"Your officers, your men, your representatives in the American army, in an accusation which will travel upon the telegraph wires perhaps to the four quarters of the world have been denounced, if not expressly, by implication, as murderers and butchers who took the life of an innocent woman. If so, when you come to try them, and you believe it, say it, but it is not the question submitted to you now. She may be innocent and the prisoner at the bar be guilty; the subject was introduced collaterally by the learned counsel, for what purpose I know not, except for effect. Before you brand these gentlemen with the character of murderers, see that you have relevant grounds to act upon. Take care, or you may be placed in the same situation; I have not charged it, and I do not think my friends would, upon reflection, charge men who are placed in such a solemn obligation with such a dereliction of duty. It has been said that this has been pronounced by the Supreme Court of the United States an illegal tribunal. What has that to do with the action of these officers? What has that to do with your action? What pertinency can it have to the issue now submitted to you for your decision? But, gentlemen of the jury, let us first consider the character of this crime, and then I will consider briefly the connection of Mrs. Surratt with it. I do not desire to say much about her; she has gone to her grave, and her spirit has passed before her Eternal Judge." After recounting the character of the crime, the District Attorney thus refers to Mrs. Surratt's connection with it: "Now, gentlemen of the jury, let us view the connection of Mrs. Mary E. Surratt with this assassination. I feel the delicacy of the ground upon which I stand. I know the situation. I know that you dislike to consider this question, which has been forced upon you. I do not want to do it. My duty is to prosecute the prisoner, but one of the counsel has said she was murdered, and another that she was butchered, and it therefore becomes my duty to trace her connection with this crime, and then leave it to you to say whether she was guilty (though not relevant to this case), of the crime for which she suffered. First, I call your attention to a fact to which we have already adverted; that her house, 541, was the rendezvous for these conspirators. Now, gentlemen, will you pause for a moment, and let me ask you how you can reconcile it with innocence? You remember the law, that it is not how much a party did, but whether she had anything to do with it. Can you, I say, reconcile it with innocence that this woman's house should have been the rendezvous of John Wilkes Booth, Lewis Payne, Atzerodt, Herold, and John H. Surratt? Would you not know by intuition? Would you not know by their conversation? Would not your judgment and your hearts tell you who they were and what they contemplated?