The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt Part 15

Such resurrected truth, like the suggested letter of Speed to be used only after poor Holt's death, seems doubly obnoxious to the latter's own common sense remark: "thus strangely withheld from the public, it would not, when it appeared, be credited."

On the whole, it is exceedingly doubtful whether Judge Bingham's testimony does not do more harm than good to General Holt's case. It is the testimony of an accomplice, if the charge it is meant to refute is true.

Its subject-matter is hearsay, withheld, so long as the direct evidence was attainable, for no good reason, or for a reason a.s.signed which will not stand a moment's examination.

This interchange of letters between two a.s.sociates in infamy, if infamy there were, the one applying for, and the other disclosing ostensibly for the first time, at so late a day, decisive information, which, in the ordinary course of things, the one must have asked for or the other revealed, and both talked over from the beginning, wears upon the face all the features of a collusive correspondence.

No one acquainted with the facts can be induced to credit what both these men state upon the threshold of their correspondence, and upon the truth of which their credibility is staked for all time, that, if two such conversations with Judge Bingham actually took place, this co-victim of a common charge would ever have withheld all knowledge of such important testimony from his brother in affliction for eight years, and until the lips of his two eminent interlocutors, whose confirmation would have at once and for ever crushed the calumny, were closed in death.

And, with this incontrovertible a.s.sertion, we dismiss John A. Bingham to keep company with Richard Montgomery and Sanford Conover, two witnesses who were once the subjects of his own fervid eulogy.

Another aspect of the case must for a moment detain us.

Under the admitted fact that the President approved the death-sentence on Wednesday, July 5th, it is by no means clear how we are to find room for this supposed Cabinet meeting.

The natural construction of Bingham's letter would lead us to believe that the Cabinet meeting, which the two Secretaries are said to have described, was a regular consultation between "the President and his advisers," held _before_ the "confidential interview" at which the President "approved the death-sentence;" and that the entire Cabinet voted on the question raised by the pet.i.tion, because it was "a unit in denying the prayer." This is but another version of the "full Cabinet" of Judge Pierrepont's first statement, and forcibly suggests that the two have an identical origin--at first withdrawn under compulsion while Seward lived, at last brought forward again after his death.

And every one, on such construction, would expect to hear the voices of McCulloch, Welles and Dennison, still living in 1873, and accessible to the ex-Judge-Advocate.

He states in his "Refutation," that he "had satisfactory reasons for believing that they were not there;" but he could not have gathered those reasons from Judge Bingham or his letter, which really is only consistent with the presence of some, if not all, of the three; and it is naturally to be inferred he got them from the ex-members themselves in letters repudiating all knowledge of the pet.i.tion;--letters he takes care not to publish.

Again: the Cabinet meeting described in Judge Bingham's letter cannot be made to square with the meeting described in the letter of Judge Harlan.

The former was a regular Cabinet meeting, the latter was an informal discussion by a few members of the Cabinet. At the one, the pet.i.tion was "duly considered," at the other, neither record nor pet.i.tion was present.

At the one, "a formal vote" was taken upon the "question as to Mrs.

Surratt's case;" at the latter, her case "was never submitted to a formal vote."

But--not to dwell further on dispensable points--it is enough to say that _any_ Cabinet meeting whatever, for the consideration of the pet.i.tion, held _before_ the President's approval of the death-sentence, is, on the admitted facts of the case, an impossibility.

Indeed Holt himself, when driven to the question, does not claim that there was. The record was in the custody of the Judge-Advocate from the 30th of June until that officer carried it to the President on the 5th of July, and during that interval the President was sick-a-bed. It was General Holt, as he himself states, who first "drew his attention to the recommendation," and "the President then and there read it in my (his) presence." And this was at the confidential interview on Wednesday, July 5th. There could have been no meeting of the President and his Cabinet at which the record and pet.i.tion were present and discussed, "before the approval of the death-sentence;" which confessedly was done at the confidential interview.

When this impossibility was pointed out by Andrew Johnson, General Holt, in his "refutation," with great show of indignation, denounces such an argument as "intensely disingenuous." While conceding at once that from the adjournment of the Commission to the 5th of July, the President "had been sick in bed, and had, of course, had no opportunity of conferring with any members of his Cabinet;" he proceeds to show what his idea of intense ingenuousness is, by claiming that what "Messrs. Seward and Stanton" (of Bingham's letter) "clearly meant was, that before the President had _finally_ and _definitely_ approved the sentences in question," the recommendation to mercy "had been considered by him and his advisers in Cabinet meeting;" and therefore such a meeting might have been held _after_ the signature to the death-warrant, say on Wednesday afternoon (5th), or on Thursday, the 6th. And he, now, once again, as in the days of the Surratt trial, abandons all idea of a "full" or regular Cabinet meeting, and endeavors, with the most transparent sophistry, to identify the informal discussion of Judge Harlan's letter with the Cabinet Council of Judge Bingham. But alas! for the ingenuous General!

Circ.u.mstances are too strong for him. For there is no more room for a Cabinet meeting, formal or informal, to do what Judge Bingham's informants are said to relate--_i. e._ consider, and then vote upon the pet.i.tion--_after_ the confidential interview than _before_.

It is agreed on all hands that the President approved of the death-sentence on Wednesday, at the confidential interview between Holt and himself, and, at that very time, and by the same warrant, appointed Friday the 7th, for the executions. The whole matter was begun and ended in an hour.

There was neither opportunity, nor, if there had been, use, to hold a Cabinet consultation upon the question of commutation after that.

The President had reviewed the record, and, without consultation with any human being but Holt, put his name to the death-warrant. Why consult his confidential advisers after he had decided the whole matter? Holt himself says that, at this private interview, it was not he, but Andrew Johnson, who had fully made up his mind that Mrs. Surratt must be put to death; that the President needed no urging or advice on that subject; that he inveighed against the women of the South with a ferocity which reminds us of the loyal Bingham himself. Holt says that the President himself, without a suggestion from him, was "prompt and decided" "as to _when_ the execution should take place," "and in the same spirit too, in which he subsequently suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus, he fixed the Friday following." Why call in his "advisers" after he had, with the approval of his judgment and his conscience, put his hand to the work of blood!

Besides, if he needed such a supererogatory endors.e.m.e.nt of his "advisers,"

there was no time to get it.

The record with the death-warrant went direct to the Adjutant-General's office that very Wednesday. Holt cannot remember whether he took it or not, nor can the Adjutant-General remember when or how he received it. But this is of no consequence. The order for the execution was drawn on that day, the necessary copies made that day; it was promulgated on the morning of Thursday the 6th, and on that day at _noon_, the warrant for her death, within twenty-four hours, was read to the fainting woman in her cell. All day long, on the 6th, the White House was besieged by her friends, her priests and her daughter, to obtain a reprieve. The guardians of the President had no time to hold Cabinet consultations over foregone dooms of death. They were too busy intercepting verbal prayers for mercy, holding shut the doors of the President's private room, sending away all pet.i.tioners, for a few more hours' life, to the merciful Judge-Advocate, making sure that there should be four pine coffins and four newly dug graves, and that the Habeas Corpus should not leave one empty. Hold a Cabinet meeting after the President had signed the b.l.o.o.d.y warrant, and Stanton had once clutched it! Reopen the perilous question to hear Welles and Dennison, and McCulloch and Seward, to say nothing of Harlan and Speed And Stanton, discuss a pet.i.tion addressed to the President who had already denied it! "Five members of our court have been suborned by their feelings to swerve from their duty. We run no more risks of soft-hearted gallantry this time amid the members of the Cabinet. Let the funeral games begin."

The ex-Judge-Advocate insists that the signature to the death-warrant was a matter of very little moment. The President could withdraw it at any time. But would he have us believe that, after the President had dispatched such a fatal missive to the officer whose sole duty, with regard to it, consisted in the promulgation of an order for its execution within twenty-four hours, such action was simply provisional and, according to usage, still subject to rescission by a Cabinet vote?

Desperate, indeed, must be the necessities of a defence, which drive the defendant on the forlorn hope of identifying a Cabinet meeting, voting as a unit to deny a pet.i.tion for clemency, "_before the death-warrant was approved_," with a Cabinet discussion of the pet.i.tion, _after_ the death-warrant, fixing the execution on the next day but one, had been signed by the President, (who is represented as urgent and eager at the moment of his signature to exact in the shortest time the extremest penalty); on the ground that the latter was held _before_ the theoretical _animus revocandi_ of the Executive had become technically inoperative with the last sigh of the condemned.

It has been suggested by one of his subordinate officers that the Secretary of War having seen the pet.i.tion as soon as the record came to his department, it is inconceivable that, at some moment between the 30th and the 7th, the matter should not have been discussed by him with the President.

Of course, there can be no doubt that Stanton knew all about the recommendation. But, (and this obvious answer seems to have altogether escaped the attention of his friend), if the paper was in fact suppressed, it was suppressed with Stanton's own knowledge. Indeed, his must have been the master-hand. He it was who kept the late Vice-President up to the mark of severity as long as the b.l.o.o.d.y humor lasted.

He was the sovereign, and Bingham and Holt but his va.s.sals. Everybody will give them the credit of not having dared to dream of suppression without the electrifying nod of their imperious lord.

And, from the long silence of one, if not both, of his slaves, it would appear, that he not only directed the suppression of the paper, but was too proud to deny, or suffer his minions to deny, it to his dying day.

CHAPTER V.

ANDREW JOHNSON SIGNS ANOTHER DEATH-WARRANT.

Let us turn from the case made by General Holt, which on a cursory inspection seems so strong, but the seeming strength of which, on a closer scrutiny, dissipates itself among such perplexing questions, and lands us at last in the "enjoined silence" of Stanton, to the first public, authoritative charge made by the ex-President.

It appeared, November 12th, 1873, in the same newspaper which had published General Holt's Vindication, to which it was a reply. For it must be remembered that it was Joseph Holt, for eight years the accused, and not Andrew Johnson, for eight years the accuser, at the bar of rumor, who first threw down his gage in the public arena, defying his secret antagonist to come forth.

The gallant knight chose his own good time; and, at last, surrounded with sponsors, both clerical and martial, with banners flying and a most sonorous peal of trumpets, he burst into the lists, as though he would fain hope by noise and show to over-awe his dreaded adversary into submissive silence.

His thunders availed nothing. His glove had no sooner reached the ground than it was taken up.

Let us hear the plain, straightforward statement of Andrew Johnson. There are no mysteries to unravel, no explanations to explain.

"The findings and sentences of the court were submitted on the 5th of July (he and I being alone), were then and there approved by the Executive, and taken by the Judge-Advocate-General to the War Department, where on the same afternoon the order to carry them into effect was issued. Mr. Speed, doubtless, saw the record, but it must have been in the Department of War, and not in the Executive office."

After thus quietly disposing of Mr. Speed's evidence, he proceeds:--

"The record of the court was submitted to me by Judge Holt in the afternoon of the 5th day of July, 1865. Instead of entering the Executive Mansion in the usual way, he gained admission by the private or family entrance to the Executive office. The examination of the papers took place in the library, and he and I alone were present. The sentences of the court in the cases of Herold, Atzerodt and Payne, were considered in the order named, and then the sentence in the case of Mrs. Surratt. In acting upon her case no recommendation for a commutation of her punishment was mentioned or submitted to me."

He then states that the question of s.e.x was discussed alone; Holt insisting upon carrying out the sentence without discriminating as to s.e.x; that a woman uns.e.xed was worse than a man; that too many females had abetted traitors during the war, and that there was a necessity an example should be made.

"He was not only in favor of the approval of the sentence but its execution on the earliest practicable day.

"Upon the termination of our consultation, Judge Holt wrote the order approving the sentences of the Court. I affixed my name to it, and, rolling up the papers, he took his leave, carrying the record with him, and departing as he had come through the family or private entrance."

And there we must leave him.

True, he rejoined, in December, in another very long article, contributed to the same newspaper, in which he endeavored to break the force of several points made in Johnson's answer, and dwelt with much insistence on the abstention of the President from making any open charge against him, and on his adversary's present silence with regard to General Mussey's letter. But there is nothing new in the way of testimony, except two sympathizing letters from Generals Ekin and Hunter, respectively; the former of which might be construed by the uncharitable as evidence that General Holt, at the time of the execution, was already forestalling antic.i.p.ated accusation by defending himself in private to his friends; the latter is a tribute from the grim President of the Military Commission to the Judge-Advocate's _tenderness_ to the prisoners before that body, of which the printed record of the trial affords such striking ill.u.s.trations.

This lengthy "Refutation," as it was ent.i.tled, upon the whole added little, if any, strength to the "Vindication." His accuser, on his side, resting content with his one single explicit public utterance, paid no attention to it.

And when, at the present hour, we calmly survey the relative standing, the position, the character and career of the two combatants, the circ.u.mstances surrounding the momentous confidential interview, the silent testimony of the record with the significant twist of the death-warrant, the nature of the accusation, the mysteries enveloping the belated defense, the probable motives actuating each, the thirst for blood which for a time maddened the leading spirits of the War Department, the pa.s.sivity of Johnson for the few weeks after his sudden and sombre inauguration, and for the same period the wild and reckless predominance of Stanton;--what valid reason exists why we should discredit, or even suspect for a moment, the veracity of the ex-President? Andrew Johnson looms up in history a very different figure from the one discerned by his enemies, both North and South, amid the pa.s.sions of his epoch. He was no inebriate, as he was stigmatized because of the unfortunate incident at his inauguration as Vice-President. He was no weak, frightened tool, as he appeared to be at the b.l.o.o.d.y crisis of his accession to the Presidency. He was no apostate from his section, as he was cursed by the South for being at the breaking out of the war. He was no traitor to the North, as he was denounced by the impeachers for the mere endeavor to carry out the reconstruction policy of his lamented predecessor. He was not the garrulous fool, he was called in ridicule when he "swung around the circle." He is now recognized, when his career is reviewed as a whole, as a man temperate in his habits, firm, self-willed and honest; as a statesman, intelligent though uncultured, sometimes profound and always sincere; and as a union-loving, non-sectional, earnest patriot. His impeachment is looked back upon by the whole country with shame. His impeachers are already, themselves, both impeached and convicted at the bar of history.

In sober truth, so unique and perfect a triumph never capped and completed the career of Roman warrior or modern ruler of men, as when, but little more than a year after his reply to General Holt, the ex-President--once again the chosen representative of that State whose rebellious people he had coerced with an iron hand as military governor during the Civil War--took his seat in that body, before which he had been arraigned on the impeachment of the House of Representatives and had escaped conviction by but a single vote.

With the words of Holt's denunciation still fresh in their remembrance, the citizens of Washington loaded the desk of the retributive Senator with flowers; and, when he advanced, amidst so many colleagues who had condemned him as judges, to take the oath of office, and again when, a few days later, his voice, which had before been heard pleading for the imperiled Union, was from the same place once more heard pleading for the imperiled Const.i.tution, the crowded galleries and corridors gave him a conquering hero's welcome.