy at the North, and thus to prepare the way for a dictator. Before the martyr-President had ceased to live, Secretary Stanton directed a search for the recognized assassin, and an investigation into the circumstances connected with tlie perpetration of the bloody deed. The next day, in a letter to the Hon. Charles Francis Adams, Mr. Stanton said: “The murderer of the President has been discovered and evidence obtained that these horrible crimes were committed in execution of a conspiracy deliberately planned and set on foot by rebels, under pretense of avenging the South and aiding the rebel cause.” Subsequently the Secretary of War announced, in an official bulletin, that all persons who had harbored or secreted Booth, Atzerodt, or Herold, or who had aided or assisted their escape, should be “subject to trial before a military commission, and the punishment is death.” The bulletin concluded by saying: “Let the stain of innocent blood be removed from the land by the arrest and punishment of the murderers! All good citizens are exhorted to aid public justice on this occasion. Every man should consider his own innocence charged with this solemn duty, and rest neither night nor day till it is accomplished.” Secretary Stanton faithfully performed his shave of this work, and he was ably seconded by the Provost Marshal of the War Department, Col. L. C. Baker. The discovery by Fouche of the celebrated French conspiracy, headed by Pichegru, for the assassination of the first Emperor Napoleon, has been regarded as the greatest triumph of detective-police skill on record ; but it is eclipsed by Col. Baker’s report of his operations. It was not long after the commission of the great crime before he was thoroughly conversant with the associations and habits of the chief- actor’s acquaintances in Washington, Baltimore, Montreal, and other cities. Some were promptly arrested, a careful espionage was established ever others, confidential agents were sent out far and wide, some of them in disguise, the magnetic telegraph and the photographer’s camera were called into the service for the transmission of intelligence and for the multiplication of portraits for identification, and it was not long before the proofs of a conspiracy were overwhelming.