instructions of the judge, unless they are satisfied that corrupt motives have actuated them. They will leave the party where the law leaves him, to his legitimate redress,--a writ of error to the appellate court." Referring to the course of counsel in this illegitimate appeal to the jury in their argument on this point, and to their appeal, based on the number of their exceptions to the rulings of the Court, the judge made this further remark in vindicating the position and dignity of the Court: "In reference to these matters I may observe that, perhaps, I owed it to the dignity of the bench to have interrupted counsel in the conduct of the case in this particular, but in a cause involving the life of the prisoner upon the one hand and the vindication of the outraged justice of a nation in mourning upon the other, I deemed it my duty to cast not an atom in the one scale or in the other which might by any possibility tend to prejudice either side of the issue." CHAPTER III. TREATMENT OF WITNESSES AND EVIDENCE BY THE COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENSE AND THEIR ANIMUS TOWARD THE GOVERNMENT AND APPEALS TO THE POLITICAL PREJUDICES OF JURORS. The conduct of this trial on the part of the defense toward the witnesses for the prosecution was most remarkable. The law prescribes the methods by which testimony is to be discredited, and the eminent lawyers who defended the prisoner were of course well acquainted with the legal methods of impeaching testimony. That they did not confine themselves to these was not only unprofessional, but was calculated to create a suspicion that they had an intuitive perception of the fact that the methods known to the law would not avail them in this case. Hence from the first they attempted to influence the jury by treating the government witnesses with supercillious contempt, and even scorn. They did not, however, stop here, but whenever they could find or make an occasion they would throw out insinuations against the witnesses _en masse_ by side remarks intended for the ears of the jury. They spoke of the witnesses who were kept together in a room, to be called as they were needed, as being in the "penitentiary," and added to this that "they would soon be in another penitentiary." On the examination of Dr. McMillen, the surgeon of the ocean steamer "Peruvian," in whose charge Father La Pierre had placed Surratt under the name of McCarthy, and to whom Surratt had made confessions during his voyage across the Atlantic that were conclusive of his guilt, the counsel for Surratt made themselves so offensive that the witness was provoked to a retort in self-defense.