The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt
John Stuart Mill · en
Weichman "came also:" this time with his story carefully elaborated,
touched and retouched here and there, and written down beforehand. He had
been engaged for three or four months in aiding the prosecution, had
prepared a carefully detailed statement for the use of the Assistant
District Attorney, and now openly acknowledged that "his character was at
stake" in this trial, and that he "intended to do all he could to help the
prosecution." He had conned over and over again the report of his evidence
on the Conspiracy Trial, had corrected it to meet objections subsequently
made and to eliminate discrepancies and contradictions, and had thus
brought its several disjointed parts into some logical sequence; he then
had added to it the incidents and conversations disclosed for the first
time in the affidavit sent to Colonel Burnett, which was appended to the
published report of the trial, to which allusion has been made; and, now,
in the final delivery of his deadly charge, coolly averring that his
memory was much more distinct now than at the time of the former trial two
years ago, he, with a superadded concentrated venom, flavored his
narrative with a few damning incidents never heard of before--one, the
most poisonous of all, that on the evening of the fatal 14th, while Booth
was about his murderous work, Mrs. Surratt was pacing her parlor floor
begging her pious boarder "to pray for her intentions." This time,
however, the witness did not escape unscathed. When he emerged from the
skillful hands of Mr. Bradley, his malicious and sordid _animus_ laid
bare,--his self-contradictions, his studied revisions, his purposeful
additions to his testimony, exposed--his intimacy with the conspirators,
his terrified repentance, his abject self-surrender and his cowardly
eagerness to shift his peril upon the head of his protectress,--and then
his simulated remorse and his later recantation--all made clear--he was an
object of loathing to gentlemen; a stumbling block to the philanthropist;
to the indifferent, an enigma; and to the common man, a perpetual
provocation to a breach of the peace.