The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth Part 11

Between O'Laughlin and the next prisoner, Spangler, sits a soldier in ultramarine--a discontented soldier, a moody, dissatisfied, and arbitrary soldier. His definition of military justice is like the boy's answer at school to the familiar question upon the Const.i.tution of the United States:

"What rights do accused persons enjoy ?"

The boy wrote out, very carefully, this answer:

"Death by hanging."

The boy would have been correct had the question applied to accused persons before a court-martial.

Spangler, the scene-s.h.i.+fter and stage-carpenter, has the face and bearing of a day-laborer. His blue woollen s.h.i.+rt does not confuse him, as he is used to it. He has an oldish face, wrinkled by fearful antic.i.p.ations, and his hair is thin. He is awkwardly built, and watches the trial earnestly, as if striving to catch between the links of evidence vistas of a life insured. This man has a simple and pleading face, and there is something genial in his great, incoherent countenance. He is said to have cleared the stage for Booth's escape, but this is indifferently testified to. He had often been asked by Booth to take a drink at the nearest bar. Persons who drink a.s.sure me that the greatest mark of confidence which a great man can show a lesser one is to make that tender; this, therefore, explains Booth's power over Spangler.

Spangler is the first scene-s.h.i.+fter who may become a _dramatis personae_.

A soldier sits between Spangler and Doctor Mudd. The soldier would like Spangler to get up and go away, so that he could have as much of the bench as he might sleep upon. This particular soldier, I may be qualified to say, would sleep upon his post.

Doctor Mudd has a New England and not a Maryland face. He compares, to those on his left, as Hyperion to a squatter. His high, oval head is bald very far up, but not benevolently so, and it is covered with light red hair, so thin as to contrast indifferently with the denseness of his beard and goatee. His nose would be insignificant but for its sharpness, and at the nostrils it is swelling and high-spirited. His eyes impinge upon his brows, and they are s.h.i.+ning and rather dark, while the brows themselves are so scantily clothed with hair that they seem quite naked.

Mudd is neatly dressed in a green-gra.s.s duster, and white bosom and collar; if he had no other advantages over his a.s.sociates these last would give it to him. He keeps his feet upon the rail before him in true republican style, and rolls a morsel of tobacco under his tongue.

The military commission works as if it were delegated not to try, but to convict, and Dr. Mudd, if he be innocent, is in only less danger than if he were guilty. He has a sort of home-bred intelligence in his face, and socially is as far above his fellows as Goliah of Gath above the rest of the Philistines.

On the right of Doctor Mudd sits a soldier, who is striving to look through his legs at the judge-advocate, as if taking a sort of secret aim at that person, with the intent to fetch him down, because he makes the trial so very dry, and the soldier so very thirsty.

The last man, who sits on the extreme right of the prisoners, is Mr.

Sam. Arnold. He is, perhaps, the best looking of the prisoners, and the least implicated. He has a solid, pleasant face; has been a rebel soldier, foolishly committed himself to Booth, with perhaps no intention to do a crime, recanted in pen and ink, and was made a national character. Had he recanted by word of mouth he might have saved himself unpleasant dreams. This shows everybody the absurdity of writing what they can so easily say. The best thing Arnold ever wrote was his letter to Booth refusing to engage in murder. Yet this recantation is more in evidence against than then his original purpose.

Arnold looks out of the window, and feels easy.

The reporters who are present are generally young fellows, practical and ardent, like Woods, of Boston; Colburn, of THE WORLD; and Major Poore, who has been the chronicler of such scenes for twenty years. Ber.

Pitman, one of the authors of phonetic writing, is among the official reporters, and the Murphies, who could report the lightning, if it could talk, are slas.h.i.+ng down history as it pa.s.ses in at their ears and runs out at their fingers' ends.

The counsel for the accused strike me as being commonplace lawyers. They either have no chance or no pluck to a.s.sert the dignity of their profession. Reverdy Johnson is not here. The first day disgusted him, as he is a pract.i.tioner of _law_. Yet the best word of the trial has been his:

"I, gentlemen, am a member of that body of legislators which creates courts-martial and major-generals!"

The commission has collectively an imposing appearance: the face of Judge Holt is swarthy; he questions with slow utterance, holding the witness in his cold, measuring eye. Hunter, who sits at the opposite end of the table, shuts his eyes now and then, either to sleep or think, or both, and the other generals take a note or two, and watch for occasions to distinguish themselves.

Excepting Judge Holt, the court has shown as little ability as could be expected from soldiers, placed in unenviable publicity, and upon a duty for which they are disqualified, both by education and ac.u.men. Witness the lack of dignity in Hunter, who opened the court by a coa.r.s.e allusion to "humbug chivalry;" of Lew. Wallace, whose heat and intolerance were appropriately urged in the most exceptional English; of Howe, whose tirade against the rebel General Johnson was feeble as it was ungenerous! This court was needed to show us at least the petty tyranny of martial law and the pettiness of martial jurists. The counsel for the defence have just enough show to make the unfairness of the trial partake of hypocrisy, and the wideness of the subjects discussed makes one imagine that the object of the commission is to write a cyclopedia, and not to hang or acquit six or eight miserable wretches.

LETTER IX.

THE EXECUTIONS.

Was.h.i.+ngton, Friday, July 7th.

The trial is over; four of the conspirators have paid with their lives the penalty of the Great Conspiracy; the rest go to the jail, and with one exception for the remainder of their lives.

Whatever our individual theories may be, the great crime is ended, and this is the crowning scene:

It was a long and dusty avenue, along which rambled soldiers in bluishly white coats, cattle with their tongues out, straying from the herd, and a few negroes making for their cabins, which dotted the fiery and vacant lots of the suburbs. At the foot of this avenue, where a lukewarm river holds between its dividing arms a dreary edifice of brick, the way was filled with collected cabs, and elbowing people, ab.u.t.ting against a circle of sentinels who kept the a.r.s.enal gate. The low, flat, dust-white fields to the far left were also lined with patrols and soldiers lying on the ground in squads beside their stacked muskets. Within these a second blue and monotonous line extended. The drive from the a.r.s.enal gate to the a.r.s.enal's high and steel-spiked wall was beset by companies of exacting sabremen, and all the river bank to the right was edged with blue and bayonets. This exhibition of war was the prelude to a very ghastly but very popular episode--an execution. Three men and a woman were to be led out in shackles and hung to a beam. They had conspired to take life; they had thrilled the world with the partial consummation of their plot; they were to reach the last eminence of a.s.sa.s.sins, on this parched and oppressive noon, by swinging in pinioned arms and m.u.f.fled faces in the presence of a thousand people.

The bayonets at the gate were lifted as I produced my pa.s.s. It was the last permission granted. In giving it away the General seemed relieved, for he had been sorely troubled by applications. Everybody who had visited Was.h.i.+ngton to seek for an office, sought to see this expiation also. The officer at the gate looked at my pa.s.s suspiciously. "I don't believe that all these papers have been genuine," he said. Is an execution, then, so great a warning to evil-doers, that men will commit forgery to see it?

I entered a large gra.s.sy yard, surrounded by an exceedingly high wall.

On the top of this wall, soldiers with muskets in their hands, were thickly planted. The yard below was broken by irregular buildings of brick. I climbed by a flight of rickety outside stairs to the central building, where many officers were seated at the windows, and looked awhile at the strange scene on the gra.s.sy plaza. On the left, the long, barred, impregnable penitentiary rose. The shady spots beneath it were occupied by huddling spectators. Soldiers were filling their canteens at the pump. A face or two looked out from the barred jail. There were many umbrellas hoisted on the ground to shelter civilians beneath them.

Squads of officers and citizens lay along the narrow shadow of the walls. The north side of the yard was enclosed on three sides by columns of soldiers drawn up in regular order, the side next to the penitentiary being short to admit of ingress to the prisoner's door; but the opposite column reached entirely up to the north wall.

Within this enclosed area a structure to be inhabited by neither the living nor the dead was fast approaching completion. It stood gaunt, lofty, long. Saws and hammers made dolorous music on it. Men, in their s.h.i.+rt sleeves, were measuring it and directing its construction in a business way. Now and then some one would ascend its airy stair to test its firmness; others crawled beneath to wedge its slim supports, or carry away the falling debris.

Toward this skeleton edifice all looked with a strange nervousness. It was the thought and speculation of the gravest and the gayest.

It was the gallows.

A beam reached, horizontally, in the air, twenty feet from the ground; four awkward ropes, at irregular intervals, dangled from it, each noosed at the end. It was upheld by three props, one in the center and one at each end. These props came all the way to the ground where they were morticed in heavy bars. Midway of them a floor was laid, twenty by twelve feet, held in its position on the farther side by shorter props, of which there were many, and reached by fifteen creaking steps, railed on either side. But this floor had no supports on the side nearest the eye, except two temporary rods, at the foot of which two inclined beams pointed menacingly, held in poise by ropes from the gallows floor.

And this floor was presently discovered to be a cheat, a trap, a pitfall.

Two hinges only held it to its firmer half. These were to give way at the fatal moment, and leave only the shallow and unreliable air for the bound and smothering to tread upon.

The traps were two, sustained by two different props.

The nooses were on each side of the central support.

Was this all?

Not all.

Close by the foot of the gallows four wooden boxes were piled upon each other at the edge of four newly excavated pits, the fresh earth of which was already dried and brittle in the burning noon.

Here were to be interred the broken carca.s.ses when the gallows had let go its throttle. They were so placed as the victims should emerge from the gaol door they would be seen near the stair directly in the line of march.

And not far from these, in silence and darkness beneath the prison where they had lain so long and so forbodingly, the body of John Wilkes Booth, sealed up in the brick floor, had long been mouldering. If the dead can hear he had listened many a time to the rattle of their manacles upon the stairs, to the drowsy hum of the trial and the buzz of the garrulous spectators; to the moaning, or the gibing, or the praying in the bolted cells where those whom kindred fate had given a little lease upon life lay waiting for the terrible p.r.o.nouncement.

It was a long waiting, and the roof of a high house outside the walls was seen to be densely packed with people. Others kept arriving moment by moment; soldiers were wondering when the swinging would begin and officers arguing that the four folks "deserved it, d.a.m.n them!" Gentlemen of experience were telling over the number of such expiations they had witnessed. a.n.a.lytic people were comparing the various modes of shooting, garroting, and guillotining. Cigars were sending up spirals of soothing smoke. There was a good deal of covert fear that a reprieve might be granted. Inquires were many and ingenuous for whisky, and one or two were so deeply expectant that they fell asleep.

How much those four dying, hoping, cringing, dreaming felons were grudged their little gasp of life! It was to be a scene, not a postponement or a prolongation. "Who was to be the executioner?" "Why had not the renowned and artistic Isaacs been sent for from New York?"

"Would they probably die game, or grow weak-kneed in the last extremity?" Ah, the gallows' workmen have completed the job! "Now then we should have it."

Still there was delay. The sun peeped into the new-made graves and made blistering hot the gallows' floor. The old pump made its familiar music to the cool plash of blessed water. The gra.s.s withered in the fervid heat. The bronzed faces of the soldiers ran lumps of sweat. The file upon the jail walls looked down into the wide yard yawningly. No wind fluttered the two battle standards condemned to unfold their trophies upon this coming profanation. Not yet arrived. Why? The extent of grace has almost been attained. The sentence gave them only till two o'clock!

Why are they so dilatory in wis.h.i.+ng to be hanged?

Suddenly the wicket opens, the troops spring to their feet, and stand at order arms, the flags go up, the low order pa.s.ses from company to company; the spectators huddle a little nearer to the scaffold; all the writers for the press produce their pencils and note-books.

First came a woman pinioned.

A middle-aged woman, dressed in black, bonnetted and veiled, walking between two bare-headed priests.