Great grandfather ran the investigation and served as Special Judge Advocate during the trial. These are his memories of the evidence against Mrs Surratt.
THE EVIDENCE AGAINST MRS SURRATT
“Anyone who looks into the evidence will find out that for some weeks before the assassination, Mrs Surratt was holding frequent private interviews with Wilkes Booth; and was also on terms of intimate communication in her own house with Lewis Payne, alias Wood, alias Powell, who attempted the life of Mr Seward. Some weeks before the assassination, John H. Surratt, David E. Herold, and George A. Atzerodt left at the house of a Mr Floyd, near Washington, two carbines, ammunition, and a rope sixteen to twenty feet long, which were laid away under a joist until they should be wanted.
“On the Monday preceding the assassination, Mrs Surratt came to Floyd’s house and inquired about the ‘shooting irons’, and told Floyd ‘they would be wanted soon.’ On the very day of the assassination, Mrs Surratt was at Floyd’s house again and told him ‘to have the shooting-irons ready for that night.’ She then gave Mr Floyd a field-glass and asked him to have all the things ready, with two bottles of whiskey, for the parties who would call for them in the night, and left.”
“True to her prediction, at about a quarter past twelve o’clock the same night, Booth and Herold came to Floyd’s and called for the carbines, field-glass and whiskey, which Floyd delivered to them according to Mrs Surratt’s directions. Herold took his carbine, but Booth was unable to carry his, having a broken leg, and so left it behind. The assassins were at Floyd’s house about five minutes. Booth said, as they rode off: ‘I will tell you some news. I am pretty certain we have assassinated the President and Secretary Seward.’
About midnight on the 17th of April 1865, the third day after the assassination, Payne, who till then had secreted himself, came disguised to Mrs Surratt’s house and was arrested by soldiers then in possession of it. He said Mrs Surratt had sent for him to dig a ditch.
Mrs Surratt, though she knew him well, denied she ever saw him. Her words were, ‘Before God, I do not know this man, and have never seen him.’
“It is not for us to pass upon the guilt of Mrs Surratt. We would prefer to behold her pure and stainless, ‘as the angels in heaven.’
“But whomever indulges in wide-mouthed proclamations, or pronounces her conviction ‘an inhuman crime’, unsupported by evidence, betrays an animus, to say the least, not overcareful of the truth. The same malevolent animus which, in defiance of all truth, calls General Hanock her murderer, also denounces him for having been a Union solder, and for not resigning his commission, and for all the gallant service he has rendered to his country.
“’Cease, viper: you bite a file!’”
Hancock Of General Hanock’s connection with the trial and the habeas corpus proceedings, in an interview published in the New York World, August 5, 1880, after his nomination for the presidency by the Democratic party, although I was a Republican and voted against him, I took occasion to say:
“I do not think that anybody who ever examined the case fairly could impute the least blame to General Hancock. I think from first to last he only performed what was his strict military duty.” After citing the record: “Thus you see that General Hancock fully respected the writ of habeas corpus and made a proper and respectful return to it, pleading a higher authority for not obeying it by producing the body of Mrs Surratt... Any attempt to cast blame on General Hancock for his action in connection with these events I feel confident must fail. He simply performed his duty like a good soldier.”
MILITARY OR CIVIL
This paper is too long to present here, but I will give only a few extracts showing General Hancock’s views of his relation to the habeas corpus episode and Mrs. Surratt’s connection with the conspiracy. I quote from the paper as follows:
“After the nomination of General Hancock for the presidency in 1880 by the Democratic party, at the request of the editor of the North American Review, Mr Speed, Mr Lincoln’s Attorney-General, prepared a paper for that periodical on the trial of Mrs Surratt. In that article, among other things, in speaking of the military commission and the fairness of her trial, he said:
“The military commission which tried the assassins of the President was carefully selected. It was composed of men taught by experience and habit to maintain coolness and equanimity in thr midst of the most exciting scenes. If it was possible at that period and at that place to have secured a fair trial, the method adopted was the most certain to secure it. That commission certainly had no desire to wantonly and recklessly inflict punishment upon a woman. It patiently investigated the case. If Mrs Surratt had not been guilty — if there had been any reasonable doubt of her guilt — she would have been acquitted, as some of the other accused persons were.
“The Government never showed any disposition to deal severely with any of those guilty of crimes connected with the rebellion. Its military power was exercised mildly and humanely. It was only in a few instances of absolutely hideous crimes that the perpetrators suffered the extreme penalty.
“There is no ground for the complaint that the military court was harsh, or unjust, or cruel. There is every ground for the conclusion that it did its duty with judicial calmness and perfect conscientious impartiality. It found the proofs of guilt clear and incontestable, and rendered judgment accordingly... There was an additional guarantee of fairness of the proceedings against the assassins of the President in the fact that General Hancock, a disciplined, trained and accomplished soldier, was in command at Washington at the time. His calmness and equipose in the midst of excitement, cultivated by familiarity with scenes of carnage in the whirlwind of scores of terrific conflicts, would naturally inspire calmness in others.
“Had the assassins been turned over to the civil courts for trial, the result would doubtless have been the same; and, in that case, we would have heard a more just complaint, perhaps, that instead of a trial by an impartial military tribunal, they were remanded to the mercies of an angry and revengeful mob of passionate civilians, from whom it was impossible to obtain a fair jury.”
This was the calm judgement on this trial and the justice of Mrs Surratt’s conviction of one of the purest of men — one of the ablest lawyers of his time — after the thought and reflection of fifteen years.
Beautiful sight.
Lewis Powell took the most time to die. They said he kept raising his legs "to a sitting position"
And here's an interesting side note: In one of the photos after they were hanged, most of the people/soldiers in the crowd are blurry because they were moving when the photo was taken. All except a kid and several soldiers looking at him. The kid looks frozen in place as he stares at Mary Surrat as if he was traumatized that a woman was hanged.
May the many traitors in politics, the judiciary, and the Enemedia face similar trials, convictions, and punishment, only in locations where tens of thousands can come to watch and record.
Different time, different country. There is no justice in the US today.
If unlawful attempts to remove a sitting president should be met with hanging, then what about Clapper, Brennan, and many others?
So many leftist candidates available for the same treatment - so little time.
Didn’t they bury them there by the gallows?
On this same spot, I’d like to see the Clintons, Obama, Pelosi and Adam Shitts and Comey all swing. If there’s room, let’s throw in Cheney and the rest of the J6 committee.