The practical legal bearing of this question on the trial was as to whether the prisoner, being proven to have been a member of the conspiracy which resulted in the death of President Lincoln by the hands of a fellow-conspirator, should be held as a principal in the crime, or only an accessory before the fact. In other words whether the court and jury could take cognizance of the official position of Abraham Lincoln without its being alleged in the indictment. If he could be regarded as a principal and not as an accessory he could be held equally guilty with Booth although he might not have been present and assisting in the assassination. Practically, however, this was not a matter of any consequence in this trial, because it was proven beyond a doubt that the prisoner was actually present, acting a conspicuous part in the execution of the plot. It was also proven by the testimony of one witness whose testimony was in no way impeached that it was he, and not Spangler, who prepared and fitted the bar to the door to prevent Booth being followed into the box at the theatre. The summing up of the evidence by Judge Pierrepont in his concluding speech is one of the most admirable and masterly efforts that can be anywhere found. In the first place it is a model of judicial fairness and honesty. To him the prisoner was evidently a pure abstraction toward whom he had no feelings. His only effort was to weigh impartially the evidence in the case, and to give to it a fair and common sense interpretation. He brushed away all side issues and every effort of the prisoner's counsel to bring the trial under the influence of political and of religious prejudices, and held them strictly to the question of the guilt or innocence of the prisoner, as shown by the evidence. Again it was a model effort in its logical ability in bringing the evidence before the jury. He had so completely analyzed the testimony that he was able to present it in its logical connection as to time, purpose, and circumstances; tracing the plot through the evidence before him, from its incipiency to its completion, step by step, showing the bearing and relation that one thing sustained to another in a most conclusive and unanswerable way.