The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt

John Stuart Mill · en
The other proclamation, dated May 2nd, after reciting that "it appears
from evidence in the Bureau of Military Justice, that the atrocious murder
of the late President, Abraham Lincoln, and the attempted assassination of
the Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, were incited, concerted,
and procured by and between Jefferson Davis, late of Richmond, Va., and
Jacob Thompson, Clement C. Clay, Beverly Tucker, George N. Sanders,
William C. Cleary, and other rebels and traitors against the Government of
the United States, harbored in Canada," offered the following rewards:

    "$100,000 for the arrest of Jefferson Davis.

    "$25,000 for the arrest of Clement C. Clay.

    "$25,000 for the arrest of Jacob Thompson, late of Mississippi.

    "$25,000 for the arrest of Geo. N. Saunders.

    "$25,000 for the arrest of Beverly Tucker.

    "$10,000 for the arrest of Wm. C. Cleary, late clerk of Clement C.
    Clay.

    "The Provost-Marshal-General of the United States is directed to cause
    a description of said persons, with notice of the above rewards, to be
    published."

At this date the President of the defunct Confederacy was a fugitive,
without an army; and bands of U. S. Cavalry were already on the scout to
intercept his flight. Military Justice, however, was too impatient to
await the arrest of the prime object of its sword; and in obedience to the
first proclamation proceeded without delay to organize a court to try the
prisoners selected from the multitude undergoing confinement as the
fittest victims to appease the shade of the murdered President. Over some
of the "suspect" the Judge-Advocates for a time vacillated, whether to
include them in the indictment or to use them as witnesses; but, after a
season of rigid examinations, renewed and revised, they at last concluded
that such persons would be more available in the latter capacity.

On the third day of May the funeral car, which, leaving Washington on the
twenty-first of April, had borne the body of the lamented Lincoln through
State after State, arrived at last at Springfield; and on the following
day the cherished remains were there consigned to the tomb. On the sixth,
by special order of the Adjutant-General, a Military Commission was
appointed to meet at Washington on Monday, the eighth day of May, or as
soon thereafter as practicable, "for the trial of David E. Herold,
George A. Atzerodt, Lewis Payne, Michael O'Laughlin, Edward Spangler,
Samuel Arnold, Mary E. Surratt, Samuel A. Mudd and such other prisoners as
may be brought before it, implicated in the murder of the late President
and in the attempted assassination of the Secretary of State and in an
alleged conspiracy to assassinate other officers of the Federal Government
at Washington City, and their aiders and abettors. By order of the
President of the United States." And so, all things being in readiness,
let the curtain rise.




PART I.

THE MURDER.




CHAPTER I.

THE OPENING OF THE COURT.