In December, 1868, the Judge-Advocate is privately seeking testimony from the Rev. J. George Butler, of Washington, the minister who attended Atzerodt in his last moments, whose letter of the 15th is most satisfactory on Johnson's belief in the guilt of Mrs. Surratt, but most unsatisfactory in regard to the petition of mercy. On the 1st of March, 1869, among the last acts of his stormy administration, the President undid, as far as he could then undo, the work of the Military Commission by setting Arnold and Spangler free; O'Laughlin having died from the effects of the climate. Had the five officers of the Military Commission been permitted to exercise their power of mitigating the sentence of Mrs. Surratt, as they did in the cases of these men, or had the Executive granted their prayer for clemency; the President might have signalized the close of his term by a still more memorable pardon, and the mother, rescued from death by mercy, would have joined the son, rescued from death by justice. During the four years of the first administration of President Grant, while Andrew Johnson was fighting his way back to his old place, among the people of Tennessee, the story of the suppressed recommendation ever and anon circulated anew with unquenchable vitality. The reappearance of Mudd, Spangler and Arnold, as free men; the "doubtful" death of Stanton, "with such maimed rites" of burial, as might "betoken The corse, they follow, did with desperate hand Fordo its own life;" every incident connected in any way with the tragedy of the woman's trial and death, and every prominent event in the career of the men who had surrounded the illstarred successor of the murdered Lincoln in the awful hour of his accession, revived the irrepressible question; and the friends of Mrs. Surratt's memory, and the friends of Johnson, alike, each by their own separate methods, on every such opportunity, appealed and re-appealed to the public, asserting again and again the suppression of the plea for mercy, propagating what General Holt brands as "the atrocious accusation," or, as he elsewhere characterizes their actions, "for long years wantonly and wickedly assailing" the ex-Judge-Advocate. And yet, during all these years, the baited hero is silent. He lies low. As far as appears, he makes no further efforts to secure testimony. His friend and old associate, Bingham, is by his side, yet he makes no appeal to him. He keeps close by him the letters he has already secured to substantiate his own version of the confidential interview. But he seeks for no Cabinet testimony. His stern master in the War Department, after the acquittal of the President, lays down his sceptre, and then, though the deadliest enemy of Johnson, is allowed to die in silence. Seward lives on and is asked to give no help. The ex-Judge-Advocate still lies low. At length came the appointed time. William H. Seward died on the 12th day of October, 1872.