The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth Part 13

Atzerott died easily. Life did not care to fight for his possession.

The two central figures lived long after the two upon the flanks.

There they hung, bundles of carca.s.s and old clothes, four in a row, and past all conspiracy or ambition, the river rolling by without a sound, and men watching them with a s.h.i.+ver, while the heat of the day seemed suddenly abated, as if by the sudden opening of a tomb.

The officers conversed in a half-audible tone; the reporters put up their books; the a.s.sistants descended from the gallows; and the medical men drew near. No wind stirred the unbreathing bodies, they were stone dead.

The bodies were allowed to hang about twenty minutes, when surgeon Otis, U. S. V., and a.s.sistant Surgeons Woodward and Porter, U. S. A., examined them and p.r.o.nounced all dead. In about ten minutes more a ladder was placed against the scaffold preparatory to cutting the bodies down. An over-zealous soldier on the platform reached over and severed the cord, letting one body fall with a thump, when he was immediately ordered down and reprimanded. The body of Atzerott was placed in a strong white pine box, and the other bodies cut down in the following order, Harold, Powell, and Mrs. Surratt.

The carca.s.ses thus recovered were given over to a squad of soldiers and each placed in a pine box without uncovering the faces. The boxes were forthwith placed in the pits prepared for them, and directly all but the memory of their offense pa.s.sed from the recording daylight.

In the gloomy shadow of that a.r.s.enal lies all the motive, and essay of a crime which might have changed the destinies of our race. It will be forever a place of suspicion and marvel, the haunted spot of the Capitol, and the terror of all who to end a fancied evil, cut their way to right with a dagger.

EXTRA MURAL SCENES.

As everything connected with this expiation will be greedily read I compile from gossip and report a statement of the last intramural hours of the prisoners.

During the morning a female friend of Atzerott, from Port Tobacco, had an interview with him--she leaving him about eleven o'clock. He made the following statement:

He took a room at the Kirkwood House on Thursday, in order to get a pa.s.s from Vice-President Johnson to go to Richmond. Booth was to lease the Richmond theater and the President was to be invited to attend it when visiting Richmond, and captured there. Harold brought the pistol and knife to the room about half-past two o'clock on Friday. He (Atzerott) said he would have nothing to do with the murder of Johnson, when Booth said that Harold had more courage than Atzerott, and he wanted Atzerott to be with Harold to urge him to do it. There was a meeting at a restaurant about the middle of March, at which John Surratt, O'Laughlin, Booth, Arnold, Payne, Harold and himself were present, when a plan to capture the President was discussed. They had heard the President was to visit a camp, and they proposed to capture him, coach and all, drive through long old fields to "T. B.," where the coach was to be left and fresh horses were to be got, and the party would proceed to the river to take a boat. Harold took a buggy to "T. B." in antic.i.p.ation that Mr.

Lincoln would be captured, and he was to go with the party to the river.

Slavery had put him on the side of the South. He had heard it preached in church that the curse of G.o.d was upon the slaves, for they were turned black. He always hated the n.i.g.g.e.r and felt that they should be kept in ignorance. He had not received any money from Booth, although he had been promised that if they were successful they should never want, that they would be honored throughout the South, and that they could secure an exchange of prisoners and the recognition of the confederacy.

Harold slept well several hours, but most of the night he was sitting up, either engaged with his pastor, Rev. Mr. Olds, of Christ Church, or in prayer. His sisters were with him from an early hour this morning to twelve o'clock; they being present when he partook of the sacrament at the hands of Dr. Olds. The parting was particularly affecting. Harold conversed freely with them, and expressed himself prepared to die.

Powell conversed with Dr. Gillette and Dr. Striker on religious topics during the morning, sitting erect, as he did in the court-room. From his conversation it appears that he was raised religiously, and belonged to the Baptist church until after the breaking out of the rebellion. He appeared to be sincerely repentant, and in his cell shed tears freely.

He gave his advisers several commissions of a private character, and stated that he was willing to meet his G.o.d, asking all men to forgive, and forgiving all who had done aught against him. Colonel Doster, his counsel, also took leave of him during the morning, as well as with Atzerott.

Mrs. Surratt's daughter was with her at an early hour. One of her male friends also had an interview with her, and received directions concerning the disposition of her property. During the night and morning she received the ministrations of Revs. J. A. Walter and B. F. Wigett, and conversed freely with them, expressing, while protesting her innocence, her willingness to meet her G.o.d. Her counsel, Messrs. Aiken & Clampitt, took leave of her during the morning.

A singular feature of this execution was the arrest of General Hanc.o.c.k this morning, who appeared in court, to answer a writ of _habeas corpus_, with a full staff. It is well to notice that this execution by military order has not, therefore, pa.s.sed without civil protest.

President Johnson extended to General Hanc.o.c.k the right conferred upon the President by Congress of setting aside the _habeas corpus_.

As usual in such executions as this, there were many stirring outside episodes, and much shrewd mixture of tragedy and business. A photographer took note of the scene in all its phases, from a window of a portion of the jail. Six artists were present, and thirty seven special correspondents, who came to Was.h.i.+ngton only for this occasion.

The pa.s.ses to the execution were written not printed, and, excepting the bungling mechanism of the scaffold, the sorrowful event went off with more than usual good order. Every body feels relieved to night, because half of the crime is buried.

On Monday, Mudd, Arnold, O'Laughlin, and Spangler, will go northward to prison. The three former for life, the last for six years.

Applications for pardon were made yesterday and to-day to President Johnson, by Mrs. Samuel Mudd, who is quite woe-begone and disappointed, in behalf of her husband, by the sisters of Harold, and by Miss Ann Surratt. Harold's sisters, dressed in full mourning and heavily veiled, made their appearance at the White House, for the purpose of interceding with the President in behalf of their brother. Failing to see the President, they addressed a note to Mrs. Johnson, and expressed a hope that she would not turn a deaf ear to their pleadings. Mrs. Johnson being quite sick, it was deemed expedient by the ushers not to deliver the note, when, as a last expedient, the ladies asked permission to forward a note to Mrs. Patterson, the President's daughter, which privilege was not granted, as Mrs. Patterson is also quite indisposed to-day. The poor girls went away with their last hope shattered.

The misery of the pretty and heart-broken daughter of Mrs. Surratt is the talk of the city. This girl appears to have loved her mother with all the petulant pa.s.sion of a child. She visited her constantly, and to-day made so stirring an effort to obtain her life that her devotion takes half the disgrace from the mother. She got the priests to speak in her behalf. Early to-day she knelt in the cell at her mother's feet, and sobbed, with now and then a pitiful scream till the gloomy corridors rang. She endeavored to win from Payne a statement that her mother was not accessory, and, as a last resort, flung herself upon the steps of the White-House, and made that portal memorable by her filial tears.

About half-past 8 o'clock this morning, Miss Surratt, accompanied by a female friend, again visited the White-House, for the purpose of obtaining an interview with the President. The latter having given orders that he would receive no one to-day, the door-keeper stopped Miss Surratt at the foot of the steps leading up to the President's office, and would not permit her to proceed further. She then asked permission to see General Muzzy, the president's military secretary, who promptly answered the summons, and came down stairs where Miss Surratt was standing. As soon as the general made his appearance, Miss Surratt threw herself upon her knees before him, and catching him by the coat, with loud sobs and streaming eyes, implored him to a.s.sist her in obtaining a hearing with the President. General Muzzy, in as tender a manner as possible, informed Miss Surratt that he could not comply with her request, as President Johnson's orders were imperative, and he would receive no one. Upon General Muzzy returning to his office, Miss Surratt threw herself upon the stair steps, where she remained a considerable length of time, sobbing aloud in the greatest anguish, protesting her mother's innocence, and imploring every one who came near her to intercede in her mother's behalf.

While thus weeping she declared her mother was too good and kind to be guilty of the enormous crime of which she was convicted, and a.s.serted that if her mother was put to death she wished to die also. She was finally allowed to sit in the east room, where she lay in wait for all who entered, hoping to make them efficacious in her behalf, all the while uttering her weary heart in a woman's touching cries: but at last, certain of disappointment, she drove again to the jail and lay in her mother's cell, with the heavy face of one who brings ill-news. The parting will consecrate those gloomy walls. The daughter saw the mother pinioned and kissed her wet face as she went shuddering to the scaffold.

The last words of Mrs. Surratt, as she went out of the jail, were addressed to a gentleman whom she had known.

"Good-bye, take care of Annie."

To-night there is c.r.a.pe on the door of the Surratt's, and a lonely lamp s.h.i.+nes at a single window, where the sad orphan is thinking of her bereavement.

The bodies of the dead have been applied for but at present will not given up.

Judge Holt was pet.i.tioned all last night for the lives and liberties of the condemned, but he was inexorable.

The soldiers who hung the condemned were appointed against their will. I forbear to give their names as they do not wish the repute of executioners. They all belonged to the Fourteenth Veteran Reserve Infantry.

Here endeth the story of this tragedy upon a tragedy. All are glad that it is done. I am glad particularly. It has cost me how many journeying to Was.h.i.+ngton, how many hot midnights at the telegraph office, how many gallops into wild places, and how much revolting familiarity with blood.

The end has come. The slain, both good and evil, are in their graves, out of the reach of hangman and a.s.sa.s.sin. Only the correspondent never dies. He is the true Pantheist--going out of nature for a week, but bursting forth afresh in a day, and so insinuating himself into the history of our era that it is beginning to be hard to find out where the event ends and the writer begins.

Next week Ford's Theater opens with the "Octoroon." The gas will be pearly as ever; the scenes as rich. The blood-stained foot-lights will flash as of old upon merry and mimicking faces. So the world has its tragic ebullitions; but its real career is comedy. Over the graves of the good and the scaffolds of the evil, sits the leering Momus across whose face death sometimes brings sleep, but never a wrinkle.