The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes BoothTownsend, George Alfred
History
The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth
Townsend, George Alfred
Assassins -- United States -- Biography; Booth, John Wilkes, 1838-1865; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Assassination
The boy wrote out, very carefully, this answer:
"Death by hanging."
The boy would have been correct had the question applied to accused
persons before a court-martial.
Spangler, the scene-shifter and stage-carpenter, has the face and
bearing of a day-laborer. His blue woollen shirt does not confuse him,
as he is used to it. He has an oldish face, wrinkled by fearful
anticipations, and his hair is thin. He is awkwardly built, and watches
the trial earnestly, as if striving to catch between the links of
evidence vistas of a life insured. This man has a simple and pleading
face, and there is something genial in his great, incoherent
countenance. He is said to have cleared the stage for Booth's escape,
but this is indifferently testified to. He had often been asked by Booth
to take a drink at the nearest bar. Persons who drink assure me that the
greatest mark of confidence which a great man can show a lesser one is
to make that tender; this, therefore, explains Booth's power over
Spangler.
Spangler is the first scene-shifter who may become a _dramatis personę_.
A soldier sits between Spangler and Doctor Mudd. The soldier would like
Spangler to get up and go away, so that he could have as much of the
bench as he might sleep upon. This particular soldier, I may be
qualified to say, would sleep upon his post.
Doctor Mudd has a New England and not a Maryland face. He compares, to
those on his left, as Hyperion to a squatter. His high, oval head is
bald very far up, but not benevolently so, and it is covered with light
red hair, so thin as to contrast indifferently with the denseness of his
beard and goatee. His nose would be insignificant but for its sharpness,
and at the nostrils it is swelling and high-spirited. His eyes impinge
upon his brows, and they are shining and rather dark, while the brows
themselves are so scantily clothed with hair that they seem quite naked.
Mudd is neatly dressed in a green-grass duster, and white bosom and
collar; if he had no other advantages over his associates these last
would give it to him. He keeps his feet upon the rail before him in true
republican style, and rolls a morsel of tobacco under his tongue.
The military commission works as if it were delegated not to try, but to
convict, and Dr. Mudd, if he be innocent, is in only less danger than if
he were guilty. He has a sort of home-bred intelligence in his face, and
socially is as far above his fellows as Goliah of Gath above the rest of
the Philistines.
On the right of Doctor Mudd sits a soldier, who is striving to look
through his legs at the judge-advocate, as if taking a sort of secret
aim at that person, with the intent to fetch him down, because he makes
the trial so very dry, and the soldier so very thirsty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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