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Congressional Globe, U.S. Senate
ASSASSINATION REWARDS
The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, resumed the consideration of House bill No. 801, authorizing the payment of the rewards offered by the President of the United States, &c.
Mr. DAVIS. I should like some Senator to give the Senate some assurance that Abraham Lincoln's murderer was in fact killed. I have never seen myself any satisfactory evidence that Booth was killed.
Mr. HOWARD. In order to prove it demonstratively, perhaps we should be compelled to send for Botson Corbett, who shot him. I suppose the honorable Senator is speaking of Booth.
Mr. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. JOHNSON. I submit to my friend from Kentucky that there are some things that we must take judicial notice of, just as well as that Julius Caesar is dead.
Mr. DAVIS. I would rather have better testimony of the fact. I want it proved that Booth was in that barn; I cannot conceive, if he was in the barn, why he was not taken alive and brought to this city alive. I have never seen anybody or the evidence of anybody that identified Booth after he is said to have been killed. Why so much secrecy about it? Why was not his boty brought up publicly to Washington city and exposed to the gaze of the multitude, that it might be identified? It may be that he is dead; but there is a mystery and a most inexplicable mystery to my mind about the whole affair. He may come back some of these days and murder somebody else.
I merely got up to make this suggestion. I supposed that some gentleman was in possession of facts going to show that Booth was identified. Identify Booth, and these men ought to have their reward, but I doubt whether this man Baker out to have anything. I believe he was a much bigger villain than any man he was pursuing. I do not doubt that at all; and I believe he is just such a man as to get up now a story of the capture of Booth when Booth had not been overtaken at all. If gentlemen will refer me to where I can get a narrative of facts to prove the identity of Booth, I will at my leisure read it with much interest. I want to be assured of the facts, not with a view to vote on this bill but with a view to the history of the transaction.
I do not see why, if Booth was in the bard, he should have been shot. He could have been captured just as well alive as dead. It would have been much more satisfactory to have brought him up here alive and to have inquired of him to reveal the whole transaction, to have implicated all who were guilty and to have exculpated all who were innocent. I do not see any reason why the matter had not taken that course. Bring his body up, carry it to the City Hall, expose it there to public gaze, let all who had seen him playing, all who associated with him on the stage or in the green room or the taverns and other public places, have had access to his body to have identified it. That was the way, where $100,000 was offered as a reward for catpuring the man. I am certain I was as innocent of that murder as the child that is yet unborn; but I should have disliked to have $100,000 offered for me as an accomplice in that murder; it would have caused me to be hung or shot just as certain as fate.
Mr. CONNESS. That would be a big price.
Mr. DAVIS. I have no doubt that the honorable Senator from California could have had me captured or shot for $2.50 by some of his myrmidons.
Mr. ANTHONY. I am happy to relieve my friend from Kentucky by informingg him that a small part of the skeleton of Booth is in the anatomical museum of the Surgeon General.
Mr. JOHNSON. Who knows that?
Mr. ANTHONY. I do not know how it is identified, but it is certified to be that.
Mr. SPRAGUE. I hope we shall have the question
The bill was passed.
