The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt
John Stuart Mill · en
Mingling with the varied emotions evoked by the capture and death of the
chief criminal was a feeling of deepest exasperation that the foul
assassin should after all have eluded the ignominious penalty of his
crime. Thence arose a savage disposition on the part of the governing
powers to wreak this baffled vengeance first, on his inanimate body;
secondly, on the lives of his associates held so securely in such close
custody; and thirdly, on all those in high places who might be presumed to
sympathize with his deeds. It was too horrible to imagine that the ghost
of the martyred Lincoln should walk unavenged. So stupendous a calamity
must of necessity be the outcome of as stupendous a conspiracy, and must
in the very justice of things be followed by as stupendous a retribution.
A sacrifice must be offered and the victims must be forthcoming. To employ
the parallel subsequently drawn by General Ewing on the trial of the
conspirators: On the funeral pyre of Patroclus must be immolated the
twelve Trojan captives. They were sure of Payne and of Herold. They held
Arnold and O'Laughlin and Atzerodt and Spangler and Doctor Mudd--all the
supposed satellites of Booth, save one. John H. Surratt could not be
found. Officers in company with Weichman and Holahan, boarders at his
mother's house, who in the terror of the moment had given themselves up on
the morning of the fifteenth, traced him to Canada, as has already been
noticed, but had there lost track of him. They had returned disappointed;
and now Weichman and Holahan were in solitary confinement. Notwithstanding
the large rewards out for his capture, as to him alone the all-powerful
government seemed to be baffled. One consolation there was, however--if
they could not find the son, they held the mother as a hostage for him,
and they clung to the cruel expectation that by putting her to the torture
of a trial and a sentence, they might force the son from his hiding place.
In the meanwhile the Bureau of Military Justice, presided over by
Judge-Advocate-General Holt, had been unceasingly at work. General Baker
with his posse of soldiers and detectives scoured the country far and wide
for suspected persons and witnesses, hauled them to Washington and shut
them up in the prisons. Then the Bureau of Military Justice took them in
hand, and, when necessary, by promises, hopes of reward and threats of
punishment, squeezed out of them the testimony they wanted. Colonel Henry
L. Burnett, who had become an expert in such proceedings from having
recently conducted the trial of Milligan before a military tribunal at
Indianapolis, was brought on to help Judge Holt in the great and good
work. In the words of General Ewing in his plea for Dr. Mudd: