The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt Part 13

In short, the statements of the two disputants are not contradictory. Both may be true. And, when we recollect the feeble state of health of the President at the time of the "confidential interview" and his mood of mind towards the distasteful task forced upon him in a season of nervous debility; when we recollect the mode and manner the Judge-Advocate adopted of writing out the death warrant; it will seem extremely probable that both statements _are_ true. The President made no "careful scrutiny" of the record in 1865, or he would not have needed to do so in 1867. The Judge-Advocate, inspired by his master, would not be too officious in pointing out to the listless and uninquiring Executive the superfluous little paper. He might do his whole duty, by conversing on the subject of the commutation of the sentence of the one woman condemned, and, then, by so placing the roll of papers for the President's signature to the death warrant as to bring the modest "suggestion" of the five officers "_right before his eyes_," though upside down. If the sick President did not carefully scrutinize the papers, was that the Judge-Advocate's fault? Nay, in writing out the death warrant in the inspired way he did, this zealous patriot may have felt even a pious glow, in thus lending himself as an instrument to ward off a frustration of Divine justice. Alas! one may easily lose one's self in endeavoring to trace out the abnormal vagaries of the "truly loyal" mind, at that period of hysterical patriotism.

After these incidents on the Surratt trial, and at the White House, there could be no more mystery about the recommendation to mercy. It was historically certain that such a doc.u.ment, or rather a "suggestion," did in fact emanate from the Commission, and was at some time affixed to the record. Left out of Pitman's official compilation, nevertheless it was there. The only question about it which could any longer agitate the people was, had it been suppressed? And this, unfortunately, was now narrowed down to a mere question of veracity between the President and his subordinate officer, as to what occurred at the Confidential Interview; and which, moreover, threatened to resolve itself into a maze of special pleading about the lack of attention, on the part of the Executive, and the duty of thorough explanation, on the part of the Judge-Advocate, in the delicate task of approving the judgment of a Military Commission.

Whether this unsatisfactory and ticklish state of the issue was the cause or not, nothing was done in consequence of these revelations of the Surratt trial. The President, indeed, plunged as he was in the struggle to get rid of Stanton, which finally led to his impeachment, and remembering his own remissness in not scrutinizing the papers before he signed the death-warrant, could have had but little inclination to provoke another conflict, on such precarious grounds, by attempting the removal of the incriminated subordinate of his rebellious Secretary. He kept possession of the record, however, long enough to subject it to a thorough inspection by himself and his advisers, for (as appears from the letter of the chief clerk already quoted) it was not returned to the Judge-Advocate-General's office until December, 1867.

The Judge-Advocate, on his part, remained likewise pa.s.sive and displayed no eagerness for a vindication by a court of inquiry.

He pleads in 1873, as excuse for his non-action, that "it would have been the very madness of folly" for him "to expose his reputation to the perils of a judicial proceeding in which his enemy and slanderer would play the quadruple role of organizer of the court, accuser, witness and final judge." Forgetting the "history" he had told Mr. Pierrepont, and then withdrawn, in 1867, he actually claims that he "was not aware that any member of Mr. Johnson's Cabinet knew of his having seen and considered the recommendation," and that he "was kept in profound ignorance of" "this important information" "_through the instrumentality of Mr. Stanton_"!

But, were it credible that the Judge-Advocate "supposed," as he says, "that this information was confined to" the President and himself, (not even his master, Stanton, knowing anything of the pet.i.tion), even in that case the "perils" of an investigation, which he affects to dread, were all on the side of his adversary. The necessity for the President of the United States, himself, to come forward as the one sole witness to his own accusation--especially when the charge involved an admission of his own delinquency, and was to be met by the loud and defiant denial of his arraigned subordinate--was enough, of itself, to deter the Chief Magistrate of a great nation from descending into so humiliating a combat.

But, to lay no stress upon this consideration, it must be manifest to any one acquainted with the state of public feeling at the time, that the single, uncorroborated testimony of the maligned, distrusted Andrew Johnson, branded as a traitor by the triumphant republican party, on the eve of impeachment, a hostile army under his nominal command, Stanton harnessed on his back, unfriendly private secretaries pervading his apartments, and detectives in his bed-chamber; in support of such a "disloyal" charge, disclosing, as it was sure to be a.s.serted, a latent remorse for the righteous fate of the she-a.s.sa.s.sin; would have been hailed in all military circles with derision. The popular, the eminently loyal, the politically sound Judge-Advocate, backed by Stanton, Bingham and Burnett, by his Bureau and his Court, by General Grant and the Army, had certainly nothing to fear.

But, though this hero of so many courts-martial appears to have had no mind for a dose of his own favorite remedy, he began, in his characteristic secret way, to collect testimony corroborative of his version of the confidential interview. He writes no letter to a single Cabinet officer. But, immediately after the close of the John H. Surratt trial (August 24, 1867), he writes to General Ekin reminding him of an interview, soon after the execution, in which he (Holt) mentioned that the President had seen the pet.i.tion; and he obtains from that officer the information he sought. In January, 1868, he quietly procures from two clerks in his office, letters testifying to the condition of the record when it arrived from the Commission, when the Judge-Advocate took it to carry to the President, and when he brought it back. It is needless to say that, though these clerks state that the page, on which the pet.i.tion was written, and the page, on which the latter portion of the death-warrant was written, are "directly face to face to each other;" they do not notice that, when the death-warrant was signed, the page, on which the pet.i.tion was written, must have been, either under the other pages of the record, or upside down.

In this same month, the resolution of the Senate refusing to concur in the suspension of Stanton was adopted (January 13th, 1868). General Grant, the Secretary of War _ad interim_, in violation of his promise to the President, as alleged by the latter, thereupon surrendered the office to the favorite War-Minister, who thus forced himself back among the confidential advisers of the President.

On the 21st of February, the President, with one last desperate stroke, removed him from office; and on the 24th, Andrew Johnson was impeached for this "high crime."

In the midst of his troubles, the President finds time to pardon Dr. Mudd (Feb. 8th), who soon returns to his family and friends.

The impeachment trial ends May 26th, the President escaping conviction by but one vote; and Stanton at last lets go his hold on the War office.

In December, 1868, the Judge-Advocate is privately seeking testimony from the Rev. J. George Butler, of Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 pet.i.tion 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, a.s.serting 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 a.s.sailing" 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 a.s.sociate, 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.

On the 11th day of February, 1873, Gen. Holt makes his appeal for testimony from the officers of Johnson's first Cabinet, by letter to John A. Bingham, requesting him to furnish his recollections of the late Stanton and the late Seward. On March 30th, 1873, he writes to James Speed, Ex-Attorney-General, inclosing a copy of Bingham's reply. On May 21st, 1873, he writes to James Harlan, Ex-Secretary of the Interior, inclosing a copy of Bingham's reply. In July, 1873, he writes to General Mussey, once Johnson's private secretary; and, in August, armed with the answers of these correspondents and with the letters he had gathered in 1867 and 1868, and unprovoked by any revivification of the old charge, he rushes into the columns of the Was.h.i.+ngton Chronicle with his formidable "Vindication."

CHAPTER IV.

THE TRIAL OF JOSEPH HOLT.

On the threshold of his Vindication, Gen. Holt revives the discredited and apparently forgotten declaration made by Mr. Pierrepont on the trial of John H. Surratt, and stakes his whole case upon the establishment of the truth of the allegation that the pet.i.tion for commutation, attached as it was to the record of the findings and sentences of the Military Commission, was the subject of consideration at a meeting of the Cabinet of President Johnson, and its prayer rejected with the concurrence of the members present at such meeting.

So long as the contention is limited to what took place during that momentous hour between the President and himself, "alone," with the light thrown upon it by the record including the endorsed death-warrant and the affixed paper, he exhibits a certain lack of confidence in the strength of his defense. For, although he prints the "circ.u.mstantial evidence," as he calls it, to sustain his own version of the "confidential interview"

(consisting of the two letters from his former clerk, heretofore alluded to, and the letter from Gen. Mussey saying that the "acting President"

told him of the recommendation "about that time"), he confesses it was not until he recently had secured certain testimony that the pet.i.tion had been considered by officers of the Cabinet, that he at length felt his case strong enough to warrant a public challenge of his adversary, and himself justified in submitting it to the public.

In short, we have a sort of reversal of the position of six years before.

_Then_, after having at first put forward the a.s.sertion that the pet.i.tion was considered by the Cabinet, the Judge-Advocate summarily suppresses that branch of his case, and puts into the foreground the explicit a.s.severation of the identical paper being "right before the President's eyes" when he signed the death-warrant. "He wants no misunderstanding about that." _Now_, while he keeps in mind, it is true, this version of the confidential interview, he relegates it to the rear, and const.i.tutes the Cabinet consideration the very citadel of his cause.

As to what takes place at a meeting of the Cabinet, its members of course are the first, if not the only, witnesses. And it is a matter of surprise that General Holt, so far as is apparent, never, in all these past years, applied to any one of them to substantiate so essential a part of his vindication. He states that he has always been satisfied that the matter must have been considered in the Cabinet, and adds that "from the confidential character of Cabinet deliberations" he has "thus far been denied access to this source of information." But he does not say when, or to whom, he applied for such "access," or how he had been "denied." It is certain, from what he says elsewhere, that he never applied to Stanton or to Seward; he admits in a subsequent communication that he never applied to McCulloch, Welles or Dennison; and, from the tenor of their letters now in reply to his, it appears he never applied before to Harlan or to Speed. And these are all the members of the Cabinet of President Johnson in July, 1865. Moreover, he does not, even now, in 1873, make application in the first instance to an ex-Cabinet officer. His first application is made to John A. Bingham, his old colleague in the prosecution of Mrs. Surratt, for Cabinet information in the shape of conversations with the two ministers, who, after so many years of unsolicited silence in life, are now silent, beyond the reach of solicitation, in death. And it is not until he has secured the desired information, which he would have us believe was entirely unexpected, that he is stirred up to the necessity of a public vindication of his character; and then he selects the two of the surviving ministers of the Cabinet, known to be hostile to the ex-President, as the objects of solicitation, sending them, as a spur to their recollections, the letter containing the reminiscences of his serviceable ally. But, by some fatality, the industrious inquirer takes nothing by his somewhat complicated manoeuvre. The letters he produces from Cabinet officers afford him no a.s.sistance. Judge Harlan can recall only an informal discussion by three or four members of the Cabinet (Seward, Stanton, himself and probably Speed) of the question of the commutation of the sentence of Mrs. Surratt because of her s.e.x; which, she being the one woman under condemnation, would surely arise in a tribunal of gentlemen, whether there was a recommendation or not, as in fact it did even among the stern soldiers of the Military Commission. But the writer, who, as Senator from the State of Iowa, had voted for the conviction of President Johnson, makes the positive declaration, that "no part of the record of the trial, the decision of the court, or the recommendation of clemency was at that time or ever at any time read in my (his) presence." He remembers, with undoubting distinctness, inquiring at the time whether the Attorney-General had examined the record, and was told that the whole case had been carefully examined by the Attorney-General and the Secretary of War; and he states that the question was never submitted to the Cabinet for a formal vote.

This letter is most significant, both for what it says and for what it refrains from saying. Its positive statement annihilates the story of a "full Cabinet" when "the vote of every member" was adverse, and indeed of any Cabinet meeting whatever, where the paper was present and considered--such a story as Judge Pierrepont first gathered from the "voice" of Holt; and the absence of all affirmation that the writer had either seen or heard of the recommendation, while he expressly states that it was never read in his presence (considering the occasion and object of the letter and the bias of the ex-Senator), warrants the conclusion that such a doc.u.ment was not mentioned at the informal Cabinet consultation he describes.

In any view, the letter furnishes no support to Holt's contention. The writer expressly negatives the presence of the record and the paper, and he does not affirm that such a pet.i.tion was alluded to, in terms, in the discussion in the presence of the President; which he surely would have done, in aid of his sorely tried friend, if such had been the fact.

The Judge-Advocate fares even worse at the hands of the Ex-Attorney-General. Here is a man who knew, if any other member of the Cabinet except Stanton knew, whether the paper in question ever came up for discussion before the President in his Cabinet. He goes so far as to say that, after the findings and before the execution, he saw the paper attached to the record "in the President's office;" a statement which reminds us of another of the same elusive and evasive character, (that the paper was "_before the President_"), and, like that, affirms nothing one way or the other as to the consciousness of the President of its presence.

And then he proceeds as follows:

"I do not feel at liberty to speak of what was said at Cabinet meetings.

In this I know I differ from other gentlemen" (presumably an allusion to the Seward and Stanton of Bingham's letter), "but feel constrained to follow my own sense of propriety."

His friend's necessity would have been met by something less than a repet.i.tion of what was _said_ at Cabinet meetings. He had only to tell whether he saw a certain paper (not in the President's office), but at a meeting of the President and his advisers, or knew of the recognition there of its mere existence;--a revelation which would not have violated the most punctilious sense of official propriety; and he feels constrained to withhold the least ray of light upon so simple a question.

The witness "declines to answer."

Ten years after the present controversy, Judge Holt, feeling acutely this weak point in his vindication, again appeals to Speed, in the most moving tones, to break his unaccountable silence and rescue his friend's gray head from "the atrocious accusation," "known to him to be false in its every intendment," with which that perfidious monster, dead now eight years, and, (as Holt significantly quotes), "gone to his own place,"

sought "to blacken the reputation of a subordinate officer holding a confidential interview with him."

And, strange to say, Speed first neglects even to reply to Holt's repeated communications for six months, and then just opens his lips to whisper, "I cannot say more than I have said." He had offered in private (if we may credit Holt) to write a letter to his aggrieved friend, giving him the desired information, "but not to be used until after Holt's death;" a proposition quite naturally discouraged by Holt, who made this sensible reply: "that a letter thus strangely withheld from the public would not, when it appeared, be credited."

But, when repeatedly implored to spread "the desired information" before the public, he again declines to answer. James Speed would not tell the truth, when by telling the truth he might relieve his old friend in "the closing hours of his life" from a most d.a.m.nable calumny, because, forsooth, "of his sense of propriety." He could not violate the secrecy of a Cabinet meeting, held nearly twenty years before; a secrecy which he had good reason to believe had already been broken, in the professed interest of truth, by three of his own colleagues, and, in the alleged interest of a most foul falsehood, by the President himself.

Before the Judge finally gives up his old a.s.sociate as hopeless, he craftily points out to him a way by which the ex-Cabinet officer may give his testimony without violating the most punctilious sense of propriety, not only, but without departing one iota from the literal truth. Since his first letter, General Holt informs him: "I have learned that although you gained the information while a member of the Cabinet, it was not strictly in your capacity as such, but that at the moment I laid before the President the record of the trial, with the recommendation for clemency on behalf of Mrs. Surratt, you chanced to be so situated as to be a.s.sured by the evidence of your own senses that such pet.i.tion of recommendation was by me presented to the President, and was the subject of conversation between him and myself." Does this mean that Speed was an unseen spectator of the confidential interview, and witnessed the writing of the death-warrant? At all events, for some reason, the ex-Attorney-General was afraid to accept this opportunity to equivocate.

Holt may well wonder at Speed's obstinate silence. He exclaims: "It is a mystery to me." It will be a mystery to every one, provided the black charge was false. But, on the hypothesis that the charge was true, that the paper was suppressed, either actually or virtually, there is no mystery.

Had Speed known that the paper was, not only "_before_" the President, but considered by him, either in or out of the Cabinet, it is beyond the limit of human credulity to believe, for a moment, that, with all possible motives to lead him to succor his friend, and with none to lead him to s.h.i.+eld the character of his dead political foe, he would not have uttered the one decisive word in the controversy. And he comes as near doing so as he dares, evidently. He shows, in 1873, a yearning to help his old friend--a yearning so strong that we may be sure it was not the frivolous pretext of "official propriety" which constrained him, then, much less in 1883.

If he, too, as Holt said of Stanton, feared the resentment of the dethroned Johnson in life, he certainly could not have feared the resentment of Johnson's ghost after death.

He must be numbered among those who,

"With arms enc.u.mbered thus, or this head-shake, Or by p.r.o.nouncing of some doubtful phrase, As, _'Well, well, we know;' or 'We could, an' if we would;' or 'If we list to speak;' or 'There be, an' if they might;'_"

"ambiguously give out" to know what they are sworn "never to speak of." If there was any oath-guarding "fellow in the cellarage," rest a.s.sured it was not the pale wraith of the hood-winked Johnson, but the blood-boltered spectre of his once wide-ruling Minister of War.