THE LIFE, CRIME, AND CAPTURE

OF

JOHN WILKES BOOTH, WITH A FULL SKETCH OF THE

Conspiracy of which he was the Leader, AND THE

PURSUIT, TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF HIS ACCOMPLICES. 

BY GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND, A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT. 

[Illustration: THE LIFE, CRIME, AND CAPTURE OF John Wilkes Booth AND THEPURSUIT, TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF HIS ACCOMPLICES. ]

EXPLANATORY. 

One year ago the writer of the letters which follow, visited the BattleField of Waterloo. In looking over many relics of the combat preservedin the Museum there, he was particularly interested in the files ofjournals contemporary with the action. These contained the Duke ofWellington's first despatch announcing the victory, the reports of thesubordinate commanders, and the current gossip as to the episodes andhazards of the day. 

The time will come when remarkable incidents of these our times will bea staple of as great curiosity as the issue of Waterloo. It is anincident without a precedent on this side of the globe, and never to berepeated. 

Assassination has made its last effort to become indigenous here. Thepublic sentiment of Loyalist and Rebel has denounced it: the world hasremarked it with uplifted hands and words of execration. Therefore, aslong as history shall hold good, the murder of the President will be atheme for poesy, romance and tragedy. We who live in this consecratedtime keep the sacred souvenirs of Mr. Lincoln's death in our possession;and the best of these are the news letters descriptive of hisapotheosis, and the fate of the conspirators who slew him. 

I represented the _World_ newspaper at Washington during the whole ofthose exciting weeks, and wrote their occurrences fresh from the mouthsof the actors. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, By DICK & FITZGERALD, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for theSouthern District of New York. 

PREFATORY. 

It has seemed fitting to Messrs. DICK & FITZGERALD to reproduce the_World_ letters, as a keepsake for the many who received them kindly. The Sketches appended were conscientiously written, and whateverembellishments they may seem to have grew out of the stirringevents, --not out of my fancy. 

Subsequent investigation has confirmed the veracity even of theirspeculations. I have arranged them, but have not altered them; if theyrepresent nothing else, they do carry with them the fever and spirit ofthe time. But they do not assume to be literal history: We live tooclose to the events related to decide positively upon them. As abrochure of the day, --nothing more, --I give these Sketches of aCorrespondent to the public. 

G. A. T. 

THE LIFE, CRIME, AND CAPTURE

OF

JOHN WILKES BOOTH. 

LETTER I. 

THE MURDER. 

Washington, April 17. 

Some very deliberate and extraordinary movements were made by a handsomeand extremely well-dressed young man in the city of Washington lastFriday. At about half-past eleven o'clock A. M. , this person, whose nameis J. Wilkes Booth, by profession an actor, and recently engaged in oilspeculations, sauntered into Ford's Theater, on Tenth, between E and Fstreets, and exchanged greetings with the man at the box-office. In theconversation which ensued, the ticket agent informed Booth that a boxwas taken for Mr. Lincoln and General Grant, who were expected to visitthe theater, and contribute to the benefit of Miss Laura Keene, andsatisfy the curiosity of a large audience. Mr. Booth went away with ajest, and a lightly-spoken "Good afternoon. " Strolling down toPumphreys' stable, on C street, in the rear of the National Hotel, heengaged a saddle horse, a high-strung, fast, beautiful bay mare, tellingMr. Pumphreys that he should call for her in the middle of theafternoon. 

From here he went to the Kirkwood Hotel, on the corner of Pennsylvaniaavenue and Twelfth street, where, calling for a card and a sheet ofnotepaper, he sat down and wrote upon the first as follows:

_For Mr. Andrew Johnson_:--

I don't wish to disturb you; are you at home?

J. W. Booth. 

To this message, which was sent up by the obliging clerk, Mr. Johnsonresponded that he was very busily engaged. Mr. Booth smiled, and turningto his sheet of note-paper, wrote on it. The fact, if fact it is, thathe had been disappointed in not obtaining an examination of theVice-President's apartment and a knowledge of the Vice-President'sprobable whereabouts the ensuing evening, in no way affected hiscomposure. The note, the contents of which are unknown, was signed andsealed within a few moments. Booth arose, bowed to an acquaintance, andpassed into the street. His elegant person was seen on the avenue a fewminutes, and was withdrawn into the Metropolitan Hotel. 

At 4 P. M. , he again appeared at Pumphreys' livery stable, mounted themare he had engaged, rode leisurely up F street, turned into an alleybetween Ninth And Tenth streets, and thence into an alley reloading tothe rear of Ford's Theater, which fronts on Tenth street, between E andF streets. Here he alighted and deposited the mare in a small stable offthe alley, which he had hired sometime before for the accommodation of asaddle-horse which he had recently sold. Mr. Booth soon afterwardretired from the stable, and is supposed to have refreshed himself at aneighboring bar-room. 

At 8 o'clock the same evening, President Lincoln and Speaker Colfax sattogether in a private room at the White House, pleasantly conversing. General Grant, with whom the President had engaged to attend Ford'sTheater that evening, had left with his wife for Burlington, New-Jersey, in the 6 o'clock train. After this departure Mr. Lincoln ratherreluctantly determined to keep his part of the engagement, rather thanto disappoint his friends and the audience. Mrs. Lincoln, entering theroom and turning to Mr. Colfax, said, in a half laughing, half seriousway, "Well, Mr. Lincoln, are you going to the theater with me or not?""I suppose I shall have to go, Colfax, " said the President, and theSpeaker took his leave in company with Major Rathbone, of theProvost-Marshal General's office, who escorted Miss Harris, daughter ofSenator Harris, of New York. Mr. And Mrs. Lincoln reached Ford's Theaterat twenty minutes before 9 o'clock. 

The house was filled in every part with a large and brilliantly attiredaudience. As the presidential party ascended the stairs, and passedbehind the dress circle to the entrance of the private box reserved forthem, the whole assemblage, having in mind the recent Union victories, arose, cheered, waving hats and handkerchiefs, and manifesting everyother accustomed sign of enthusiasm. The President, last to enter thebox, turned before doing so, and bowed a courteous acknowledgment of hisreception--At the moment of the President's arrival, Mr. Hawks, one ofthe actors, performing the well-known part of Dundreary, had exclaimed:"This reminds me of a story, as Mr. Lincoln says. " The audience forcedhim, after the interruption, to tell the story over again. It evidentlypleased Mr. Lincoln, who turned laughingly to his wife and made a remarkwhich was not overheard. 

[Illustration: Scene of the Assassination. 

_X_ President's Position. _A_ The course of the Assassin after theMurder. _BB_ Movable partition not in use on the night of theAssassination. _D_ Door through which the Assassin looked in taking aim. _C_ Closed door through which pistol ball was fired. ]

The box in which the President sat consisted of two boxes turned intoone, the middle partition being removed, as on all occasions when astate party visited the theater. The box was on a level with the dresscircle; about twelve feet above the stage. There were two entrances--thedoor nearest to the wall having been closed and locked; the door nearestthe balustrades of the dress circle, and at right angles with it, beingopen and left open, after the visitors had entered. The interior wascarpeted, lined with crimson paper, and furnished with a sofa coveredwith crimson velvet, three arm chairs similarly covered, and sixcane-bottomed chairs. Festoons of flags hung before the front of the boxagainst a background of lace. 

President Lincoln took one of the arm-chairs and seated himself in thefront of the box, in the angle nearest the audience, where, partiallyscreened from observation, he had the best view of what was transpiringon the stage. Mrs. Lincoln sat next to him, and Miss Harris in theopposite angle nearest the stage. Major Rathbone sat just behind Mrs. Lincoln and Miss Harris. These four were the only persons in the box. 

The play proceeded, although "Our American Cousin, " without Mr. Sothern, has, since that gentleman's departure from this country, been justlyesteemed a very dull affair. The audience at Ford's, including Mrs. Lincoln, seemed to enjoy it very much. The worthy wife of the Presidentleaned forward, her hand upon her husband's knee, watching every scenein the drama with amused attention. Even across the President's face atintervals swept a smile, robbing it of its habitual sadness. 

About the beginning of the second act, the mare, standing in the stablein the rear of the theater, was disturbed in the midst of her meal bythe entrance of the young man who had quitted her in the afternoon. Itis presumed that she was saddled and bridled with exquisite care. 

Having completed these preparations, Mr. Booth entered the theater bythe stage door; summoned one of the scene shifters, Mr. John Spangler, emerged through the same door with that individual, leaving the dooropen, and left the mare in his hands to be held until he (Booth) shouldreturn. Booth who was even more fashionably and richly dressed thanusual, walked thence around to the front of the theater, and went in. Ascending to the dress circle, he stood for a little time gazing aroundupon the audience and occasionally upon the stage in his usual gracefulmanner. He was subsequently observed by Mr. Ford, the proprietor of thetheater, to be slowly elbowing his way through the crowd that packed therear of the dress circle toward the right side, at the extremity ofwhich was the box where Mr. And Mrs. Lincoln and their companions wereseated. Mr. Ford casually noticed this as a slightly extraordinarysymptom of interest on the part of an actor so familiar with the routineof the theater and the play. 

The curtain had arisen on the third act, _Mrs. Mountchessington_ and_Asa Trenchard_ were exchanging vivacious stupidities, when a young man, so precisely resembling the one described as J. Wilkes Booth that be isasserted to be the same, appeared before the open door of thePresident's box, and prepared to enter. 

The servant who attended Mr. Lincoln said politely, "this is thePresident's box, sir, no one is permitted to enter. " "I am a senator, "responded the person, "Mr. Lincoln has sent for me. " The attendant gaveway, and the young man passed into the box. 

As he appeared at the door, taking a quick, comprehensive glance at theinterior, Major Rathbone arose. "Are you aware, sir, " he said, courteously, "upon whom you are intruding? This is the President's box, and no one is admitted. " The intruder answered not a word. Fastening hiseyes upon Mr. Lincoln, who had half turned his head to ascertain whatcaused the disturbance, he stepped quickly back without the door. 

Without this door there was an eyehole, bored it is presumed on theafternoon of the crime, while the theater was deserted by all save a fewmechanics. Glancing through this orifice, John Wilkes Booth espied in amoment the precise position of the President; he wore upon his wrinklingface the pleasant embryo of an honest smile, forgetting in the mimicscene the splendid successes of our arms for which he was responsible, and the history he had filled so well. 

The cheerful interior was lost to J. Wilkes Booth. He did not catch thespirit of the delighted audience, of the flaming lamps flingingillumination upon the domestic foreground and the gaily set stage. Heonly cast one furtive glance upon the man he was to slay, and thrustingone hand in his bosom, another in his skirt pocket, drew forthsimultaneously his deadly weapons. His right palm grasped a Derringerpistol, his left a dirk. 

Then, at a stride, he passed the threshold again, levelled his arm atthe President and bent the trigger. 

A keen quick report and a puff of white smoke, --a close smell of powderand the rush of a dark, imperfectly outlined figure, --and thePresident's head dropped upon his shoulders: the ball was in his brain. 

[Illustration: Map. The Theatre and its Surroundings. 

_A_ Public School. _B_ Herndon House. _C_ Only vacant lot communicatingwith the Alley. _D_ Only alley outlet to F street. _E_ Bank. _X_Restaurant. _G_ Newspaper Office. _H_ Model House. _I_ House to whichthe President was taken. _K_ Alley through which the Murderer escaped. ]

The movements of the assassin were from henceforth quick as thelightning, he dropped his pistol on the floor, and drawing abowie-knife, struck Major Rathbone, who opposed him, ripping through hiscoat from the shoulder down, and inflicting a severe flesh wound in hisarm. He leaped then upon the velvet covered balustrade at the front ofthe box, between Mrs. Lincoln and Miss Harris, and, parting with bothhands the flags that drooped on either side, dropped to the stagebeneath. Arising and turning full upon the audience, with the knifelifted in his right hand above his head, he shouted "_Sic, sempertyrannis_--Virginia is avenged!" Another instant he had fled across thestage and behind the scenes. Colonel J. B. Stewart, the only person inthe audience who seemed to comprehend the deed he had committed, climbedfrom his seat near the orchestra to the stage, and followed closebehind. The assassin was too fleet and too desperate, that furyincarnate, meeting Mr. Withers, the leader of the orchestra, just behindthe scenes, had stricken him aside with a blow that fortunately was nota wound; overturning Miss Jenny Gourlay, an actress, who came next inhis path, he gained, without further hindrance, the back door previouslyleft open at the rear of the theater; rushed through it; leaped upon thehorse held by Mr. Spangler, and without vouchsafing that person a wordof information, rode out through the alley leading into F street, andthence rapidly away. His horse's hoofs might almost have been heard amidthe silence that for a few seconds dwelt in the interior of the theater. 

[Illustration: _A_ Miss Laura Keene's Position. _D_ Movable partitionwall not in place on Friday. _P_ Position of the President. _X_ Flats. _B_ Dark Passage-way--Position of Sentry. _E_ Exit, or Stage Door. _MM_Entrance to Box. _CCC_ Entrance to Dress Circle, _H_ Position of Booth'sHorse. ]

Then Mrs. Lincoln screamed, Miss Harris cried for water, and the fullghastly truth broke upon all--"The President is murdered!" The scenethat ensued was as tumultuous and terrible as one of Dante's pictures ofhell. Some women fainted, others uttered piercing shrieks, and cries forvengeance and unmeaning shouts for help burst from the mouths of men. Miss Laura Keene, the actress, proved herself in this awful time asequal to sustain a part in real tragedy as to interpret that of thestage. Pausing one moment before the footlights to entreat the audienceto be calm, she ascended the stairs in the rear of Mr. Lincoln's box, entered it, took the dying President's head in her lap, bathed it withthe water she had brought, and endeavoured to force some of the liquidthrough the insensible lips. The locality of the wound was at firstsupposed to be in the breast. It was not until after the neck andshoulders had been bared and no mark discovered, that the dress of MissKeene, stained with blood, revealed where the ball had penetrated. 

This moment gave the most impressive episode in the history of theContinent. 

The Chief Magistrate of thirty, millions of people--beloved, honored, revered, --lay in the pent up closet of a play-house, dabbling with hissacred blood the robes of an actress. 

As soon as the confusion and crowd was partially overcome, the form ofthe President was conveyed from the theater to the residence of Mr. Peterson, on the opposite side of Tenth street. Here upon a bed, in alittle hastily prepared chamber, it was laid and attended bySurgeon-General Barnes and other physicians, speedily summoned. 

In the meanwhile the news spread through the capital, as if borne ontongues of flame. Senator Sumner, hearing at his residence, of theaffair took a carriage and drove at a gallop to the White House, when heheard where it had taken place, to find Robert Lincoln and other membersof the household still unaware of it. Both drove to Ford's Theater, andwere soon at the President's bedside. Secretary Stanton and the othermembers of the cabinet were at hand almost as soon. A vast crowd, surging up Pennsylvania avenue toward Willard's Hotel, cried, "ThePresident is shot!" "President Lincoln is murdered. " Another crowdsweeping down the avenue met the first with the tidings, "SecretarySeward has been assassinated in bed. " Instantly a wild apprehension ofan organized conspiracy and of other murders took possession of thepeople. The shout "to arms!" was mingled with the expressions of sorrowand rage that everywhere filled the air. "Where is General Grant?" or"where is Secretary Stanton!" "Where are the rest of the cabinet?" brokefrom thousands of lips. A conflagration of fire is not half so terribleas was the conflagration of passion that rolled through the streets andhouses of Washington on that awful night. 

The attempt on the life of Secretary Seward was perhaps as daring, ifnot so dramatic, as the assassination of the President. At 9:20 o'clocka man, tall, athletic, and dressed in light coloured clothes, alightedfrom a horse in front of Mr. Seward's residence in Madison place, wherethe secretary was lying, very feeble from his recent injuries. Thehouse, a solid three-story brick building, was formerly the oldWashington Club-house. Leaving his horse standing, the stranger rang atthe door, and informed the servant who admitted him that he desired tosee Mr. Seward. The servant responded that Mr. Seward was very ill, andthat no visitors were admitted. "But I am a messenger from Dr. Verdi, Mr. Seward's physician; I have a prescription which I must deliver tohim myself. " The servant still demurring, the stranger, without furtherparley, pushed him aside and ascended the stairs. Moving to the right, he proceeded towards Mr. Seward's room, and was about to enter it, whenMr. Frederick Seward appeared from an opposite doorway and demanded hisbusiness. He responded in the same manner as to the servant below, butbeing met with a refusal, suddenly closed the controversy by strikingMr. Seward a severe and perhaps mortal blow across the forehead with thebutt of a pistol. As the first victim fell, Major Seward, another andyounger son of the secretary, emerged from his father's room. Without aword the man drew a knife and struck the major several blows with it, rushing into the chamber as he did so; then, after dealing the nurse ahorrible wound across the bowels, he sprang to the bed upon which thesecretary lay, stabbing him once in the face and neck. Mr. Seward aroseconvulsively and fell from the bed to the floor. Turning and brandishinghis knife anew, the assassin fled from the room, cleared the prostrateform of Frederick Seward in the hall, descended the stairs in threeleaps, and was out of the door and upon his horse in an instant. It isstated by a person who saw him mount that, although he leaped upon hishorse with most unseemly haste, he trotted away around the corner of theblock with circumspect deliberation. 

Around both the house on Tenth street and the residence of SecretarySeward, as the fact of both tragedies became generally known, crowdssoon gathered so vast and tumultuous that military guards scarcelysufficed to keep them from the doors. 

The room to which the President had been conveyed is on the first floor, at the end of the hall. It is only fifteen feet square, with a Brusselscarpet, papered with brown, and hung with a lithograph of Rosa Bonheur's"Horse Fair, " an engraved copy of Herring's "Village Blacksmith, " andtwo smaller ones, of "The Stable" and "The Barn Yard, " from the sameartist. A table and bureau, spread with crotchet work, eight chairs andthe bed, were all the furniture. Upon this bed, a low walnutfour-poster, lay the dying President; the blood oozing from thefrightful wound in his head and staining the pillow. All that themedical skill of half a dozen accomplished surgeons could do had beendone to prolong a life evidently ebbing from a mortal hurt. 

Secretary Stanton, just arrived from the bedside of Mr. Seward, askedSurgeon-General Barnes what was Mr. Lincoln's condition. "I fear, Mr. Stanton, that there is no hope. " "O, no, general; no, no;" and the man, of all others, apparently strange to tears, sank down beside the bed, the hot, bitter evidences of an awful sorrow trickling through hisfingers to the floor. Senator Sumner sat on the opposite side of thebed, holding one of the President's hands in his own, and sobbing withkindred grief. Secretary Welles stood at the foot of the bed, his facehidden, his frame shaken with emotion. General Halleck, Attorney-GeneralSpeed, Postmaster-General Dennison, M. B. Field, Assistant Secretary ofthe Treasury, Judge Otto, General Meigs, and others, visited the chamberat times, and then retired. Mrs. Lincoln--but there is no need to speakof her. Mrs. Senator Dixon soon arrived, and remained with her throughthe night. All through the night, while the horror-stricken crowdsoutside swept and gathered along the streets, while the military andpolice were patrolling and weaving a cordon around the city; while menwere arming and asking each other, "What victim next?" while thetelegraph was sending the news from city to city over the continent, andwhile the two assassins were speeding unharmed upon fleet horses faraway--his chosen friends watched about the death-bed of the highest ofthe nation. Occasionally Dr. Gurley, pastor of the church where Mr. Lincoln habitually attended, knelt down in prayer. Occasionally Mrs. Lincoln and her sons, entered, to find no hope and to go back toceaseless weeping. Members of the cabinet, senators, representatives, generals, and others, took turns at the bedside. Chief-Justice Chaseremained until a late hour, and returned in the morning. SecretaryMcCulloch remained a constant watcher until 5 A. M. Not a gleam ofconsciousness shone across the visage of the President up to hisdeath--a quiet, peaceful death at last--which came at twenty-two minutespast seven A. M. Around the bedside at this time were SecretariesStanton, Welles, Usher, Attorney-General Speed, Postmaster-GeneralDennison, M. B. Field, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Judge Otto, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, General Halleck, General Meigs, Senator Sumner, F. R. Andrews, of New-York, General Todd, of Dacotah, John Hay, private secretary, Governor Oglesby, of Illinois, GeneralFarnsworth, Mrs. And Miss Kenny, Miss Harris, Captain Robert Lincoln, son of the President, and Drs. E. W. Abbott, R. K. Stone, C. D. Gatch, Neal Hall, and Leiberman. Rev. Dr. Gurley, after the event, knelt withall around in prayer, and then, entering the adjoining room where weregathered Mrs. Lincoln, Captain Robert Lincoln, Mr. John Hay, and others, prayed again. Soon after 9 o'clock the remains were placed in atemporary coffin and conveyed to the White House under a small escort. 

In Secretary Seward's chamber, a similar although not so solemn a sceneprevailed; between that chamber and the one occupied by PresidentLincoln, visitors alternated to and fro through the night. It had beenearly ascertained that the wounds of the secretary were not likely toprove mortal. A wire instrument, to relieve the pain which he sufferedfrom previous injuries, prevented the knife of the assassin fromstriking too deep. Mr. Frederick Seward's injuries were more serious. His forehead was broken in by the blow from, the pistol, and up to thishour he has remained perfectly unconscious. The operation of trepanningthe skull has been performed, but little hope is had of his recovery. Major Seward will get well. Mr. Hansell's condition is somewhatdoubtful. 

Secretary Seward, who cannot speak, was not informed of theassassination of the President, and the injury of his son, untilyesterday. He had been worrying as to why Mr. Lincoln did not visit him. "Why does'nt the President come to see me?" he asked with his pencil. "Where is Frederick--what is the matter with him?" Perceiving thenervous excitement which these doubts occasioned, a consultation washad, at which it was finally determined that it would be best to let thesecretary know the worst. Secretary Stanton was chosen to tell him. Sitting down beside Mr. Seward's bed, yesterday afternoon, he thereforerelated to him a full account of the whole affair. Mr. Seward was sosurprised and shocked that he raised one hand involuntarily, andgroaned. Such is the condition of affairs at this stage of the terror. The pursuit of the assassins has commenced; the town is full of wild andbaseless rumors; much that is said is stirring, little is reliable. Itell it to you as I get it, but fancy is more prolific than truth: bepatient! [Footnote: The facts above had been collected by Mr. Jerome B. Stillion, before my arrival in Washington: the arrangement of them is myown. ]

LETTER II. 

THE OBSEQUIES IN WASHINGTON. 

Washington, April 19, (Evening). 

The most significant and most creditable celebration ever held inWashington has just transpired. A good ruler has been followed from hishome to the Capitol by a grand cortege, worthy of the memory and of thenation's power. As description must do injustice to the extent of thedisplay, so must criticism fail to sufficiently commend its perfecttastefulness, Rarely has a Republican assemblage been so orderly. Thefuneral of Mr. Lincoln is something to be remembered for a _cycle_. Itcaps all eulogy upon his life and services, and was, without exception, the most representative, spontaneous, and remarkable testimonial everrendered to the remains of an American citizen. 

The night before the funeral showed the probable character of thecortege. At Willard's alone four hundred applications by telegraph forbeds were refused. As many as six thousand persons spent Tuesday nightin the streets, in depots and in outbuildings. The population of thecity this morning was not far short of a hundred thousand, and of theseas many at thirty thousand walked in procession with Mr. Lincoln'sashes. 

All orders of folks were at hand. The country adjacent sent inhay-wagons, donkey-carts, dearborns. All who could slip away from thearmy came to town, and every attainable section of the Union forwardedmourners. At no time in his life had Mr. Lincoln so many to throng abouthim as in this hour, when he is powerless to do any one a service. Foronce in history, office-seekers were disinterested, and contractors andhangers-on human. These came, for this time only, to the capital of therepublic without an axe to grind or a curiosity to subserve; respect andgrief were all their motive. This day was shown that the great publicheart beats unselfish and reverent, even after a dynasty of plunder andwar. 

The arrangements for the funeral were made by Mr. Harrington, Assistant-Secretary of the Treasury, who was beset by applicants fortickets. The number of these were reduced to six hundred, the clergygetting sixty and the press twenty. I was among the first to pass theWhite House guards and enter the building. 

Its freestone columns were draped in black, and all the windows werefunereal. The ancient reception-room was half closed, and the famousEast room, which is approached by a spacious hall, had been reserved forthe obsequies. There are none present here but a few silent attendantsof the late owner of the republican palace. Deeply ensconced in thewhite satin stuffing of his coffin, the President lies like one asleep. The broad, high, beautiful room is like the varnished interior of avault. The frescoed ceiling wears the national shield, some pointedvases filled with flowers and fruit, and three emblazonings of giltpendant from which are shrouded chandeliers. A purplish gray is theprevailing tint of the ceiling. The cornice is silver white, set off bya velvet crimson. The wall paper is gold and red, broken by eight loftymirrors, which are chastely margined with black and faced with fleece. 

Their imperfect surfaces reflect the lofty catafalque, an open canopy ofsolemn alapaca, lined with tasteful satin of creamish lead, looped atthe curving roof and dropping to the four corners in half transparenttapestry. Beneath the roof, the half light shines upon a stage of freshand fragrant flowers, up-bearing a long, high coffin. White lace of puresilver pendant from the border throws a mild shimmer upon the solidsilver tracery hinges and emblazonings. A cross of lilies stands at thehead, an anchor of roses at the foot. The lid is drawn back to show theface and bosom, and on the coffin top are heather, precious flowers, andsprigs of green. This catafalque, or in plain words, this coffin setupon a platform and canopied, has around it a sufficient space ofBrussels carpet, and on three sides of this there are raised stepscovered with black, on which the honored visitors are to stand. 

The fourth side is bare, save of a single row of chairs some twenty innumber, on which the reporters are to sit. The odor of the room is freshand healthy; the shade is solemn, without being oppressive. All is rich, simple, and spacious, and in such sort as any king might wish to lie. Approach and look at the dead man. 

Death has fastened into his frozen face all the character andidiosyncrasy of life. He has not changed one line of his grave, grotesque countenance, nor smoothed out a single feature. The hue israther bloodless and leaden; but he was alway sallow. The dark eyebrowsseem abruptly arched; the beard, which will grow no more, is shavedclose, save the tuft at the short small chin. The mouth is shut, likethat of one who had put the foot down firm, and so are the eyes, whichlook as calm as slumber. The collar is short and awkward, turned overthe stiff elastic cravat, and whatever energy or humor or tender gravitymarked the living face is hardened into its pulseless outline. No corpsein the world is better prepared according to appearances. The whitesatin around it reflects sufficient light upon the face to show us thatdeath is really there; but there are sweet roses and early magnolias, and the balmiest of lilies strewn around, as if the flowers had begun tobloom even upon his coffin. Looking on uninterruptedly! for there is nopressure, and henceforward the place will be thronged with gazers whowill take from the sight its suggestiveness and respect. Three yearsago, when little Willie Lincoln died, Doctors Brown and Alexander, theembalmers or injectors, prepared his body so handsomely that thePresident had it twice disinterred to look upon it. The same men, in thesame way, have made perpetual these beloved lineaments. There is now noblood in the body; it was drained by the jugular vein and sacredlypreserved, and through a cutting on the inside of the thigh the emptyblood vessels were charged with a chemical preparation which soonhardened to the consistence of stone. The long and bony body is now hardand stiff, so that beyond its present position it cannot be moved anymore than the arms or legs of a statue. It has undergone many changes. The scalp has been removed, the brain taken out, the chest opened andthe blood emptied. All that we see of Abraham Lincoln, so cunninglycontemplated in this splendid coffin, is a mere shell, an effigy, asculpture. He lies in sleep, but it is the sleep of marble. All thatmade this flesh vital, sentient, and affectionate is gone forever. 

The officers present are Generals Hunter and Dyer and two staffcaptains. Hunter, compact and dark and reticent, walks about the emptychamber in full uniform, his bright buttons and sash and swordcontrasting with his dark blue uniform, gauntlets upon his hands, crapeon his arm and blade, his corded hat in his hands, a paper collar justapparent above his velvet tips, and now and then he speaks to CaptainNesmith or Captain Dewes, of General Harding's staff, rather as one whowishes company than one who has anything to say. His two silver starsupon his shoulder shine dimly in the draped apartment. He was one of thefirst in the war to urge the measures which Mr. Lincoln afterwardadopted. The aids walk to and fro, selected without reference to anyassociation with the late President. Their clothes are rich, theirswords wear mourning, they go in silence, everything is funereal. In thedeeply-draped mirrors strange mirages are seen, as in the coffin sceneof "Lucretia Borgia, " where all the dusky perspectives bear vistas ofgloomy palls. The upholsterers make timid noises of driving nails andspreading tapestry; but save ourselves and these few watchers andworkers, only the dead is here. The White House, so ill-appreciated incommon times, is seen to be capacious and elegant--no disgrace to thenation even in the eyes of those foreign folk of rank who shall gatherhere directly. 

As we sit brooding, with the pall straight before us, the funeral gunsare heard indistinctly booming from the far forts, with the tap of drumsin the serried street without, where troops and citizens are forming forthe grand procession. We see through the window in the beautiful springday that the grass is brightly green; and all the trees in blossom, showus through their archways the bronze and marble statues breaking thehorizon. But there is one at an upper window, seeing all this throughher tears, to whom the beautiful noon, with its wealth of zephyrs andsweets, can waft no gratulation. The father of her children, theconfidant of her affection and ambition, has passed from life intoimmortality, and lies below, dumb, cold murdered. The feeling ofsympathy for Mrs. Lincoln is as wide-spread as the regret for the chiefmagistrate. Whatever indiscretions she may have committed in the abrupttransition from plainness to power are now forgiven and forgotten. Sheand her sons are the property of the nation associated with its truestglories and its worst bereavement. By and by the guests drop in, hat inhand, wearing upon their sleeves waving crape; and some of them slip upto the coffin to carry away a last impression of the fading face. 

But the first accession of force is that of the clergy, sixty in number. They are devout looking men, darkly attired, and have come from all theneighboring cities to represent every denomination. Five years ago thesewere wrangling over slavery as a theological question, and at thebeginning of the war it was hard, in many of their bodies, to carryloyal resolutions, To-day there are here such sincere mourners as RobertPattison, of the Methodist church, who passed much of his life amongslaves and masters. He and the rest have come to believe that thePresident was wise and right, and follow him to his grave, as theapostles the interred on calvary. All these retire to the south end ofthe room, facing the feet of the corpse, and stand there silently towait for the coming of others. Very soon this East room is filled withthe representative intelligence of the entire nation. The governors ofstates stand on the dais next to the head of the coffin, with the variedfeatures of Curtin, Brough, Fenton, Stone, Oglesby and Ingraham. Behindthem are the mayors and councilmen of many towns paying their lastrespects to the representative of the source of all municipal freedom. To their left are the corporate officers of Washington, zealous to makethis day's funeral honors atone for the shame of the assassination. Withthese are sprinkled many scarred and worthy soldiers who have borne theburden of the grand war, and stand before this shape they loved in quietcivil reverence. 

Still further down the steps and closer to the catafalque rest thefamiliar faces of many of our greatest generals--the manly features ofAugur, whose blood I have seen trickling forth upon the field of battle;the open almost, beardless contour of Halleck, who has often talked ofsieges and campaigns with this homely gentleman who is going to thegrave. There are many more bright stars twinkling in contiguous shoulderbars, but sitting in a chair upon the beflowered carpet is UlyssesGrant, who has lived a century in the last three weeks and comes to-dayto add the luster of his iron face to this thrilling and saddenedpicture. He wears white gloves and sash, and is swarthy, nervous, andalmost tearful, his feet crossed, his square receding head turning nowhere now there, his treble constellation blazing upon the left shoulderonly, but hidden on the right, and I seem to read upon his compactfeatures the indurate and obstinate will to fight, on the line he hasselected, the honor of the country through any peril, as if he had swornit by the slain man's bier--his state-fellow, patron, and friend. Herealso is General McCallum, who has seamed the rebellious South withmilitary roads to send victory along them, and bring back the groaningand the scarred. These and the rest are grand historic figures, worthyof all artistic depiction. They have looked so often into the mortar'smouth, that no bravo's blade can make them wince. Do you see thethin-haired, conical head of the viking Farragut, close by GeneralGrant, with many naval heroes close behind, storm-beaten, and every inchAmericans in thought and physiognomy?

What think the foreign ambassadors of such men, in the light of theirown overloaded bodies, where meaningless orders, crosses, and ribbonsshine dimly in the funeral light? These legations number, perhaps, ahundred men, of all civilized races, --the Sardinian envoy, jetty-eyed, towering above the rest. But they are still and respectful, gatheredthus by a slain ruler, to see how worthy is the republic he haspreserved. Whatever sympathy these have for our institutions, I thinkthat in such audience they must have been impressed with the futility ofany thought that either one citizen right or one territorial inch canever be torn from the United States. Not to speak disparagingly of thesenoble guests, I was struck with the superior facial energy of our ownpublic servants, who were generally larger, and brighter-faced, born ofthat aristocracy which took its patent from Tubal Cain, and Abel thegoatherd, and graduated in Abraham Lincoln. The Haytien minister, swarthy and fiery-faced, is conspicuous among these. 

But nearer down, and just opposite the catafalque so that it isperpendicular to the direction of vision, stand the central powers ofour government, its President and counsellors. President Johnson isfacing the middle of the coffin upon the lowest step; his hands arecrossed upon his breast, his dark clothing just revealing his plaitedshirt, and upon his full, plethoric, shaven face, broad and severelycompact, two telling gray eyes rest under a thoughtful brow, whoseturning hair is straight and smooth. Beside him are Vice-PresidentHamlin, whom he succeeded, and ex-Governor King, his most intimatefriend, who lends to the ruling severity of the place a half Falstaffianepisode. The cabinet are behind, as if arranged for a daguerreotypist, Stanton, short and quicksilvery, in long goatee and glasses, in stuntedcontrast to the tall and snow-tipped shape of Mr. Welles with the rest, practical and attentive, and at their side is Secretary Chase, high, dignified, and handsome, with folded arms, listening, butundemonstrative, a half-foot higher than any spectator, and dividingwith Charles Sumner, who is near by, the preference for manly beauty inage. With Mr. Chase are other justices of the Supreme Court and to theirleft, near the feet of the corpse, are the reverend senators, representing the oldest and the newest states--splendid faces, a littleworn with early and later toils, backed up by the high, classicalfeatures of Colonel Forney, their secretary. Beyond are therepresentatives and leading officials of the various departments, with afew odd folks like George Francis Train, exquisite as ever, and, forthis time only, with nothing to say. 

Close by the corpse sit the relatives of the deceased, plain, honest, hardy people, typical as much of the simplicity of our institutions asof Mr. Lincoln's self-made eminence. No blood relatives of Mr. Lincolnwere to be found. It is a singular evidence of the poverty of hisorigin, and therefore of his exceeding good report, that, excepting hisimmediate family, none answering to his name could be discovered. Mrs. Lincoln's relatives were present, however, in some force. Dr. LymanBeecher Todd, General John B. S. Todd, C. M. Smith, Esq. , and Mr. N. W. Edwards, the late President's brother-in-law, plain, self-made peoplewere here and were sincerely affected. Captain Robert Lincoln sat duringthe services with his face in his handkerchief weeping quietly, andlittle Tad his face red and heated, cried as if his heart would break. Mrs. Lincoln, weak, worn, and nervous, did not enter the East room norfollow the remains. She was the chief magistrate's lady yesterday;to-day a widow bearing only an immortal name. Among the neighbors of thelate President, who came from afar to pay respect to his remains, wasone old gentleman who left Richmond on Sunday. I had been upon the boatwith him and heard him in hot wrangle with some officers who advised thesummary execution of all rebel leaders. This the old man opposed, whenthe feeling against him became so intense that he was compelled toretire. He counselled mercy, good faith, and forgiveness. To-day, themen who had called him a traitor, saw him among the family mourners, bent with grief. All these are waiting in solemn lines, standing erect, with a space of several feet between them and the coffin, and there isno bustle nor unseemly curiosity, not a whisper, not a footfall--onlythe collected nation looking with awed hearts upon eminent death. 

This scene is historic. I regret that I must tell you of it over alittle wire, for it admits of all exemplification. In this high, spacious, elegant apartment, laughter and levee, social pleasantry andrefined badinage, had often held their session. Dancing and music hadmade those mirrors thrill which now reflect a pall, and where the mostbeautiful women of their day had mingled here with men of brilliantfavor, now only a very few, brave enough to look upon death, werewearing funeral weeds. The pleasant face of Mrs. Kate Sprague looks outfrom these; but such scenes gain little additional power by beauty'spresence. And this wonderful relief was carved at one blow by JohnWilkes Booth. 

The religious services began at noon. They were remarkable not only fortheir association with the national event, but for a tremendouspolitical energy which they had. While none of the prayers or speechesexhibited great literary carefulness, or will obtain perpetuity on theirown merits, they were full of feeling and expressed all the intenseconcern of the country. 

The procession surpassed in sentiment, populousness, and sincere goodfeeling, anything of the kind we have had in America. It was severalmiles long, and in all its elements was full and tasteful. The scene onthe avenue will be alway remembered as the only occasion on which thatgreat thoroughfare was a real adornment to the seat of government. Inthe tree tops, on the house tops, at all the windows, the silent andaffected crowds clustered beneath half-mast banners and waving crape, toreverentially uncover as the dark vehicle, bearing its richsilver-mounted coffin, swept along; mottoes of respect and homage wereon many edifices, and singularly some of them were taken from the playof Richard III. , which was the murderer's favorite part The entire widthof the avenue was swept, from curb to curb, by the deep lines. 

The chief excellence of this procession was its representative nature. All classes, localities and trades were out. As the troops in broad, straight columns, with reversed muskets, moved to solemn marches, allthe guns on the fortifications on the surrounding hills dischargedhoarse salutes--guns which the arbiter of war whom they were to honorcould hear no longer. Every business place was closed. Sabermen sweptthe street of footmen and horsemen. The carriages drove two abreast. 

Not less than five thousand officers, of every rank, marched abreastwith the cortege. They were noble looking men with intelligent faces, and represented the sinews of the land, and the music was not the leastexcellent feature of the mournful display. About thirty bands were inthe line, and these played all varieties of solemn marches, so thatthere were continual and mingling strains of funeral music for more thanthree hours. Artillery, consisting of heavy brass pieces, followedbehind. In fact, all the citizen virtues and all the military enterpriseof the country were evidenced. Never again, until Washington becomes infact what it is in name, the chief city of America, shall we have ascene like this repeated--the grandest procession ever seen on thiscontinent, spontaneously evoked to celebrate the foulest crime onrecord. If any feeling of gratulation could arise in so calamitous atime, it would be, that so soon after this appalling calamity the nationcalmly and collectedly rallied about its succeeding rulers, and showedin the same moment its regret for the past and its resolution for thefuture. To me, the scene in the White House, the street, and the capitolto-day, was the strongest evidence the war afforded of the stability ofour institutions, and the worthiness and magnanimous power of ourpeople. 

The cortege passed to the left side of the Capitol, and entering thegreat gates, passed to the grand stairway, opposite the splendid dome, where the coffin was disengaged and carried up the ascent. It was postedunder the bright concave, now streaked with mournful trappings, and leftin state, watched by guards of officers with drawn swords. This was awonderful spectacle, the man most beloved and honored in the ark of therepublic. The storied paintings representing eras in its history weredraped in sable, through which they seemed to cast reverential glancesupon the lamented bier. The thrilling scenes depicted by Trumbull, thecommemorative canvases of Leutze, the wilderness vegetation of Powell, glared from their separate pedestals upon the central spot where lay thefallen majesty of the country. Here the prayers and addresses of thenoon were rehearsed and the solemn burial service read. At night thejets of gas concealed in the spring of the dome were lighted up, so thattheir bright reflection masses of burning light, like marvelous haloes, upon the little box where so much that we love and honor rested on itsway to the grave. And so through the starry night, in the fane of thegreat Union he had strengthened and recovered, the ashes of AbrahamLincoln, zealously guarded, are now reposing. The sage, the citizen, thepatriot, the man, has reached all the eminence that life can give theworthy or the ambitious. The hunted fugitive who struck through ourhearts to slay him, should stand beside his stately bier to see howpowerless are bullets and blades to take the real life of any noble man!

LETTER III. 

THE MURDERER. 

Washington, April 27th. 

Justice is satisfied, though blinder vengeance may not be. While theillustrious murdered is on the way to the shrine, the stark corpse ofhis murderer lies in the shambles. The one died quietly, like his life;the other died fighting, like his crime. And now that over all of themthe darkness and the dew have descended, the populace, which may not beall satisfied, may perhaps be calmed. No triumphal mourning can add tothe President's glory; no further execration can disturb the assassin'sslumbers. They have gone for what they were into history, intotradition, into the hereafter both of men and spirits; and what theywere may be in part concluded. Mr. Lincoln's career passes, in extent, gravity, and eventful association, the province of newspaper biography;but Booth is the hero of a single deed, and the delineation of him maybegin and be exhausted in a single article. I have been at pains, sincethe day of the President's obsequies, to collect all valid informationon the subject of his assassin, in anticipation of the latter's captureand death. Now that these have been consummated, I shall print thisbiography. 

The elder Booth in every land was a sojourner, as all his fathers were. Of Hebrew descent, and by a line of actors, he united in himself thatstrong Jewish physiognomy which, in its nobler phases, makes all that isdark and beautiful, and the combined vagrancy of all men of genius andall men of the stage. Fitful, powerful, passionate, his life was asuccession of vices and triumphs. He mastered the intricate charactersof dramatic literature by intuition, rather than by study, and producedthem with a vigor and vividness which almost passed the depicting ofreal life. The stage on which he raved and fought became as historic asthe actual decks of battle ships, and his small and brawny figure comesdown to us in those paroxysms of delirious art, like that of _Harold, orRichard, or Prince Rupert_. He drank to excess, was profligate but notgenerous, required but not reliable, and licentious to the bounds ofcruelty. He threw off the wife of his bosom to fly from England with aflower-girl, and, settling in Baltimore, dwelt with his youngercompanion, and brought up many children, while his first-possessed wentdown to a drunken and broken-hearted death. He himself, wanderingwestward, died on the way, errant and feverish, even in the closingmoments. His widow, too conscious of her predecessor's wrongs, and oftentaunted with them, lived apart, frugal and discreet, and brought her sixchildren up to honorable maturity. These were Junius Brutus, EdwinForrest (though he drops the Forrest for professional considerations), John Wilkes, Joseph, and the girls. All of the boys are known to more orless of fame; none of them in his art has reached the renown of thefather; but one has sent his name as far as that of the great playwrightto whom they were pupils; wherever Shakspeare is quoted, John WilkesBooth will be named, and infamously, like that Hubert in "King John, "who would have murdered the gentle Prince Arthur. 

It may not be a digression here to ask what has become of the childrenof the weird genius I have sketched above. Mrs. Booth, against whomcalumny has had no word to say, now resides with her daughters inNineteenth street, New-York. John S. Clarke dwells in princely style inPhiladelphia, with the daughter whom he married; he is the businesspartner of Edwin Booth, and they are likely to become as powerfulmanagers as they have been successful "stars. " Edwin Booth, who is saidto have the most perfect physical head in America, and whom the ladiescall the beau ideal of the melancholy Dane, dwells also on Nineteenthstreet. He has acquired a fortune, and is, without doubt, a franklyloyal gentleman. He could not well be otherwise from his membership inthe Century Club where literature and loyalty, are never dissolved. Correct and pleasing without being powerful or brilliant, he has led aplain and appreciated career, and latterly, to his honor, has beenawakening among dramatic authors some emulation by offering handsomecompensations for original plays. Junius Brutus Booth, the oldest ofthem all, most resembles in feature his wild and wayward father; he isnot as good an actor as was Wilkes, and kept in the West, that bordercivilization of the drama; he now lies, on a serious charge ofcomplicity, in Capitol Hill jail. Joseph Booth tried the stage as anutility actor and promptly failed. The best part he ever had to play was_Orson_ in the "Iron Chest, " and his discomfiture was signal; then hestudied medicine but grew discouraged, and is now in California in anoffice of some sort. A son of Booth by his first wife became a firstclass lawyer in Boston. He never recognized the rest of the family. Wilkes Booth, the third son, was shot dead on Wednesday for attemptingto escape from the consequences of murder. Such are the people to whomone of the greatest actors of our time gave his name and lineaments. ButI have anticipated the story:

Although her family was large, it was not so hard sailing with Mrs. Rosalie Booth as may be inferred. Her husband's gains had been variablygreat, and they owned a farm of some value near Baltimore. The boys hadplain but not sufficient schooling, though by the time John Wilkes grewup Edwin and Junius were making some little money and helping thefamily. So Wilkes was sent to a better school than they, where he madesome eventful acquaintances. One of these won his admiration as much inthe playground as in subsequent life upon the field of battle; this wasFitzhugh Lee, son of the great rebel chieftain. I have not heard thatLee ever had any friendship for young Wilkes, but his port and name wereenough to excite a less ardent imagination--the son of a soldier alreadygreat, and a descendant of Washington. Wilkes Booth has often spoken ofthe memory of the young man, envied his success, and, perhaps, boastedof more intimacy than he ever had. The exemplars of young Wilkes, it wassoon seen, were anything but literary. He hated school and pent-up life, and loved the open air. He used to stroll off to fish, though that sortof amusement was too sedentary for his nature, but went on fowlingjaunts with enthusiasm. In these latter he manifested that fine nerve, and certain eye, which was the talk of all his associates; but hisgreatest love was the stable; He learned to ride with his first pair ofboots, and hung around the grooms to beg permission to take the nags towater. He grew in later life to be both an indurated and a gracefulhorseman. Toward his mother and sisters he was affectionate withoutbeing obedient. Of all the sons, Wilkes was the most headstrongin-doors, and the most contented away from home. He had a fitfulgentleness which won him forgiveness, and of one of his sisters he wasparticularly fond, but none had influence over him. He was seldomcontentious, but obstinately bent, and what he willed, to did insilence, seeming to discard sympathy or confidence. As a boy he wasnever bright, except in a boy's sense; that is, he could run and leapwell, fight when challenged, and generally fell in with the sentiment ofthe crowd. He therefore made many companions, and his early days allpassed between Baltimore city and the adjacent farm. 

I have heard it said as the only evidence of Booth's ferocity in thoseearly times that he was always shooting cats, and killed off almost theentire breed in his neighbourhood. But on more than one occasion he ranaway from both school and home, and once made the trip of the Chesapeaketo the oyster fisheries without advising anybody of his family. 

While yet very young, Wilkes Booth became an habitue at the theater. Histraditions and tastes were all in that direction. His blood was of thestage, like that of the Keans, the Kembles, and the Wallacks. He wouldnot commence at the bottom of the ladder and climb from round to round, nor take part in more than a few Thespian efforts. One night, however, ayoung actor, who was to have a benefit and wished to fill the house, resolved for the better purpose to give Wilkes a chance. He announcedthat a son of the great Booth of tradition, would enact the part ofRichmond, and the announcement was enough. Before a crowded place, Boothplayed so badly that he was hissed. Still holding to his gossamer hopesand high conceit, Wilkes induced John S. Clarke, who was then addressinghis sister, to obtain him a position in the company of the Arch StreetTheater at Philadelphia. 

For eight dollars a week, Wilkes Booth, at the age of twenty-two, contracted with William Wheatley to play in any piece or part for whichhe might be cast, and to appear every day at rehearsal. He had to playthe _Courier_ in Sheridan Knowles's "Wife" on his first night, with fiveor ten little speeches to make; but such was his nervousness that heblundered continually, and quite balked the piece. Soon afterward heundertook the part of one of the Venetian comrades in Hugo's "LucretiaBorgia, " and was to have said in his turn--

"Madame, I am Petruchio Pandolfo;" instead of which he exclaimed:

"Madame, I am Pondolfio Pet--, Pedolfio Pat--, Pantuchio Ped--; damn it?what am I?"

The audience roared, and Booth, though full of chagrin, was compelled tolaugh with them. 

The very next night he was to play _Dawson_, an important part inMoore's tragedy of "The Gamester. " He had bought a new dress to wear onthis night, and made abundant preparation to do himself honor. Hetherefore invited a lady whom he knew to visit the theater, and witnesshis triumph. But at the instant of his appearance on the stage, theaudience, remembering the Petruchio Pandolfo of the previous night, burst into laughter, hisses, and mock applause, so that he was struckdumb, and stood rigid, with nothing whatever to say. Mr. John Dolman, towhose _Stukely_ has played, was compelled, therefore, to strike _Dawson_entirely out of the piece. 

These occurrences nettled Booth, who protested that he studiedfaithfully but that his want of confidence ruined him. Mr. Fredericksthe stage manager made constant complaints of Booth, who by the way, didnot play under his full name, but as Mr. J. Wilkes--and he bore thegeneral reputation of having no promise, and being a careless fellow. Heassociated freely with such of the subordinate actors as he liked; butbeing, through Clarke, then a rising favourite, of better connections, might, had he chosen, advanced himself socially, if not artistically. Clarke was to have a benefit one evening, and to enact, among otherthings, a mock _Richard III_. , to which he allowed Wilkes Booth to playa real _Richmond_. On this occasion, for the first time, Booth showedsome energy, and obtain some applause. But, in general, he was stumblingand worthless I myself remember, on three consecutive nights, hearinghim trip up and receive suppressed hisses. He lacked enterprise; otheryoung actors, instead of waiting to be given better parts, committedthem to memory, in the hope that their real interpreter might not cometo hand. Among these I recall John McCullough, who afterwards becamequite a celebrated actor. He was getting, if I correctly remember, onlysix dollars a week, while Booth obtained eight. Yet Wilkes Booth seemedtoo slow or indifferent to get on the weather side of such chances. Hestill held the part of third walking gentleman, and the third is alwaysthe first to be walked off in case of strait, as was Wilkes Booth. Hedid not survive forty weeks engagement, nor make above three hundreddollars in all that time. The Kellers arrived; they cut down thecompany, and they dispensed with Wilkes Booth. He is remembered inPhiladelphia by his failure as in the world by his crime. 

About this time a manager named Kunkle gave Booth a salary of twentydollars a week to go to the Richmond Theater. There he played a higherorder of parts, and played them better, Winning applauses from the easyprovincial cities, and taking, as everywhere the ladies by storm. I havenever wondered why many actors were strongly predisposed toward theSouth. There, their social status is nine times as big as with us. Thehospitable, lounging, buzzing character of the southerner is entirelyconsonant with the cosmopolitanism of the stage, and that easy"hang-up-your-hatativeness, " which is the rule and the demand inThespianship. We place actors outside of society, and execrate thembecause they are there. The South took them into affable fellowship, andwas not ruined by it, but beloved by the fraternity. Booth played twoseasons in Richmond, and left in some esteem. 

When the John Brown raid occured, Booth left the Richmond Theater forthe scene of strife in a picked company with which he had affiliated forsome time. From his connection with the militia on this occasion he waswont to trace his fealty to Virginia. He was a non-commissioned officer, and remained at Charleston till after the execution, visiting the oldpike man in jail, and his company was selected to form guard around thescaffold when John Brown went, white-haired, to his account. There maybe in this a consolation for the canonizers of the first arm-bearerbetween the sections, that one whose unit swelled the host to crush outthat brave old life, took from the scene inspiration enough to slay amerciful President in his unsuspecting leisure. Booth never referred toJohn Brown's death in bravado; possibly at that gallows began some suchterrible purpose as he afterward consummated. 

It was close upon the beginning of the war when Booth resolved totransform himself from a stock actor to a "star. " As many will read thiswho do not understand such distinctions, let me preface it by explainingthat a "star" is an actor who belongs to no one theater, but travelsfrom each to all, playing a few weeks at a time, and sustained in hischief character by the regular or stock actors. A stock actor is a goodactor, and a poor fool. A star is an advertisement in tights, who growsrich and corrupts the public taste. Booth was a star, and being so, hadan agent. The agent is a trumpeter who goes on before, writing theimpartial notices which you see in the editorial columns of countrypapers and counting noses at the theater doors. Booth's agent was oneMatthew Canning, an exploded Philadelphia lawyer, who took to managingby passing the bar, and J. Wilkes no longer, but our country's risingtragedian. J. Wilkes Booth, opened in Montgomery, Alabama, in hisfather's consecrated part of _Richard III_. It was very different workbetween receiving eight dollars a week and getting half the grossproceeds of every performance. Booth kept northward when his engagementwas done, playing in many cities such parts as _Romeo_, the _CorsicanBrothers_, and _Raphael_ in the "_Marble Heart_;" in all of these hegained applause, and his journey eastward, ending in eastern cities likeProvidence, Portland, and Boston was a long success, in part deserved. In Boston he received especial commendation for his enactment of_Richard_. 

I have looked over this play, his best and favorite one, to see howclosely the career of the crookback he so often delineated resembled hisown. 

How like that fearful night of _Richard_ on Bosworth field must havebeen Booth's sleep in the barn at Port Royal, tortured by ghosts ofvictims all repeating. 

 "When I was mortal my anointed body By thee was punched full of deadly holes: Think on the Tower and me! Despair and die!"

Or this, from some of Booth's female victims:

 "Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow! I that was washed to death with fulsome wine; Poor Clarence, by thy guile betrayed to death: To-morrow in the battle think on me; despair and die!"

These terrible conjurations must have recalled how aptly the scene asoften rehearsed by Booth, sword in hand, where, leaping from his bed, hecries in horror:

 "Give me another horse! bind up my wounds! Have mercy, Jesu! Soft! I did but dream. Oh! coward conscience how thou dost afflict me! The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight! Cold, flareful drops stand on my trembling flesh. What do I fear? Myself! there is none else by: Is there a murderer here? No!--Yes!--I am! Then fly, --what from myself?

 * * * * *

 My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale. And every tale condemns me for a villain! Perjury, perjury in the highest degree: Murder, stern murder in the direst degree: All several sins, all used in each degree. Throng to the bar, crying all, _Guilty! guilty!_"

By these starring engagments, Booth made incredible sums. His cashbook, for one single season, showed earnings deposited in bank of twenty-twoodd thousand dollars. In New York he did not get a hearing, except at abenefit or two: where he played parts not of his selection. InPhiladelphia his earlier failure predisposed the people to discard him, and they did. But he had made enough, and resolved to invest hiswinnings, The oil fever had just begun; he hired an agent, sent him tothe western districts and gave him discretionary power; his investmentsall turned out profitable. 

Booth died, as far as understood without debts. The day before themurder he paid an old friend a hundred dollars which he had borrowed twodays previously. He banked at Jay Cook's in Washington, generally; butturned most of his funds into stock and other matters. He gave eightydollars eight month's ago for a part investing with others in a piece ofwestern oil land. The certificate for this land he gave to his sister. Just before he died his agent informed him that the share was worthfifteen thousand dollars. Booth kept his accounts latterly with greatregularity, and was lavish as ever, but took note of all expenditures, however irregular. He was one of those men whom the possession of moneyseems to have energized; his life, so purposeless long before, grew bygood fortune to a strict computation with the world. Yet what availed sosudden reformation, and of what use was the gaining of wealth, to throwone's life so soon away, and leap from competence to hunted infamy. 

The beauty of this man and his easy confidentiality, not familiar, butmarked by a mild and even dignity, made many women impassioned of him. He was licentious as men, and particularly as actors go, but not aseducer, so far as I can learn. I have traced one case in Philadelphiawhere a young girl who had seen him on the stage became enamored of him. 

She sent him bouquets, notes, photographs and all the accessories of anintrigue. Booth, to whom such things were common, yielded to the girl'simportunities at last and gave her an interview. He was surprised tofind that so bold a correspondent was so young, so fresh, and sobeautiful. He told her therefore, in pity, the consequences of pursuinghim; that he entertained no affection for her, though a sufficientdesire, and that he was a man of the world to whom all women grewfulsome in their turn. 

"Go home, " he said, "and beware of actors. They are to be seen, not tobe known. "

The girl, yet more infatuated, persisted. Booth, who had no real virtueexcept by scintillations, became what he had promised, and one more soulwent to the isles of Cyprus. 

In Montgomery, if I do not mistake, Booth met the woman from whom hereceived a stab which he carried all the rest of his days. She was anactress, and he visited her. They assumed a relation creditable only in_La Boheme_, and were as tender as love without esteem can ever be. But, after a time, Booth wearied of her and offered to say "good by. " Sherefused--he treated her coldly; she pleaded--he passed her by. 

Then, with a jealous woman's frenzy, she drew a knife upon him andstabbed him in the neck, with the intent to kill him. Being muscular, hequickly disarmed her, though he afterward suffered from the woundpoignantly. 

Does it not bring a blush to our faces that a good, great man, like hewho has died--our President--should have met his fate from one so inuredto a life of ribaldry? Yet, only such an one could have been found tomurder Abraham Lincoln. 

The women persecuted Booth more than he followed them. He was waylaid bymarried women in every provincial town or city where he played. His facewas so youthful, yet so manly, and his movements so graceful andexcellent, that other than the coarse and errant placed themselves inhis way. After his celebrated Boston engagement, women of all ages anddegrees pressed in crowds before the Tremont House to see him depart. Their motives were various, but whether curiosity or worse, exhibitingplainly the deep influence which Booth had upon the sex. He could beanywhere easy and gentlemanly, and it is a matter of wonder that withthe entry which he had to many well-stocked homes, he did not makehospitality mourn and friendship find in his visit shame and ruin. Ihave not space to go into the millionth catalogue of Booth's intrigues, even if this journal permitted further elucidation of so banned asubject. Most of his adherents of this class were, like Heine's Polishvirgins, and he was very popular with those dramatic ladies--few, I hopeand know, in their profession--to whom divorce courts are superfluous. His last permanent acquaintance was one Ella Turner, of Richmond, wholoved him with all the impetuosity of that love which does not think, and strove to die at the tidings of his crime and fight. Happy that evensuch a woman did not die associated with John Wilkes Booth. Suchdevotion to any other murderer would have earned some poet's tear. Butthe daisies will not grow a whole rod from _his_ grave. 

Of what avail, may we ask, on the impossible supposition that Booth'scrime could have been considered heroic, was it that such a recordshould have dared to die for fame? Victory would have been ashamed ofits champion, as England of Nelson, and France of Mirabeau. 

I may add to this record that he had not been in Philadelphia a year, onfirst setting out in life, before getting into a transaction of the kindspecified. For an affair at his boarding-house he was compelled to pay aconsiderable sum of money, and it happily occurred just as he was toquit the city. He had many quarrels and narrow escapes through hislicense, a husband in Syracuse, N. Y. , once followed him all the way toCleveland to avenge a domestic insult. 

Booth's paper "To Whom it may Concern" was not his only attempt atinfluential composition. He sometimes persuaded himself that he hadliterary ability; but his orthography and pronunciation were worse thanhis syntax. The paper deposited with J. S. Clarke was useful as showinghis power to entertain a deliberate purpose. It has one or two smartpassages in it--as this:

"Our once bright red stripes look like _bloody gashes_ on the face ofheaven. "

In the passages following there is common sense and lunacy:

"I know how foolish I shall be deemed for undertaking such a step asthis, where, on the one side, I have many friends and everything to makeme happy, where my profession _alone_, has gained me an income of _morethan_ twenty thousand dollars a year, and where my _great personalambition_ in my profession has such a great field for labor. On theother hand, the South have never bestowed upon me one kind word; a placenow where I have no friends, except beneath the sod; a place where Imust either become a private soldier or a beggar. To give up all of the_former_ for the _latter_, besides my mother and sisters, whom I love sodearly (although they so widely differ with me in opinion) seems insane;but God is my judge. "

Now, read the beginning of the manifesto, and see how prophetic were hiswords of his coming infamy. If he expected so much for capturing thePresident merely, what of our execration at slaying him?

"Right or wrong, God judge me, not man. For be my motive good or bad, ofone thing I am sure, _the lasting condemnation_ of the North. 

"I love peace more than life. Have loved the Union beyond expression. For four years have I waited, hoped and prayed for the dark clouds tobreak, and for a restoration of our former sunshine. _To wait longerwould be a crime_. All hope for peace is dead. My prayers have proved asidle as my hopes. God's will be done. _I go to see and share the bitterend_. "

To wait longer would be a crime. Oh! what was the crime _not_ to wait!Had he only shared the bitter end, then, in the common trench, hismemory might have been hidden. The end had come when he appeared to makeof benignant victory a quenchless revenge. One more selection from hisapostrophe will do. It suggests the manner of his death:

"They say that the South has found _that_ 'last ditch' which the Northhave so long derided. Should I reach her in safety, and find it true, Iwill proudly beg permission to triumph or die in that same 'ditch' byher side. " The swamp near which he died may be called, without unseemlypun--a truth, not a _bon mot_--the last ditch of the rebellion. 

None of the printed pictures that I have seen do justice to Booth. Someof the _cartes de visite_ get him very nearly. He had one of the finestvital heads I have ever seen. In fact, he was one of the best exponentsof vital beauty I have ever met. By this I refer to physical beauty inthe Medician sense--health, shapeliness, power in beautiful poise, andseemingly more powerful in repose than in energy. His hands and feetwere sizable, not small, and his legs were stout and muscular, butinclined to bow like his father's. From the waist up he was a perfectman; his chest being full and broad, his shoulders gently sloping, andhis arms as white as alabaster, but hard as marble. Over these, upon aneck which was its proper column, rose the cornice of a fine Doric face, spare at the jaws and not anywhere over-ripe, but seamed with a nose ofRoman model, the only relic of his half-Jewish parentage, which gavedecision to the thoughtfully stern sweep of two direct, dark eyes, meaning to woman snare, and to man a search warrant, while the loftysquare forehead and square brows were crowned with a weight of curlingjetty hair, like a rich Corinthian capital. His profile was eagleish, and afar his countenance was haughty. He seemed throat full ofintrospections, ambitious self-examinings, eye-strides into the future, as if it withheld him something to which he had a right. I have sincewondered whether this moody demeanor did not come of a guilty spirit, but all the Booths look so. 

Wilkes spoke to me in Washington for the first time three weeks beforethe murder. His address was winning as a girl's, rising in effect notfrom what he said, but from how he said it. It was magnetic, and I candescribe it therefore by its effects alone. I seemed, when he hadspoken, to lean toward this man. His attitude spoke to me; with as easyfamiliarity as I ever observed he drew rear and conversed. The talk wason so trite things that it did not lie a second in the head, but when Ileft him it was with the feeling that a most agreeable fellow had passedby. 

The next time the name of Wilkes Booth recurred to me was like thepistol shot he had fired. The right hand I had shaken murdered thefather of the country. 

Booth was not graceful with his feet, although his ordinary walk waspleasant enough. But his arms were put to artistic uses; not the baserones like boxing, but all sorts of fencing, manual practice, and thehandling of weapons. 

In his dress, he was neat without being particular. Almost any clothescould fit him; but he had nothing of the exquisite about him; hisneckties and all such matters were good without being gaudy. Nature haddone much for him. In this beautiful palace an outlaw had builded hisfire, and slept, and plotted, and dreamed. 

I have heard it said that Booth frequently cut his adversaries upon thestage in sheer wantonness or bloodthirstiness. This is a mistake, and isattributable to his father, the elder Booth, who had the madness ofconfounding himself with the character. Wilkes was too good a fencer tomake ugly gashes; his pride was his skill, not his awkwardness. Once

he was playing with John McCullough in the last act of "Richard. " Theywere fighting desperately. Suddenly the cross-piece on the hilt ofMcCullough's sword flew off and cut the owner deeply in the forehead. Blood ran down McCullough's face, though they continued to struggle, andwhile, ostensibly, Booth was imitating a demon, he said in a halfwhisper:

"Good God, John, did I hurt you?"

And when they went off the stage, Booth was white with fear that he hadgashed his friend. 

As an actor, Booth was too energetic to be correct; his conception ofRichard was vivid and original, one of the best that we have had, and hecame nearer his father's rendering of the last act than any body we havehad. His combat scene was terrific. The statement that his voice hadfailed has no valid foundation; it was as good when he challenged thecavalry-men to combat as in the best of his Thespian successes. In allacting that required delicate characterization, refined conception orcarefulness, Booth was at sea. But in strong physical parts, requiringfair reading and an abundance of spring and tension, he was much finerthan hearsay would have us believe. 

His _Romeo_ was described a short time ago by the Washington_Intelligencer_ as the most satisfactory of all renderings of that finecharacter. He played the _Corsican Brothers_ three weeks on a run inBoston. He played _Pescara_ at Ford's Theater--his last mock part inthis world--on to-morrow (Saturday) night, six weeks ago. 

He was fond of learning and reciting fugitive poems. His favorite piecewas "The Beautiful Snow" comparing it to a lost purity. He has beenknown by gentlemen in this city to recite this poem with fine effect, and cry all the while. This was on the principle of "guilty peoplesitting at a play. " His pocket-book was generally full of littleselections picked up at random, and he had considerable delicacy ofappreciation. 

On the morning of the murder, Booth breakfasted with Miss Carrie Bean, the daughter of a merchant, and a very respectable young lady, at theNational Hall. He arose from the table at, say eleven o'clock. Duringthe breakfast, those who watched him say that he was lively, piquant andself-possessed as ever in his life. 

That night the horrible crime thrilled the land. A period of crippledflight succeeded. Living in swamps, upon trembling hospitality, uponhopes which sank as he leaned upon them. Booth passed the nights inperilous route or broken sleep, and in the end went down like a bravo, but in the eyes of all who read his history, commanding no respect forhis valor, charity for his motive, or sympathy for his sin. 

The closing scenes of these terrible days are reserved for a secondpaper. Much matter that should have gone into this is retained for thepresent. 

LETTER IV. 

THE ASSASSIN'S DEATH. 

Washington, April 28--8 P. M. 

A hard and grizzly face overlooks me as I write. Its inconsiderableforehead is crowned with turning sandy hair, and the deep concave of itslong insatiate jaws is almost hidden by a dense red beard, which can notstill abate the terrible decision of the large mouth, so well sustainedby searching eyes of spotted gray, which roll and rivet one. This is theface of Lafayette Baker, colonel and chief of the secret service. He hasplayed the most perilous parts of the war, and is the capturer of thelate President's murderer. The story that I am to tell you, as he andhis trusty dependents told it to me, will be aptly commenced here, wherethe net was woven which took the dying life of Wilkes Booth. 

When the murder occured, Colonel Baker was absent from Washington, Hereturned on the third morning, and was at once besought by SecretaryStanton to join the hue and cry against the escaped Booth. The sagaciousdetective found that nearly ten thousand cavalry, and one-fourth as manypolicemen, had been meantime scouring, without plan or compass, thewhole territory of Southern Maryland. They were treading on each other'sheels, and mixing up the thing so confoundedly, that the best place forthe culprits to have gone would have been in the very midst of theirpursuers. Baker at once possessed himself of the little the WarDepartment had learned, and started immediately to take the usualdetective measures, till then neglected, of offering a reward andgetting out photographs of the suspected ones. He then dispatched a fewchosen detectives to certain vital points, and awaited results. 

The first of these was the capture of Atzeroth. Others, like the takingof Dr. Mudge, simultaneously occured. But the district supected beingremote from the railway routes, and broken by no telegraph station, thecolonel, to place himself nearer the theater of events, ordered anoperator, with the necessary instrument, to tap the wire running toPoint Lookout, near Chappells Point, and send him prompt messages. 

The same steamer which took down the operator and two detectives. Brought back one of the same detectives and a negro. This negro, takento Colonel Baker's office, stated so positively that he had seen Boothand another man cross the Potomac in a fishing boat, while he waslooking down upon them from a bank, that the colonel, was at firstskeptical; but when examined the negro answered so readily andintelligently, recognizing the men from the photographs, that Baker knewat last that he had the true scent. 

Straightway he sent to General Hancock for twenty-five men, and whilethe order was going, drew down his coast survey-maps. With that quickdetective intuition amounting almost to inspiration, he cast upon theprobable route and destination of the refugees, as well as the pointwhere he would soonest strike them. Booth, he knew, would not keep alongthe coast, with frequent deep rivers to cross, nor, indeed, in anydirection east of Richmond, where he was liable at any time to cross ourlines of occupation; nor, being lame, could he ride on; horseback, so asto place himself very far westward of his point of debarkation inVirginia. But he would travel in a direct course from Bluff point, wherehe crossed to Eastern Tennessee, and this would take him through PortRoyal on the Rappahannock river, in time to be intercepted there by theoutgoing cavalry men. 

When, therefore, twenty-five men, under one Lieutenant Dougherty, arrived at his office door, Baker placed the whole under control of hisformer lieutenant-colonel, E. J. Conger, and of his cousin, LieutenantL. B. Baker--the first of Ohio, the last of New-York--and bade them gowith all dispatch to Belle Plain on the Lower Potomac, there todisembark, and scour the country faithfully around Port Royal, but notto return unless they captured their men. 

Conger is a short, decided, indomitable, courageous fellow, provincialin his manners, but fully understanding his business, and collected as ahousewife on Sunday. 

Young Baker is large and fine-looking--a soldier, but no policeman--andhe deferred to Conger, very properly, during most of the eventssucceeding. 

Quitting Washington at 2 o'clock P. M. On Monday, the detectives andcavalrymen disembarked at Belle Plain, on the border of Stafford county, at 10 o'clock, in the darkness. Belle Plain is simply the nearestlanding to Fredericksburg, seventy miles from Washington city, andlocated upon Potomac creek. It is a wharf and warehouse merely, and herethe steamer John S. Ide stopped and made fast, while the party gallopedoff in the darkness. Conger and Baker kept ahead, riding up tofarm-houses and questioning the inmates, pretending to be in search ofthe Maryland gentlemen belonging to the party. But nobody had seen theparties described, and, after a futile ride on the Fredericksburg road, they turned shortly to the east, and kept up their baffled inquiries allthe way to Port Conway, on the Rappahannock. 

On Tuesday morning they presented themselves at the Port Royal ferry, and inquired of the ferry-man, while he was taking them over in squadsof seven at a time, if he had seen any two such men. Continuing theirinquiries at Port Royal, they found one Rollins a fisherman, whoreferred them to a negro named Lucas, as having driven two men a shortdistance toward Bowling Green in a wagon. It was found that these menanswered to the description, Booth having a crutch as previouslyascertained. 

The day before Booth and Harold had applied at Port Conway for thegeneral ferry-boat, but the ferryman was then fishing and would notdesist for the inconsiderable fare of only two persons, but to theirsupposed good fortune a lot of confederate cavalrymen just then camealong, who threatened the ferryman with a shot in the head if he did notinstantly bring across his craft and transport the entire party. Thesecavalrymen were of Moseby's disbanded command, returning from FairfaxCourt House to their homes in Caroline county. Their captain was on hisway to visit a sweetheart at Bowling Green, and he had so far takenBooth under his patronage, that when the latter was haggling with Lucasfor a team, he offered both Booth and Harold the use of his horse, toride and walk alternately. 

In this way Lucas was providentially done out of the job, and Booth rodeoff toward Bowling Green behind the confederate captain on one and thesame horse. 

So much learned, the detectives, with Rollins for a guide, dashed off inthe bright daylight of Tuesday, moving southwestward through the levelplains of Caroline, seldom stopping to ask questions, save at a certainhalfway house, where a woman told them that the cavalry party ofyesterday had returned minus one man. As this was far fromcircumstantial, the party rode along in the twilight, and reachedBowling Green at eleven o'clock in the night. 

This is the court-house town of Caroline county--a small and scatteredplace, having within it an Ancient tavern, no longer used for other thanlodging purposes; but here they hauled from his bed the captainaforesaid, and bade him dress himself. As soon as he comprehended thematter he became pallid and eagerly narrated all the facts in hispossession. Booth, to his knowledge, was then lying at the house of oneGarrett, which they had passed, and Harold had departed the existing daywith the intention of rejoining him. 

Taking this captain along for a guide, the worn out horsemen retraced, though some of the men were so haggard and wasted with travel that theyhad to be kicked into intelligence before they could climb to theirsaddles. The objects of the chase thus at hand, the detectives, full ofsanguine purpose; hurried the cortege so well along that by 2 o'clockearly morning, all halted at Garrett's gate. In the pale moonlight threehundred yards from the main road, to the left, a plain old farmhouselooked grayly through its environing locusts. It was worn andwhitewashed, and two-storied, and its half-human windows glowered downupon the silent cavalrymen like watching owls, which stood as sentriesover some horrible secret asleep within. The front of this house lookedup the road toward the Rappahannock, but did not face it, and on thatside a long Virginia porch protruded, where, in the summer, among thehoneysuckles, the humming bird flew like a visible odor. Nearest themain road, against the pallid gable, a single-storied kitchen stood, andthere were three other doors, one opening upon the porch, one in thekitchen gable, and one in the rear of the farmhouse. 

Dimly seen behind, an old barn, high and weather-beaten, faced theroadside gate, for the house itself lay to the left of its own lane; andnestling beneath the barn, a few long corn-cribs lay with a cattle shedat hand. There was not a swell of the landscape anywhere in sight. Aplain dead level contained all the tenements and structures. A wormfence stretched along the road broken by two battered gate posts, andbetween the road and the house, the lane was crossed by a second fenceand gate. The farm-house lane, passing the house front, kept straight onto the barn, though a second carriage track ran up to the porch. 

[Illustration: Plan of Garrett's House. 

_A_ Door through which the dying man was brought. _B_ Corner at whichthe barn was fired. _C_ Spot in the barn on which Booth stood. _D_ Pointwhere Corbett fired. _E_ Porch where Booth died. _G_ Door at whichLieutenant Baker knocked. _H_ Shed. _I_ Kitchen. ]

It was a homely and primitive scene enough, pastoral as any farm boy'sbirth-place, and had been the seat of many toils and endearments. Youngwives had been brought to it, and around its hearth the earliest criesof infants, gladdening mothers' hearts, had made the household jubilanttill the stars came out, and were its only sentries, save the brightlights at its window-panes as of a camp-fire, and the suppressedchorusses of the domestic bivouac within, where apple toasting and nutcracking and country games shortened the winter shadows. Yet in thishouse, so peaceful by moonlight, murder had washed its spotted hands, and ministered to its satiated appetite. History--present in every nookin the broad young world--had stopped, to make a landmark of Garrett'sfarm. 

In the dead stillness, Baker dismounted and forced the outer gate;Conger kept close behind him, and the horsemen followed cautiously. Theymade no noise in the soft clay, nor broke the all-foreboding silenceanywhere, till the second gate swung open gratingly, yet even then norhoarse nor shrill response came back, save distant croaking, as of frogsor owls, or the whizz of some passing night-hawk. So they surrounded thepleasant old homestead, each horseman, carbine in poise, adjusted underthe grove of locusts, so as to inclose the dwelling with a circle offire. After a pause, Baker rode to the kitchen door on the side, anddismounting, rapped and halloed lustily. An old man, in drawers andnight-shirt, hastily undrew the bolts, and stood on the threshold, peering shiveringly into the darkness. 

Baker seized him by the throat at once, and held a pistol to his ear. "Who--who is it that calls me?" cried the old man. "Where are the menwho stay with you?" challenged Baker. "If you prevaricate you are a deadman!" The old fellow, who proved to be the head of the family, was sooverawed and paralysed that he stammered, and shook, and said not aword. "Go light a candle, " cried Baker, sternly, "and be quick aboutit. " The trembling old man obeyed, and in a moment the imperfect raysflared upon his whitening hairs and bluishly pallid face. Then thequestion was repeated, backed up by the glimmering pistol, "where arethose men?" The old man held to the wall, and his knees smote eachother. "They are gone, " he said. "We hav'n't got them in the house, Iassure you that they are gone. " Here there were sounds and whisperingsin the main building adjoining, and the lieutenant strode to the door. Aludicrous instant intervened, the old man's modesty outran his terror. "Don't go in there, " he said, feebly; "there are women undressed inthere. " "Damn the women, " cried Baker; "what if they are undressed? Weshall go in if they haven't a rag. " Leaving the old man in muteastonishment, Baker bolted through the door, and stood in an assemblageof bare arms and night robes. His loaded pistol disarmed modesty of itsdelicacy and substituted therefor a seasonable terror. Here he repeatedhis summons, and the half light of the candle gave to his face a morethan bandit ferocity. They all denied knowledge of the strangers'whereabouts. 

In the interim Conger had also entered, and while the household and itsinvaders were thus in weird tableaux, a young man appeared, as if he hadrisen from the ground. The muzzles of everybody turned upon him in asecond; but, while he blanched, he did not lose loquacity. "Father, " hesaid, "we had better tell the truth about the matter. Those men whom youseek, gentlemen, are in the barn, I know. They went there to sleep. "Leaving one soldier to guard the old man--and the soldier was very gladof the job, as it relieved him of personal hazard in the approachingcombat--all the rest, with cocked pistols at the young man's head, followed on to the barn. It lay a hundred yards from the house, thefront barndoor facing the west gable, and was an old and spaciousstructure, with floors only a trifle above the ground level. 

The troops dismounted, were stationed at regular intervals around it, and ten yards distant at every point, four special guards placed tocommand the door and all with weapons in supple preparation, while Bakerand Conger went direct to the portal. It had a padlock upon it, and thekey of this Baker secured at once. In the interval of silence thatensued, the rustling of planks and straw was heard inside, as of personsrising from sleep. 

At the same moment Baker hailed:

"To the persons in this barn. I have a proposal to make; we are about tosend in to you the son of the man in whose custody you are found. Eithersurrender to him your arms and then give yourselves up, or we'll setfire to the place. We mean to take you both, or to have a bonfire and ashooting match. "

No answer came to this of any kind. The lad, John M. Garrett, who was indeadly fear, was here pushed through the door by a sudden opening of it, and immediately Lieutenant Baker locked the door on the outside. The boywas heard to state his appeal in under tone. Booth replied:

"Damn you. Get out of here. You have betrayed me. "

At the same time he placed his hand in his pocket as for a pistol. Aremonstrance followed, but the boy slipped quickly over the reopenedportal, reporting that his errand had failed, and that he dared notenter again. All this time the candle brought from the house to the barnwas burning close beside the two detectives, rendering it easy for anyone within to have shot them dead. This observed, the light wascautiously removed, and everybody took care to keep out of itsreflection. By this time the crisis of the position was at hand, thecavalry exhibited very variable inclinations, some to run away, othersto shoot Booth without a summons, but all excited and fitfully silent. At the house near by the female folks were seen collected in thedoorway, and the necessities of the case provoked prompt conclusions. The boy was placed at a remote point, and the summons repeated by Baker:

"You must surrender inside there. Give up your arms and appear. There isno chance for escape. We give you five minutes to make up your mind. "

A bold, clarion reply came from within, so strong as to be heard at thehouse door:

"Who are you, and what do you want with us?"

Baker again urged: "We want you to deliver up your arms and become ourprisoners. "

"But who are you?" hallooed the same strong voice. 

Baker. --"That makes no difference. We know who you are, and we want you. We have here fifty men, armed with carbines and pistols. You cannotescape. "

There was a long pause, and then Booth said:

"Captain, this is a hard case, I swear. Perhaps I am being taken by myown friends. " No reply from the detectives. 

Booth--"Well, give us a little time to consider. "

[Illustration: Garrett's House, Where Booth Died--Sketched by W. N. Walton, for "Harper's Weekly" for May 30th, 1865]

Baker--"Very well. Take time. "

Here ensued a long and eventful pause. What thronging memories itbrought to Booth, we can only guess. In this little interval he made theresolve to die. But he was cool and steady to the end. Baker, after alapse, hailed for the last time. 

"Well, we have waited long enough; surrender your arms and come out, orwe'll fire the barn. "

Booth answered thus: "I am but a cripple, a one-legged man. Withdrawyour forces one hundred yard from the door, and I will come. Give me achance for my life, captain. I will never be taken alive. "

Baker--"We did not come here to fight, but to capture you. I say again, appear, or the barn shall be fired. "

Then with a long breath, which could be heard outside, Booth cried insudden calmness, still invisible, as were to him his enemies:

"Well, then, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me. "

There was a pause repeated, broken by low discussions within betweenBooth and his associate, the former saying, as if in answer to someremonstrance or appeal, "Get away from me. You are a damned coward, andmean to leave me in my distress; but go, go. I don't want you to stay. Iwon't have _you_ stay. " Then he shouted aloud:

"There's a man inside who wants to surrender. "

Baker--"Let him come, if he will bring his arms. "

Here Harold, rattling at the door, said: "Let me out; open the door; Iwant to surrender. "

Baker--"Hand out your arms, then. "

Harold--"I have not got any. "

Baker--"You are the man that carried the carbine yesterday; bring itout. "

Harold--"I haven't got any. "

This was said in a whining tone, and with an almost visible shiver. Booth cried aloud, at this hesitation: "He hasn't got any arms; they aremine, and I have kept them. "

Baker--"Well, he carried the carbine, and must bring it out. "

Booth--"On the word and honor of a gentleman, he has no arms with him. They are mine, and I have got them. "

At this time Harold was quite up to the door, within whispering distanceof Baker. The latter told him to put out his hands to be handcuffed, atthe same time drawing open the door a little distance. Harold thrustforth his hands, when Baker, seizing him, jerked him into the night, andstraightway delivered him over to a deputation of cavalrymen. The fellowbegan to talk of his innocence and plead so noisily that Congerthreatened to gag him unless he ceased. Then Booth made his last appeal, in the same clear unbroken voice:

"Captain, give me a chance. Draw off your men and I will fight themsingly. I could have killed you six times to-night, but I believe you tobe a brave man, and would not murder you. Give a lame man a show. "

It was too late for parley. All this time Booth's voice had sounded fromthe middle of the barn. 

Ere he ceased speaking, Colonel Conger, slipping around to the rear, drew some loose straws through a crack, and lit a match upon them. Theywere dry and blazed up in an instant, carrying a sheet of smoke andflame through the parted planks, and heaving in a twinkling a world oflight and heat upon the magazine within. The blaze lit up the blackrecesses of the great barn till every wasp's nest and cobweb in the roofwas luminous, flinging streaks of red and violet across the tumbled farmgear in the corner, plows, harrows, hoes, rakes, sugar mills, and makingevery separate grain in the high bin adjacent, gleam like a mote ofprecious gold. They tinged the beams, the upright columns, thebarricades, where clover and timothy, piled high, held toward the hotincendiary their separate straws for the funeral pile. They bathed themurderer's retreat in beautiful illumination, and while in bold outlinehis figure stood revealed, they rose like an impenetrable wall to guardfrom sight the hated enemy who lit them. Behind the blaze, with his eyeto a crack, Conger saw Wilkes Booth standing upright upon a crutch. Helikens him at this instant to his brother Edwin, whom he says he so muchresembled that he half believed, for the moment the whole pursuit tohave been a mistake. At the gleam of the fire Wilkes dropped his crutch, and, carbine in both hands, crept up to the spot to espy the incendiaryand shoot him dead. His eyes were lustrous like fever, and swelled androlled in terrible beauty, while his teeth were fixed, and he wore theexpression of one in the calmness before frenzy. In vain he peered withvengeance in his look; the blaze that made him visible concealed hisenemy. A second he turned glaring at the fire, as if to leap upon it andextinguish it, but it had made such headway that this was a futileimpulse and he dismissed it. As calmly as upon the battlefield a veteranstands amidst the hail of ball and shell, and plunging iron, Boothturned at a man's stride, and pushed for the door, carbine in poise, andthe last resolve of death, which we name despair, set on his high, bloodless forehead. 

As so he dashed, intent to expire not unaccompanied, a disobedientsergeant at an eye-hole drew upon him the fatal bead. The barn was allglorious with conflagration and in the beautiful ruin this outlawed manstrode like all that, we know of wicked valor, stern in the face ofdeath. A shock, a shout, a gathering up of his splendid figure as if toovertip the stature God gave him, and John Wilkes Booth fell headlong tothe floor, lying there in a heap, a little life remaining. 

"He has shot himself!" cried Baker, unaware of the source of the report, and rushing in, he grasped his arms to guard against any feint orstrategy. A moment convinced him that further struggle with the proneflesh was useless. Booth did not move, nor breathe, nor gasp. Conger andtwo sergeants now entered, and taking up the body, they bore it in hastefrom the advancing flame, and laid it without upon the grass, all freshwith heavenly dew. 

"Water, " cried Conger, "bring water. "

When this was dashed into his face, he revived a moment and stirred hislips. Baker put his ear close down, and heard him say:

"Tell mother--and die--for my country. "

They lifted him again, the fire encroaching in hotness upon them andplaced him on the porch before the dwelling. 

A mattrass was brought down, on which they placed him and propped hishead, and gave him water and brandy. The women of the household, joinedmeantime by another son, who had been found in one of the corn cribs, watching as he said, to see that Booth and Harold did not steal thehorses, were nervous, but prompt to do the dying man all kindnesses, although waived sternly back by the detectives. They dipped a rag inbrandy and water, and this being put between Booth's teeth he sucked itgreedily. When he was able to articulate again, he muttered to Mr. Bakerthe same words, with an addenda. "Tell mother I died for my country. Ithought I did for the best. " Baker repeated this, saying at the sametime "Booth, do I repeat it correctly. " Booth nodded his head. By thistime the grayness of dawn was approaching; moving figures inquisitivelycoming near were to be seen distinctly, and the cocks began to crowgutturally, though the barn was a hulk of blaze and ashes, sendingtoward the zenith a spiral line of dense smoke. The women becameimportunate that the troops might be ordered to extinguish the fire, which was spreading toward their precious corn-cribs. Not even deathcould banish the call of interest. Soldiers were sent to put out thefire, and Booth, relieved of the bustle around him, drew near to deathapace. Twice he was heard to say, "kill me, kill me. " His lips oftenmoved but could complete no appreciable sound. He made once a motionwhich the quick eye of Conger understood to mean that his throat painedhim. Conger put his finger there, when the dying man attempted to cough, but only caused the blood at his perforated neck to flow more, lively. He bled very little, although shot quite through, beneath and behind theears, his collar being severed on both sides. 

A soldier had been meanwhile despatched for a doctor, but the route andreturn were quite six miles, and the sinner was sinking fast. Still thewomen made efforts to get to see him, but were always rebuffed, and allthe brandy they could find was demanded by the assassin, who motionedfor strong drink every two minutes. He made frequent desires to beturned over, not by speech, but by gesture, and was alternately placedupon his back, belly and side. His tremendous vitality evidenced itselfalmost miraculously. Now and then, his heart would cease to throb, andhis pulses would be as cold as a dead man's. Directly life would beginanew, the face would flush up effulgently, the eyes open and brighten, and soon relapsing, stillness re-asserted, would again be dispossessedby the same magnificent triumph of man over mortality. Finally the fussylittle doctor arrived, in time to be useless. He probed the wound to seeif the ball were not in it, and shook his head sagely, and talkedlearnedly. 

Just at his coming Booth had asked to have his hands raised and shownhim. They were so paralyzed that he did not know their location. Whenthey were displayed he muttered, with a sad lethargy, "Useless, useless. " These were the last words he ever uttered. As he began to diethe sun rose and threw beams into all the tree-tops. It was of a man'sheight when the struggle of death twitched and fingered in the fadingbravo's face. His jaw drew spasmodically and obliquely downward; hiseyeballs rolled to-ward his feet, and began to swell; lividness, like ahorrible shadow, fastened upon him, and, with a sort of gurgle andsudden check, he stretched his feet and threw his head back and gave upthe ghost. 

They sewed him up in a saddle blanket. This was his shroud; too like asoldier's. Harold, meantime, had been tied to a tree, but was nowreleased for the march. Colonel Conger pushed on immediately forWashington; the cortege was to follow. Booth's only arms were hiscarbine knife, and two revolvers. They found about him bills ofexchange, Canada money, and a diary. A venerable old negro living in thevicinity had the misfortune to possess a horse. This horse was a relicof former generations, and showed by his protruding ribs the generalleanness of the land. He moved in an eccentric amble, and when put uponhis speed was generally run backward. To this old negro's horse washarnessed a very shaky and absurd wagon, which rattled like approachingdissolution, and each part of it ran without any connection orcorrespondence with any other part. It had no tail-board, and its shaftswere sharp as famine; and into this mimicry of a vehicle the murdererwas to be sent to the Potomac river, while the man he had murdered wasmoving in state across the mourning continent. The old negro geared uphis wagon by means of a set of fossil harness, and when it was backed toGarrett's porch, they laid within it the discolored corpse. The corpsewas tied with ropes around the legs and made fast to the wagon sides. Harold's legs were tied to stirrups, and he was placed in the centre offour murderous looking cavalrymen. The two sons of Garrett were alsotaken along, despite the sobs and petitions of the old folks and women, but the rebel captain who had given Booth a lift, got off amidst thenight's agitations, and was not rearrested. So moved the cavalcade ofretribution, with death in its midst, along the road to Port Royal. Whenthe wagon started, Booth's wound till now scarcely dribbling, began torun anew. It fell through the crack of the wagon, dripping upon theaxle, and spotting the road with terrible wafers. It stained the planks, and soaked the blankets; and the old negro, at a stoppage, dabbled hishands in it by mistake; he drew back instantly, with a shudder andstifled expletive, "Gor-r-r, dat'll never come off in de world; it'smurderer's blood. " He wrung his hands, and looked imploringly at theofficers, and shuddered again: "Gor-r-r, I wouldn't have dat on me furtousand, tousand dollars. " The progress of the team was slow, withfrequent danger of shipwreck altogether, but toward noon the cortegefiled through Port Royal, where the citizens came out to ask the matter, and why a man's body, covered with sombre blankets, was going by with sogreat escort. They were told that it was a wounded confederate, and soheld their tongues. The little ferry, again in requisition, took themover by squads, and they pushed from Port Conway to Bell Plain, whichthey reached in the middle of the afternoon. All the way the blooddribbled from the corpse in a slow, incessant, sanguine exudation. Theold negro was niggardly dismissed with two paper dollars. The dead manuntied and cast upon the vessel's dock, steam gotten up in a littlewhile, and the broad Potomac shores saw this skeleton ship flit by, asthe bloody sun threw gashes and blots of unhealthy light along thesilver surface. 

All the way associate with the carcass, went Harold, shuddering in sogrim companionship, and in the awakened fears of his own approaching. Ordeal, beyond which it loomed already, the gossamer fabric of ascaffold. He tried to talk for his own exoneration, saying he hadridden, as was his wont, beyond the East Branch, and returning, foundBooth wounded, who begged him to be his companion. Of his crime he knewnothing, so help him God, &c. But nobody listened to him. All interestof crime, courage, and retribution centered in the dead flesh at hisfeet. At Washington, high and low turned out to look on Booth. Only afew were permitted to see his corpse for purposes of recognition. It wasfairly preserved, though on one side of the face distorted, and lookingblue like death, and wildly bandit-like, as if beaten by avenging winds. 

Yesterday the Secretary of War, without instructions of any kind, committed to Colonel Lafayette C. Baker, of the secret service, thestark corpse of J. Wilkes Booth. The secret service never fulfilled itsvolition more secretively. "What have you done with the body?" said I toBaker. "That is known" he answered, "to only one man living besidesmyself. It is gone. I will not tell you where. The only man who knows issworn to silence. Never till the great trumpeter comes shall the graveof Booth be discovered. " And this is true. Last night, the 27th ofApril, a small row boat received the carcass of the murderer; two menwere in it they carried the body off into the darkness, and out of thatdarkness it will never return. In the darkness, like his great crime, may it remain forever, impalpable, invisible, nondescript, condemned tothat worse than damnation, --annihilation. The river-bottom may oozeabout it laden with great shot and drowning manacles. The earth may haveopened to give it that silence and forgiveness which man will never giveits memory. The fishes may swim around it, or the daisies grow whiteabove it; but we shall never know. Mysterious, incomprehensible, unattainable, like the dim times through which we live and think upon asif we only dreamed them in perturbed fever, the assassin of a nation'shead rests somewhere in the elements, and that is all; but if theindignant seas or the profaned turf shall ever vomit his corpse fromtheir recesses, and it receive humane or Christian burial from some whodo not recognize it, let the last words those decaying lips ever utteredbe carved above them with a dagger, to tell the history of a young andonce promising life--useless! useless!

LETTER V. 

A SOLUTION OF THE CONSPIRACY. 

[The annexed Letter, which has been cavilled at, as much as copied, is arationale of the Conspiracy, combined from the Government's ownofficers. When it was written it was believed to be true: the evidenceat the trial has confirmed much of it: I reprint it to show how men'singenuities were at work to account for the conception and progress ofthe Plot. ]

Washington, May 2. 

Justice and fame are equally and simultaneously satisfied. The Presidentis not yet in his sarcophagus, but all the conspirators against hislife, with a minor exception or two, are in their prison cells waitingfor the halter. 

The dark and bloody plot against a good ruler's life is now so fullyunraveled that I may make it plain to you. There is nothing to be gainedby further waiting; the trials are proceeding; the evidence is mountainhigh. Within a week the national scaffold will have done its work, andbe laid away forever. This prompt and necessary justice will signal thelast public assassination in America. Borgia, and Medici, andBrinvilliers, have left no descendants on this side of the world. 

The conspiracy was both the greatest and the smallest of our cycle. Narrowed in execution to a few, it was understood and connived at by amultitude. One man was its head and heart; its accessories were sonumerous that the trouble is not whom to suspect, but whom not accuse. Damning as the result must be to the character of our race, it must beadmitted, in the light of facts, that Americans are as secretive and asskillful plotters as any people in the world. The Rye House plot, neverfully understood; the many schemes of Mazzini, never fastened upon himsufficiently well for implication, yield in extent, darkness andintricacy, to the republican plot against the President's life and thoseof his counselors. The police operations prove that the late murder asnot a spasmodic and fitful crime, but long premeditated, and carried toconsummation with as much cohesion and resolution as the murder ofAllessandro de Medici or Henri Quatre. 

I have been accused of cannonizing Booth. Much as I denounce anddeprecate his crime--holding him to be worthy of all execration, and soseeped in blood that the excuses of a century will fail to lift him outof the atmosphere of common felons--I still, at every new developement, stand farther back in surprise and terror at the wonderful resources andextraordinary influence of one whom I had learned to consider a mereThespian, full of sound, fury, and assertion. 

Strange and anomalous as the facts may seem, John Wilkes Booth was thesole projector of the plot against the President which culminated in thetaking of that good man's life. He had rolled under his tongue the sweetparagraphs of Shakspeare refering to Brutus, as had his father so well, that the old man named one son Junius Brutus, and the other John Wilkes, after the wild English agitator, until it became his ambition, like thewicked Lorenzino de Medici, to stake his life upon one stroke for fame, the murder of a ruler obnoxious to the South. 

That Wilkes Booth was a southern man from the first may be accounted forupon grounds, of interest as well as of sympathy. It is insidious tofind no higher incentive than appreciation, but on the stage this is thefirst and last motive; and as Edwin Booth made his success in the Northand remained steadfast, Wilkes Booth was most truly applauded in theSouth, and became rebel. A false emotion of gratitude, as well as animpulse of mingled waywardness and gratitude, set John Wilkes's facefrom the first toward the North, and he burned to make his name a partof history, cried into fame by the applauses of the South. 

He hung to his bloody suggestion with dogged inflexibility, maintainingonly one axiom above all the rest--that whatever minor parts might beenacted--Casca, Cassius, or what not--he was to be the dramatic Brutus, excepting that assassin's negativeness. In other words, the idea was tobe his own, as well us the crowning blow. 

Booth shrank at first from murder, until another and less dangerousresolution failed. This was no less than the capture of the President'sbody, and its detention or transportation to the South. I do not rely onthis assertion upon his sealed letter, where he avows it; there has beenfound upon a street within the city limits, a house belonging to oneMrs. Greene; mined and furnished with underground apartments, manaclesand all the accessories to private imprisonment. Here the President, andas many as could be gagged and conveyed away with him, were to beconcealed in the event of failure to run them into the confederacy. Owing to his failure to group around him as many men as he desired, Booth abandoned the project of kidnapping; but the house was discoveredlast week, as represented, ready to be blown up at a moment's notice. 

It was at this time that Booth devised his triumphant route through theSouth. The dramatic element seems to have been never lacking in hisdesign, and with all his base purposes he never failed to consider somesubsequent notoriety to be enjoyed. He therefore shipped, before the endof 1864, his theatrical wardrobe from Canada to Nassau. After thecommission of his crime he intended to reclaim it, and "star" throughthe South, drawing money as much by his crime as his abilities. 

When Booth began "on his own responsibility, " to hunt for accomplices, he found his theory at fault. The bold men he had dreamed of refused tojoin him in the rash attempt at kidnapping the President, and were tooconscientious to meditate murder. All those who presented themselveswere military men, unwilling to be subordinate to a civilian, and a mereplay-actor, and the mortified bravo found himself therefore compelled tosink to a petty rank in the plot, or to make use of base and despicableassistants. His vanity found it easier to compound with the secondalternative than the first. 

Here began the first resolve, which, in its mere animal estate, we mayname courage. Booth found that a tragedy in real life could no more beenacted without greasy-faced and knock-kneed supernumeraries than uponthe mimic stage. Your "First Citizen, " who swings a stave for MarcAntony, and drinks hard porter behind the flies is very like the bravoof real life, who murders between his cocktails at the nearest bar. Wilkes Booth had passed the ordeal of a garlicky green-room, and did notshrink from the broader and ranker green-room of real life. He assembledaround him, one by one, the cut-throats at whom his soul would haverevolted, except that he had become, by resolve, a cut-throat inhimself. 

About this time certain gentlemen in Canada began to be unenviablyknown. I abstain from giving their names, because unaware of how farthey seconded this crime, if at all. But they seconded as infamousthings, such as cowardly raids from neutral territory into the states, bank robbings, lake pirating, city burning, counterfeiting, railwaysundering, and the importation of yellow fever into peaceful andunoffending communities. I make no charges against those whom I do notknow, but simply say that the confederate agents, Jacob Tompson, LarryMcDonald, Clement Clay, and some others, had already accomplished enoughvillainy to make Wilkes Booth, on the first of the present year, believethat he had but to seek an interview with them. 

He visited the provinces once certainly, and three times it is believed, stopping in Montreal at St. Lawrence Hall, and banking four hundred andfifty-five dollars odd at the Ontario bank. This was his own money. Ihave myself seen his bank-book with the single entry of this amount. Itwas found in the room of Atzerott, at Kirkwood's Hotel. From this visit, whatever encouragement Booth received, he continued in systematiccorrespondence with one or more of those agents down to the commissionof his crime. I dare not say how far each of these agents wasimplicated. My personal conviction is that they were neither loth to themurder nor astonished when it had been done. They had money withdiscretion from the confederacy, though acting at discretion and outsideof responsibility, and always, at every wild adventure, they instructedtheir dupes that each man took his life in his hand on every incursioninto the north. So Beale took his, raiding on the great lakes. SoKennedy took his, on a midnight bonfire-tramp into the metropolis. Sotook the St. Albans raiders their lives in their palms, dashing into apeaceful town. And if these agents entertained Wilkes Booth's suggestionat all they plainly told him that he carried his life in his dagger'sedge, and could expect from them neither aid nor exculpation. 

Some one or all of these agents furnished Booth with a murderer. Thefellow Wood or Payne, who stabbed Mr. Seward and was caught at Mrs. Surratt's house in Washington. He was one of three Kentucky brothers, all outlaws, and had himself, it is believed, accompanied one of hisbrothers, who is known to have been at St. Albans on the day of thebank-delivery. This Payne, besides being positively identified as theassassin of the Sewards, had no friends nor haunts in Washington. He wassimply a dispatched murderer, and after the night of the crime, strucknorthward of the frontier, instead of southward in the company of Booth. The proof, of this will follow in the course of the article. 

While I assert that the Canadian agents knew Booth and patted his back, calling him, like Macbeth, the "prince of cut-throats, " I am equallycertain that Booth's project was unknown in Richmond. No word, norwritten line, no clue of any sort has been found attaching Booth to theconfederate authorities. The most that can be urged to meet preposterousclaims of this sort is, that out of the rebellion grew the murder; whichis like attributing the measles to the creation of man. But McDonald andhis party had money at discretion, and under their control the vilestfellows on the continent. Their personal influence over those errantones amounted to omnipotence. Most of the latter were young and sanguinepeople, like Beale and Booth; their plots were made up at St. Catharine's, Toronto, and Montreal, and they have maintained since thewar began, rebel mail routes between Canada and Richmond, leadingdirectly passed Washington. 

If Booth received no positive instructions, he was at any rate adjudgeda man likely to be of use, and therefore introduced to the rebelagencies in and around Washington. Doubtless by direct letter, or verbalinstruction, he received a password to the house of Mrs. Surratt. 

Half applauded, half rebuffed by the rebel agents in Canada, Booth'simpressions of his visit were just those which would whet him soonestfor the tragedy. His vanity had been fed by the assurance that successdepended upon himself alone, and that as he had the responsibility hewould absorb the fame; and the method of correspondence was of thatdark and mysterious shape which powerfully operated upon his dramatictemperament. 

What could please an actor, and the son of an actor, better than tomingle as a principal in a real conspiracy, the aims of which werepseudo-patriotic, and the end so astounding that at its coming the wholeglobe would reel. Booth reasoned that the ancient world would not feelmore sensitively the death of Julius Cæsar than the new the suddentaking off of Abraham Lincoln. 

And so he grew into the idea of murder. It became his business thought. It was his recreation and his study. He had not worked half so hard forhistrionic success as for his terrible graduation into an assassin. Hehad fought often on the boards, and seen men die in well-imitatedhorror, with flowing blood upon his keen sword's edge, and the strongstride of mimic victory with which he flourished his weapon at theclosing of the curtain. He embraced conspiracy like an old diplomatist, and found in the woman and the spot subjects for emulation. 

Southeast of Washington stretches a tapering peninsula, composed of fourfertile counties, which at the remote tip make Point Lookout, and do notcontain any town within them of more than a few hundred inhabitants. Tobacco has ruined the land of these, and slavery has ruined the people. Yet in the beginning they were of that splendid stock of Calvert andLord Baltimore, but retain to-day only the religion of the peacefulfounder. I mention it is an exceptional and remarkable fact, that everyconspirator in custody is by education a Catholic. These are our mostloyal citizens elsewhere, but the western shore of Maryland is a noxiousand pestilential place for patriotism. The county immediately outside ofthe District of Columbia, to the south, is named Prince Gorgia's and thepleasantest village of this county, close to Washington, is calledSurrattsville. This consists of a few cabins at a cross-road, surrounding a fine old hotel, the master whereof, giving the settlementhis name, left the property to his wife, who for a long time carried iton with indifferent success. Having a son and several daughters, shemoved to Washington soon after the beginning of the war and let thetavern to a trusty friend--one John Lloyd. Surrattsville has gainednothing in patronage or business from the war, except that it became atan early date, a rebel postoffice. The great secret mail from MatthiasCreek, Virginia, to Port Tobacco, struck Surrattsville, and thenceheaded off to the east to Washington, going meanderingly north. Of thispoet route Mrs. Surratt was a manageress; and John Lloyd, when he rentedher hotel, assumed the responsibility of looking out for the mail, aswell the duty of making Mrs. Surratt at home when she chose to visithim. 

So Surrattsville only ten miles from Washington, has been throughout thewar a sect of conspiracy. It was like a suburb of Richmond, reachingquite up to the rival capital; and though the few Unionists on thepeninsula knew its reputation well enough, nothing of the sort came outuntil the murder. 

Treason never found a better agent than Mrs. Surratt. She is a large, masculine, self-possessed female, mistress of her house, and as lithe arebel as Belle Boyd or Mrs. Greenhough. She has not the flippantry andmenace of the first, nor the social power of the second; but therebellion has found no fitter agent. 

At her country tavern and Washington home Booth was made welcome, andthere began the muttered murder against the nation and mankind. 

The acquaintance of Mrs. Surratt in Lower Maryland undoubtedly suggestedto Booth the route of escape, and made him known to his subsequentaccomplices. Last fall he visited the entire region, as far asLeonardstown, in St. Mary's county, professing to be in search of landbut really hunting up confederates upon whom he could depend. At thistime he bought a map, a fellow to which I have seen among Atzerott'seffects, published at Buffalo for the rebel government, and marking athap-hazard all the Maryland villages, but without tracing the highroadsat all. The absence of these roads, it will be seen hereafter, verynearly misled Booth during his crippled flight. 

It could not but have struck Booth that this isolated part of Marylandignorant and rebel to the brim, without telegraph or railways, or directstage routes, belted with swamps and broken by dense timber, affordedextraordinary opportunities for shelter and escape. Only the coastsurvey had any adequate map of it; it was _ultima thule_ to all intents, and treason might subsist in welcome upon it for a thousand years. 

When Booth cast around him for assistance, he naturally selected thosemen whom he could control. The first that recommended himself was oneHarold, a youth of inane and plastic character, carried away by theexample of an actor, and full of execrable quotations, going to showthat he was an imitator of the master spirit both in text andadmiration. This Harold was a gunner, and therefore versed in arms; hehad traversed the whole lower portion of Maryland, and was therefore ageographer as well as a tool. His friends lived at every farmhousebetween Washington and Leonardsville, and he was respectably enoughconnected, so as to make his association creditable as well as useful. 

Harold, whose picture I have seen, is a dull-faced, shallow boy, smooth-haired, and provincial; he had no money nor employment, exceptthat he clerked for a druggist a while, until he knew Wilkes Booth, wholooked at him only once, and bought his soul for a smile. Harold wasinfatuated by Booth as a woman by a soldier. He copied his gait andtone, adopted his opinions, and was unhappy out of his society. Boothgave him money, mysteriously obtained, and together they made theacquaintance of young John Surratt, son of the conspiratress. 

Young Surratt does not appear to have been a puissant spirit in thescheme; indeed, all design and influence therein was absorbed by Mrs. Surratt and Booth. The latter was the head and heart of the plot; Mrs. Surratt was his anchor, and the rest of the boys were disciples toIscariot and Jezebel. John Surratt, a youth of strong Southernphysiognomy, beardless and lanky, knew of the murder and connived at it. "Sam" Arnold and one McLaughlin were to have been parties to it, butbacked out in the end. They all relied upon Mrs. Surratt, and took their"cues" from Wilkes Booth. 

The conspiracy had its own time and kept its own counsel. Murder exceptamong the principals, was seldom mentioned except by genteelimplication. But they all publicly agreed that Mr. Lincoln ought to beshot, and that the North was a race of fratricides. Much was said ofBrutus, and Booth repeated heroic passages to the delight of Harold, wholearned them also, and wondered if he was not born to greatness. 

In this growing darkness, where all rehearsed cold-hearted murder, Wilkes Booth grew great of stature. He had found a purpose consonantwith his evil nature and bad influence over weak men; so he grewmoodier, more vigilant, more plausible. By mien and temperament he wasborn to handle a stiletto. We have no face so markedly Italian; it wouldstand for Caesar Borgia any day in the year. All the rest were swayed orpersuaded by Booth; his schemes were three in order:

1st. To kidnap the President and Cabinet, and run them South or blowthem up. 

2d. Kidnapping failed, to murder the President and the rest and seekshelter in the confederate capital. 

3d. The rebellion failed, to be its avenger, and throw the country intoconsternation, while he escaped by the unfrequented parts of Maryland. 

When this last resolution had been made, the plot was both contractedand extended. There were made two distinct circles of confidants--thoseaware of the meditated murder, and those who might shrink from murder, though willing accessories for a lesser object. Two colleagues for bloodwere at once accepted--Payne and Atzerott. 

The former I have sketched; he is believed to have visited Washingtononce before, at Booth's citation; for the murder was at first fixed forthe day of inauguration. Atzerott was a fellow of German descent, whohad led a desperate life at Port Tobacco, where he was a house-painter. He had been a blockade-runner across the Potomac, and a mail-carrier. When Booth and Mrs. Surratt broke the design to him, with a suggestionthat there was wealth in it, he embraced the offer at once, and bought adirk and pistol. Payne also came from the North to Washington, and, asfate would have it, the President was announced to appear at Ford'stheater in public. There the resolve of blood was reduced to a definitemoment. 

On the night before the crime Booth found on whom he could rely. JohnSurratt was sent northward by his mother on Thursday. Sam Arnold andMcLaughlin, each of whom was to kill a cabinet officer, grewpigeon-livered and ran away. Harold true to his partiality, lingeredaround Booth to the end; Atzerott went so far as to take his knife andpistol to Kirkwood's, where President Johnson was stopping, and hid themunder the bed. But either his courage failed, or a trifling accidentderanged his plan. But Payne, a professional murderer, stood "game, " andfought his way over prostrate figures to his sick victim's bed. Therewas great confusion and terror among the tacit and rash conspirators onThursday night. They had looked upon the plot as of a melodrama, andfound to their horror that John Wilkes Booth meant to do murder. 

Six weeks before the murder, young John Surratt had taken two splendidrepeating carbines to Surrattville and told John Lloyd to secret them. 

The latter made a hole in the wainscotting and suspended them fromstrings, so that they fell within the plastered wall of the room below. On the very afternoon of the murder, Mrs. Surratt was driven toSurrattsville, and she told John Lloyd to have the carbines readybecause they would be called for that night. Harold was madequartermaster, and hired the horses. He and Atzerott were mountedbetween 8 o'clock and the time of the murder, and riding about thestreets together. 

The whole party was prepared for a long ride, as their spurs andgauntlets show. It may have been their design to ride in company to theLower Potomac, and by their numbers exact subsistence andtransportation; but all edifices of murder lack a corner stone. We onlyknow that Booth ate and talked well during the day; that he never seemedso deeply involved in 'oil, ' and that there is a hiatus between hissupper here and his appearance at Ford's theater. 

Lloyd, I may interpolate, ordered his wife a few days before the murderto go on a visit to Allen's Fresh. She says she does not know why shewas so sent away, but swears that it is so. Harold, three weeks beforethe murder, visited Port Tobacco, and said that the next time the boysheard of him he would be in Spain; he added that with Spain there was noextradition treaty. He said at Surrattsville that he meant to make abarrel of money, or his neck would stretch. 

Atzerott said that if he ever came to Port Tobacco again he would berich enough to buy the whole place. 

Wilkes Booth told a friend to go to Ford's on Friday night and see thebest acting in the world. 

At Ford's theater, on Friday night, there were many standers in theneighborhood of the door, and along the dress circle in the direction ofthe private box where the President sat. 

The play went on pleasantly, though Mr. Wilkes Booth an observer of theaudience, visited the stage and took note of the positions. His allegedassociate, the stage carpenter, then received quiet orders to clear thepassage by the wings from the prompter's post to the stage door. Allthis time, Mr. Lincoln, in his family circle, unconscious of the deaththat crowded fast upon him, watched the pleasantry and smiled and feltheartful of gentleness. 

Suddenly there was a murmur near the audience door, as of a man speakingabove his bound. He said:

"Nine o'clock and forty-five minutes!"

These words were reiterated from mouth to mouth until they passed thetheater door, and were heard upon the sidewalk. 

Directly a voice cried, in the same slightly-raised monotone:

"Nine o'clock and fifty minutes!"

This also passed from man to man, until it touched the street like ashudder. 

"Nine o'clock and fifty-five minutes!" said the same relentless voice, after the next interval, each of which narrowed to a lesser span thelife of the good President. 

Ten o'clock here sounded, and conspiring echo said in reverberation:

"Ten o'clock!"

So like a creeping thing, from lip to lip, went:

"Ten o'clock and five minutes. "

(An interval. )

"Ten o'clock and ten minutes!"

At this instant Wilkes Booth appeared in the door of the theater, andthe men who had repeated the time so faithfully and so ominouslyscattered at his coming, as at some warning phantom. Fifteen minutesafterwards the telegraph wires were cut. 

All this is so dramatic that I fear to excite a laugh when I write it. But it is true and proven, and I do not say it but report it. 

All evil deeds go wrong. While the click of the pistol, taking thePresident's life, went like a pang through the theater, Payne wasspilling blood in Mr. Seward's house from threshold to sick chamber. ButBooth's broken leg delayed him or made him lose his general calmness andhe and Harold left Payne no to his fate. 

I have not adverted to the hole bored with a gimlet in the entry door ofMr. Lincoln's box, and cut out with a penknife. The theory that thepistol-ball of Booth passed through this hole is exploded. And the stagecarpenter may have to answer for this little orifice with all his neck. For when Booth leaped from the box he strode straight across the stageby the footlights, reaching the prompter's post, which is immediatelybehind that private box opposite Mr. Lincoln. From this box to the stagedoor in the rear, the passage-way leads behind the ends of the scenes, and if generally either closest up by one or more withdrawn scenes, orso narrow that only by doubling and turning sidewise can one pass along. On this fearful night, however, the scenes were so adjusted to themurderer's design that he had a free aisle from the foot of the stage tothe exit door. 

Within fifteen minutes after the murder the wires were severed entirelyaround the city, excepting only a secret wire for government uses, whichleads to Old Point. I am told that by this wire the government reachedthe fortifications around Washington, first telegraphing all the way toOld Point, and then back to the outlying forts. This information comesto me from so many creditable channels that I must concede it. 

Payne, having, as he thought, made an end of Mr. Seward--which wouldhave been the case but for Robinson, the nurse--mounted his horse, andattempted to find. Booth. But the town was in alarm, and he galloped atonce for the open country, taking as he imagined, the proper road forthe East Branch. He rode at a killing pace, and when near Fort Lincoln, on the Baltimore pike, his horse threw him headlong. Afoot andbewildered, he resolved to return to the city, whose lights he couldplainly see; but before doing so ho concealed himself some time, andmade some almost absurd efforts to disguise himself. Cutting a crosssection from the woolen undershirt which covered his muscular arm, hemade a rude cap of it, and threw away his bloody coat. This has sincebeen found in the woods, and blood has been found also on his bosom andsleeves. He also spattered himself plentifully with mud and clay, and, taking an abandoned pick from the deserted intrenchments near by, hestruck at once for Washington. 

By the providence which always attends murder, he reached Mrs. Surratt'sdoor just as the officers of the government were arresting her. Theyseized Payne at once, who had an awkward lie to urge in hisdefense--that he had come there to dig a trench. That night he dug atrench deep and broad enough for both of them to lie in forever. Theywashed his hands, and found them soft and womanish; his pocketscontained tooth and nail brushes and a delicate pocket knife. All thisapparel consorted ill with his assumed character. He is, without doubt, Mr. Seward's attempted murderer. 

Coarse, and hard, and calm, Mrs. Surratt shut up her house after themurder, and waited with her daughters till the officers came. She wasimperturbable, and rebuked her girls for weeping, and would have gone tojail like a statue, but that in her extremity, Payne knocked at herdoor. He had come, he said, to dig a ditch for Mrs. Surratt, whom hevery well knew. But Mrs. Surratt protested that she had ever seen theman at all, and had no ditch to clean. 

"How fortunate, girls, " she said, "that these officers are here; thisman might have murdered us all. "

Her effrontery stamps her as worthy of companionship with Booth. Paynehas been identified by a lodger of Mrs. Surratt's, as having twicevisited the house under the name of Wood. The girls will render valuabletestimony in the trial. If John Surratt were in custody the links wouldbe complete. 

Atzerott had a room almost directly over Vice-President Johnson's. Hehad all the materials to do murder, but lost spirit or opportunity. Heran away so hastily that all his arms and baggage were discovered; atremendous bowie-knife and a Colt's cavalry revolver were found betweenthe mattresses of his bed. Booth's coat was also found there, showingconspired flight in company, and in it three boxes of cartridges, a mapof Maryland, gauntlet for riding, a spur and a handkerchief marked withthe name of Booth's mother--a mother's souvenir for a murderer's pocket!

Atzerott fled alone, and was found at the house of his uncle inMontgomery county. I do not know that any instrument of murder has evermade me thrill as when I drew this terrible bowie-knife from its sheath. Major O'Bierne, of New-York, was the instigator of Atzerott's discoveryand arrest. 

I come now to the ride out of the city by the chief assassin and hisdupe. Harold met Booth immediately after the crime in the next street, and they rode at a gallop past the Patent Office and over Capitol Hill. 

As they crossed the Eastern branch at Uniontown, Booth gave his propername to the officer at the bridge. This, which would seem to have beenfoolish, was, in reality, very shrewd. The officers believed that one ofBooth's accomplices had given this name in order to put them out of thereal Booth's track. So they made efforts elsewhere, and so Booth got astart. At midnight, precisely, the two horsemen stopped atSurrattsville, Booth remaining on his nag while Harold descended andknocked lustily at the door. Lloyd, the landlord, came down at once, when Harold pushed past him into the bar, and obtained a bottle ofwhiskey, some of which he gave to Booth immediately. While Booth wasdrinking, Harold went up stairs and brought down one of the carbines. Lloyd started to get the other, but Harold said:

"We don't want it; Booth has broken his leg and can't carry it. "

So the second carbine remained in the hall, where the officers afterwardfound it. 

As the two horsemen started to go off, Booth cried out to Lloyd:

"Do you want to hear some news?"

"I don't care much about it, " cried Lloyd, by his own account. 

"We have murdered, " said Booth, "the President and Secretary of State!"

And with this horrible confession, Booth and Harold dashed away in themidnight, across Prince George's county. 

On Saturday, before sunrise, Booth and Harold, who had ridden all nightwithout stopping elsewhere, reached the house of Dr. Mudd, three milesfrom Bryantown. They contracted with him for twenty-five dollars ingreenbacks to set the broken leg. Harold, who knew Dr. Mudd, introducedBooth under another name, and stated that he had fallen from his horseduring the night. The doctor remarked of Booth that he draped the lowerpart of his face while the leg was being set; he was silent, and inpain. Having no splits in the house, they split up an old-fashionedwooden band-box and prepared them. The doctor was assisted by anEnglishman, who at the same time began to hew out a pair of crutches. The inferior bone of the left leg was broken vertically across, andbecause vertically it did not yield when the crippled man walked uponit. 

The riding boot of Booth had to be cut from his foot; within were thewords "J. Wilkes. " The doctor says he did not notice these, but thatvisual defect may cost him his neck. The two men waited around the houseall day, but toward evening they slipped their horses from the stableand rode away in the direction of Allen's Fresh. 

Below Bryantown run certain deep and slimy swamps, along the belt ofthese Booth and Harold picked up a negro named Swan, who volunteered toshow them the road for two dollars; they gave him five more to show themthe route to Allen's Fresh, but really wished, as their actionsintimated, to gain the house of one Sam. Coxe, a notorious rebel, andprobably well advised of the plot. They reached the house at midnight. It is a fine dwelling, one of the best in Maryland. And after hallooingfor some time, Coxe came down to the door himself. As soon as he openedit and beheld who the strangers were, he instantly blew out a candle heheld in his hand, and without a word pulled them into the house, thenegro remaining in the yard. The confederates remained in Coxe's housetill 4 A. M. , during which time, the negro saw them drink and eatheartily; but when they reappeared they spoke in a loud tone, so thatSwan could hear them, against the hospitality of Coxe. All this wasmeant to influence the darkey; but their motives were as apparent astheir words. He conducted them three miles further on, when they toldhim that now they knew the way, and giving him five dollars more--makingtwelve in all--told him to go back. 

But when the negro, in the dusk of the morning, looked after them as hereceded, he saw that both horses' heads were turned once more towardCoxe's, and it was this man, doubtless, who harbored the fugitives fromSunday to Thursday, aided, possibly, by such neighbors as the Wilsonsand Adamses. 

At the point where Booth crossed the Potomac the shores are veryshallow, and one must wade out some distance to where a boat will float. A white man came up here with a canoe on Friday, and tied it by a stoneanchor. Between seven and eight o'clock it disappeared, and in theafternoon some men at work in Virginia, saw Booth and Harold land, tiethe boat's rope to a stone, and fling it ashore, and strike at onceacross a ploughed field for King George Court House. Many folksentertained them without doubt, but we positively hear of them next atPort Royal Ferry, and then at Garrett's farm. 

I close this article with a list of all who were at Garrett's farm onthe death of Booth. 

 1. E. J. Conger, \ Detectives. 2. Lieut. Baker, / 3. Surgeon from Port Royal, 4. Four Garrett daughters. 5. Harold, Booth's accomplice, _Soldiers_. --Company H, Sixteenth New-York Volunteer Cavalry, LieutenantEd. P. Doherty commanding: Corporals A. Neugarten, J. Waly, M. Hornsby:Privates J. Mellington, D. Darker, E. Parelays, W. Mockgart;Corporals--Zimmer (Co. C), M. Taenaek; Privates H. Pardman, J. Meiyers, W. Burnn, F. Meekdank, G. Haich, J. Raien, J. Kelly, J. Samger (Co. M), G. Zeichton, --Steinbury, L. Sweech (Co. A), A. Sweech (Co. H), F. Diacts; Sergeant Wandell; Corporals Lannekey, Winacky; Sergeant Corbett(Co. L). 

Sergeant Corbett, who shot Booth, was the only man of the commandbelonging to the same company with Lieutenant Doherty, Commandant. 

LETTER VI. 

THE DETECTIVES' STORIES. 

Washington, May 2--P. M. 

The police resources of the country have been fairly tested during thepast two weeks. Under the circumstances, the shrewdness and energy ofboth municipal and national detectives have been proven good. The latterbody has had a too partial share of the applause thus far, while thegreat efforts of our New-York and other officers have been overlooked. In the crowning success of Doherty, Conger, and Baker on the Virginiaside of the water we have forgotten the as vigorous and better sustainedpursuit on the Maryland side. 

Yet the Secretary of War has thanked all concerned, especially referringto many excellent leaders in the long hunt through Charles and St. Mary's counties. Here the military and civil forces together amounted toquite a small army, and constituted by far the largest policeorganization ever known on this side of the Atlantic. 

I think the adventures and expedients of these public servants worthy ofa column. It would be out of all proportion to pass them by when wedevote a dozen lines to every petty larceny and shoplifting. 

On the Friday night of the murder the departments were absolutelyparalyzed. The murderers had three good hours for escape; they hadevaded the pursuit of lightning by snapping the telegraph wires, andrumor filled the town with so many reports that the first valuablehours, which should have been used to follow hard after them, wereconsumed in feverish efforts to know the real extent of theassassination. 

Immediately afterwards, however, or on Saturday morning early, theprovost and special police force got on the scent, and military insquads were dispatched close upon their heels. 

Three grand pursuits wore organized: one reaching up the north bank ofthe Potomac toward Chain bridge, to prevent escape by that directioninto Virginia, where Mosby, it was suspected, waited to hail themurderers;

A second starting from Richmond, Va. , northward, forming a broadadvancing picket or skirmish line between the Blue Ridge and the broadsea-running streams;

A third to scour the peninsula towards Point Lookout. 

The latter region became the only one well examined; the northernexpedition failed until advised from below to capture Atzerott, andfailed, to capture Payne. Yet there were cogent probabilities that theassassin had taken this route; far Mosby would have given them the righthand of fellowship. 

When that guerrilla heard of Booth's feat, said Captain Jett, heexclaimed:

"Now, by----! I could take that man in my arms. "

Washington, as a precautionary measure, was doubly picketed at once; theauthorities in all northern towns advised of the personnel of themurderer, and requests made of the detective chiefs in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New-York, to forward to Washington without delay theirbest decoys. 

A court of inquiry was organized on the moment, and early in the weeksucceeding rewards were offered. An individual, and not the government, offered the first rewards. 

There were two men without whom the hunt would have gone astray manytimes. 

John S. Young, chief of the New-York detective force, a powerful andresolute man, whose great weight and strength are matched by boundlessenergy, and both subordinate to a head as clear as the keen andsearching warrant of his eye. This man has been in familiar conversewith every rebel agent in the Canadas, and is feared by them as theyfear the fates of Beall and Kennedy. Without being a sensationist, hehas probably rendered the cleverest services of the war to the generalgovernment. They sent for him immediately after the tragedy, and hestopped on the way for his old police companion, Marshal Murray. Thelatter's face and figure are familiar to all who know New-York; heresembles an admiral on his quarter-deck; he is a detective of fair andexcellent repute, and has a somewhat novel pride in what he calls "themost beautiful gallows in the United States. "

These officials were ordered to visit Colonel Ingraham's office andexamine the little evidence on hand. They and their tried officersformed a junction on Sunday afternoon with the large detective force ofProvost-Marshal Major O'Bierne. The latter commands the District ofColumbia civil and military police. He is a New-Yorker and has been shotthrough the body in the field. 

The detective force of Young and Murray consisted of Officers Radford, Kelso, Elder, and Hoey, of New-York; Deputy-Marshal Newcome, formerly ofTHE WORLD'S city staff; Officers Joseph Pierson and West, of Baltimore. 

Major O'Bierne's immediate aids were Detectives John Lee, Lloyd, Gavigan, Coddingham, and Williams. 

A detachment of the Philadelphia detective police, force--OfficersTaggert, George Smith, and Carlin, reporting to Colonel Baker--went inthe direction of the North Pole; everybody is on the _que vive_ forthem. 

To the provost-marshal of Baltimore, MacPhail, who knew the tone andbearing of the country throughout, was joined the zealous co-operationof Officer Lloyd, of Major O'Bierne's staff, who had a personal feelingagainst the secessionists of lower Maryland; they had once driven himaway for his loyalty, and had reserved their hospitality for assassins. 

Lieutenant Commander Gushing, I am informed, also rendered importantservices to the government in connection with the police operations. Volunteer detectives, such as Ex-Marshal Lewis and Angelis, wereplentiful; it is probable that in the pitch of the excitement fivehundred detective officers were in and around Washington city. At thesame time the secret police of Richmond abandoned their ordinarybusiness, and devoted themselves solely to this overshadowing offense. 

No citizen, in these terrible days, knows what eyes were upon him as hetalked and walked, nor how his stature and guise were keenly scanned byfolks who passed him absent-faced, yet with his mental portraitcarefully turned over, the while some invisible hand clutched arevolver, and held a life or death challenge upon his lips. 

The military forces were commanded by Colonel Welles, of the Twentysixth Michigan regiment, whose activity and zeal were amply sustained byColonel Clendenning, of the Eighth Illinois cavalry, probably the finestbody of horse in the service. 

The first party to take the South Maryland road was dispatched by MajorO'Bierne, and commanded by Lieutenant Lovett, of the Veteran Reserves. It consisted of twenty-five cavalry men, with detectives Cottingham, Lloyd, and Gavigan; these latter, with the lieutenant, kept well inadvance. They made inquiries of a soothing and cautious character, butsaw nothing suspicious until they arrived at Piscataway, where anunknown man, some distance ahead, observed them, and took to the woods. This was on Sunday night, forty hours after the murder. 

Guided by Officer Lloyd, the little band dashed on, arriving atBryantown on Tuesday. Here they arrested John Lloyd, of the hotel atSurrattsville, of whom they had previously inquired for the murderers, and he had said positively that he neither knew them nor had seenanybody whatever on the night of the crime. He was returning in a wagon, with his wife, whom he had ordered, the day before, to go on a visit toAllen's Fresh, The Monday afterward he started to bring her back. Thiswoman, frightened at the arrest, acknowledged at once that in herhusband's conduct there was some inexplicable mystery. He was taciturnand defiant as before, until confronted by some of his old Unionneighbors. 

The few Unionists of Prince George's and Charles counties, longpersecuted and intimidated, now came forward and gave importanttestimony. 

Among these was one Roby, a very fat and very zealous old gentleman, whose professions were as ample as his perspiration. He told theofficers of the secret meetings for conspiracy's, sake at Lloyd's Hotel, and although a very John Gilpin on horseback, rode here and there to hisgreat loss of wind and repose, fastening fire-coals upon the guilty orsuspected. 

Lloyd was turned over to Mr. Cottingham, who had established a jail atRobytown; that night his house was searched, and Booth's carbine foundhidden in the wall. Three days afterward, Lloyd himself confessed--andhis neck is quite nervous at this writing. 

This little party, under the untiring Lovett, examined all thefarm-houses below Washington resorting to many shrewd expedients, andtaking note of the great swamps to the east of Port Tobacco; theyreached Newport at last and fastened tacit guilt upon many residents. 

Beyond Bryantown they overhauled the residence of Doctor Mudd and foundBooth's boot. This was before Lloyd confessed, and was the firstpositive trace the officers had that they were really close upon theassassins. 

I do not recall anything more wild and startling than this vague anddangerous exploration of a dimly known, hostile, and ignorant country. To these few detectives we owe much of the subsequent successfulprosecution of the pursuit. They were the Hebrew spies. 

By this time the country was filling up with soldiers, but previously asecond memorable detective party went out under the personal command ofMajor O'Bierne. It consisted, besides that officer, of Lee, D'Angellia, Callahan, Hoey, Bostwick, Hanover, Bevins, and McHenry, and embarked atWashington on a steam-tug for Chappell's Point. Here a military stationhad long been established for the prevention of blockade andmail-running across the Potomao. It was commanded by Lieutenant Laverty, and garrisoned by sixty-five men. On Tuesday night, Major O'Bierne'sparty reached this place, and soon afterwards, a telegraph station wasestablished here by an invaluable man to the expedition, CaptainBeckwith, General Grant's chief cypher operator, who tapped the PointLookout wire, and placed the War Department within a moment's reach ofthe theater of events. 

Major O'Bierne's party started at once over the worst road in the worldfor Port Tobacco. 

If any place in the world is utterly given over to depravity, it is PortTobacco. From this town, by a sinuous creek, there is flat boatnavigation to the Potomac, and across that river to Mattox's creek. Before the war Port Tobacco was the seat of a tobacco aristocracy and ahaunt of negro traders. It passed very naturally into a rebel post forblockade-runners and a rebel post-office general. Gambling, cornerfighting, and shooting matches were its lyceum education. Violence andignorance had every suffrage in the town. Its people were smugglers, toall intents, and there was neither Bible nor geography to the wholeregion adjacent. Assassination was never very unpopular at Port Tobacco, and when its victim was a northern president it became quite heroic. Amonth before the murder a provost-marshal near by was slain in hisbed-chamber. For such a town and district the detective police were theonly effective missionaries. The hotel here is called the Brawner House;it has a bar in the nethermost cellar, and its patrons, carousing inthat imperfect light, look like the denizens of some burglar's crib, talking robbery between their cups; its dining-room is dark andtumble-down, and the _cuisine_ bears traces of Caffir origin; a barbecueis nothing to a dinner there. The Court House of Port Tobacco is themost superflous house in the place, except the church. It stands in thecenter of the town in a square, and the dwellings lie about it closely, as if to throttle justice. Five hundred people exist in Port Tobacco;life there reminds me, in connection with the slimy river and theadjacent swamps, of the great reptile period of the world, wheniguanadons and pterodactyls and pleosauri ate each other. 

Into this abstract of Gomorrah the few detectives went like angels whovisited Lot. They pretended to be enquiring for friends, or to havebusiness designs, and the first people they heard of were Harold andAtzerott. The latter had visited Port Tobacco three weeks before themurder, and intimated at that time his design of fleeing the country. But everybody denied having seen him subsequent to the crime. 

Atzerott had been in town just prior to the crime. He had been livingwith a widow woman named Mrs. Wheeler, by whom he had several children, and she was immediately called upon by Major O'Bierne. He did not tellher what Atzerott had done, but vaguely hinted that he had committedsome terrible crime, and that since he had done her wrong, she couldvindicate both herself and justice by telling his whereabouts. The womanadmitted that Atzerott had been her bane, but she loved him, and refusedto betray him. 

His trunk was found in her garret, and in it the key to his paint shopin Port Tobacco. The latter was fruitlessly searched, but the probablewhereabouts of Atzerott in Mongomery county obtained, and Major O'Biernetelegraphing there immediately, the desperate fellow was found andlocked up. A man named Crangle who had succeeded Atzerott in Mrs. Wheeler's pliable affections, was arrested at once and put in jail. Anumber of disloyal people were indicated or "spotted" as in no wiseangry at the President's taking off, and for all such a provost prisonwas established. 

[Illustration: Maryland. ]

A few miles from Port Tobacco dwelt a solitary woman, who, whenquestioned, said that for many nights she had heard, after she hadretired to bed, a man enter her cellar and lie there all night, departing before dawn. Major O'Bierne and the detectives ordered her toplace a lamp in her window the next night she heard him enter, and atdark they established a cordon of armed officers around the place. Atmidnight punctually she exhibited the light, when the officers brokeinto the house and thoroughly searched it, without result. Yet the womanpositively asserted that she had heard the man enter. 

It was afterward found that she was of diseased mind. 

By this time the military had come up in considerable numbers, and MajorO'Bierne was enabled to confer with Major Wait, of the Eighth Illinois. 

The major had pushed on Monday night to Leonardstown, and pretty welloverhauled that locality. 

It was at this time that preparations were made to hunt the swampsaround Chapmantown, Beantown, and Allen's Fresh. Booth had been entirelylost since his departure from Mudd's house, and it was believed that hehad either pushed on for the Potomac or taken to the swamps. Theofficers sagaciously determined to follow him to the one and to explorethe other. 

The swamps tributary to the various branches of the Wicomico river, ofwhich the chief feeder is Allen's creek, bear various names, such asJordan's swamp, Atchall's swamp, and Scrub swamp. There are densegrowths of dogwood, gum, and beech, planted in sluices of water and bog;and their width varies from a half mile to four miles, while theirlength is upwards of sixteen miles. Frequent deep ponds dot thiswilderness place, with here and there a stretch of dry soil, but nohuman being inhabits the malarious extent; even a hunted murderer wouldshrink from hiding there. Serpents and slimy lizards are the onlydenizens; sometimes the coon takes refuge in this desert from thehounds, and in the soil mud a thousand odorous muskrats delve, with nowand then a tremorous otter. But not even the hunted negro dares tofathom the treacherous clay, nor make himself a fellow of the slimyreptiles which reign absolute in this terrible solitude. Here thesoldiers prepared to seek for the President's assassin, and no search ofthe kind has ever been so thorough and patient. The Shawnee, in hisstrong hold of despair in the heart of Okeefeuokee, would scarcely havechanged homes with Wilkes Booth and David Harold, hiding in this inhumancountry. 

The military forces deputed to pursue the fugitives were seven hundredmen of the Eighth Illinois cavalry, six hundred men of the Twenty-secondColored troops, and one hundred men of the Sixteenth New York. Theseswept the swamps by detachments, the mass of them dismounted, withcavalry at the belts of clearing, interspersed with detectives atfrequent intervals in the rear. They first formed a strong picket cordonentirely around the swamps, and then, drawn up in two orders of battle, advanced boldly into the bogs by two lines of march. One party swept theswamps longitudinally, the other pushed straight across their smallestdiameter. 

A similar march has not been made during the war; the soldiers were onlya few paces apart, and in steady order they took the ground as it came, now plunging to their arm-pits in foul sluices of gangrened water, nowhopelessly submerged in slime, now attacked by Regions of wood ticks, now tempting some unfaithful log or greenishly solid morass, andplunging to the tip of the skull in poison stagnation; the tree boughsrent their uniforms; they came out upon dry land, many of them without arag of garment scratched, and gashed, and spent, repugnant tothemselves, and disgusting to those who saw them; but not one trace ofBooth or Harold was any where found. Wherever they might be, the swampsdid not contain them. 

While all this was going on, a force started from Point Lookout, andswept the narrow necks of Saint Mary's quite up to Medley's Neck. Tocomplete the search in this part of the country, Colonel Wells and MajorO'Bierne started with a force of cavalry and infantry for Chappel Point;they took the entire peninsula as before, and marched in close skirmishline across it, but without finding anything of note. The matter ofinclosing a house was by cavalry advances, which held all the avenuestill mounted detectives came up. Many strange and ludicrous adventuresoccured on each of these expeditions. While the forces were going upCobb's neck, there was a counter force coming down from Allen's Fresh. 

Major O'Bierne started for Leonardstown with his detective force, andplayed off Laverty as Booth, and Hoey as Harold. These two advanced tofarm-houses and gave their assumed names, asking at the same time forassistance and shelter. They were generally avoided, except by one mannamed Claggert, who told them they might hide in the woods behind hishouse. When Claggert was arrested, however he stated that he meant tohide them only to give them up. While on this adventure, a man who hadheard of the reward came very near shooting Laverty. The ruse now becamehazardous and the detectives resumed their real characters. 

I have not time to go into the detail of this long and excellent hunt. My letter of yesterday described how the detectives of Mr. Young andMarshal Murray examined the negro Swan, and traced Booth to the house ofSam Coxe, the richest rebel in Charles county. There is a gap in theevidence between the arrival of Booth at this place and his crossing thePotomac above Swan Point, in a stolen or purposely-provided canoe. Butas Coxe's house is only ten miles from the river, it is possible that hemade the passage of the intermediate country undiscovered. 

One Mills, a rebel mail-carrier, also arrested, saw Booth and Haroldlurking along the river bank on Friday; he referred Major O'Bierne toone Claggert, a rebel, as having seen them also; but Claggert held histongue, and went to jail. On Saturday night, Major O'Bierne, thusassured, also crossed the Potomac with his detectives to Boon's farm, where the fugitives had landed. While collecting information here agunboat swung up the stream, and threatened to fire on the party. 

It was now night, and all the party worn to the ground with long traveland want of sleep. Lieutenant Laverty's men went a short distance downthe country and gave up, but Major O'Bierne, with a single man, pushedall night to King George's court-house, and next day, Sunday, re-embarked for Chappell's Point. Hence he telegraphed his information, and asked permission to pursue, promising to catch the assassins beforethey reached Port Royal. 

This the department refused. Colonel Baker's men were delegated to makethe pursuit with the able Lieutenant Doherty, and. O'Bierne, who was themost active and successful spirit in the chase, returned to Washington, cheerful and contented. 

At Mrs. Burratt's Washington house, at the Pennsylvania Hotel, Washington, and at Surrattsville, the Booth plot was almost entirelyarranged. These three places will be relics of conspiracy forever. 

Harold said to Lieutenant Doherty, after the latter had dragged him fromthe barn. 

"Who's that man in there? It can't be Booth; he told me his name wasLoyd. "

He further said that he had begged food for Booth from house to housewhile the latter hid in the woods. 

The confederate captain, Willie Jett, who had given Booth a lift behindhis saddle from Port Royal to Garrett's farm, was then courting a MissGoldmann at Bowling Green; his traveling companions were LieutenantsRuggles and Burbridge. 

Payne, the assassin of the Sewards, was arrested by Officers, Sampson, of the sub-treasury, and Devoe, acting under General Alcott. The latterhad besides, Officers Marsh and Clancy (a stenographer). 

The reward for the capture of Booth will be distributed between verymany men. The negro, Swan, will get as much of it, as he deserves. Itamounts to about eighty thousand dollars, but the War Department mayincrease it at discretion. The entire rewards amount to a hundred andsixty odd thousand. Major O'Bierne should get a large part of it aswell. 

This story which I must close abruptly, deserves to be re-written, withall its accessory endeavours. What I have said is in skeleton merely, and far from exhaustive. 

LETTER VII. 

THE MARTYR. 

Washington, May 14. 

I am sitting in the President's office. He was here very lately, but hewill not return to dispossess me of this high-backed chair he filled solong, nor resume his daily work at the table where I am writing. 

There are here only Major Hay and the friend who accompanies me. Abright-faced boy runs in and out, darkly attired, so that his fob-chainof gold is the only relief to his mourning garb. This is little Tad. , the pet of the White House. That great death, with which the worldrings, has made upon him only the light impression which all things makeupon childhood. He will live to be a man pointed out everywhere, for hisfather's sake; and as folks look at him, the tableau of the murder willseem to encircle him. 

The room is long and high, and so thickly hung with maps that the colorof the wall cannot be discerned. The President's table at which I amseated, adjoins a window at the farthest corner; and to the left of mychair as I recline in it, there is a large table before an empty grate, around which there are many chairs, where the cabinet used to assemble. The carpet is trodden thin, and the brilliance of its dyes is lost. Thefurniture is of the formal cabinet class, stately and semi-comfortable;there are book cases sprinkled with the sparse library of a countrylawyer, but lately plethoric, like the thin body which has departed inits coffin. They are taking away Mr. Lincoln's private effects, todeposit them wheresoever his family may abide, and the emptiness of theplace, on this sunny Sunday, revives that feeling of desolation fromwhich the land has scarce recovered. I rise from my seat and examine themaps; they are from the coast survey and engineer departments, andexhibit all the contested grounds of the war: there are pencil linesupon them where some one has traced the route of armies, and planned thestrategic circumferences of campaigns. Was it the dead President who sofollowed the march of empire, and dotted the sites of shock andoverthrow?

Here is the Manassas country--here the long reach of the wastedShenandoah; here the wavy line of the James and the sinuous peninsula. The wide campagna of the gulf country sways in the Potomac breeze thatfilters in at the window, and the Mississippi climbs up the wall, withblotches of blue and red to show where blood gushed at the bursting ofdeadly bombs. So, in the half-gloomy, half-grand apartment, roamed thetall and wrinkled figure whom the country had summoned from his plainhome into mighty history, with the geography of the republic drawn intoa narrow compass so that he might lay his great brown hand upon iteverywhere. And walking to and fro, to and fro, to measure the destiniesof arms, he often stopped, with his thoughtful eyes upon the carpet, toask if his life were real and if he were the arbiter of so tremendousissues, or whether it was not all a fever-dream, snatched from his sofain the routine office of the Prairie state. 

There is but one picture on the marble mantel over the cold grate--JohnBright, a photograph. 

I can well imagine how the mind of Mr. Lincoln often went afar to theface of Bright, who said so kindly things of him when Europe was mockinghis homely guise and provincial phraseology. To Mr. Lincoln, John Brightwas the standard-bearer of America and democracy in the old world. Hethrilled over Bright's bold denunciations of peer and "Privilege, " andstretched his long arm across the Atlantic to take that daring Quakerinnovator by the hand. 

I see some books on the table; perhaps they have lain there undisturbedsince the reader's dimming eyes grew nerveless. A parliamentary manual, a Thesaurus, and two books of humor, "Orpheus C. Kerr, " and "ArtemusWard. " These last were read by Mr. Lincoln in the pauses of his hardday's labor. Their tenure here bears out the popular verdict of hispartiality for a good joke; and, through the window, from the seat ofMr. Lincoln, I see across the grassy grounds of the capitol, the brokenshaft of the Washington Monument, the long bridge and the fort-tippedHeights of Arlington, reaching down to the shining river side. Thesescenes he looked at often to catch some freshness of leaf and water, andoften raised the sash to let the world rush in where only the nationabided, and hence on that awful night, he departed early, to forget thisroom and its close applications in the _abandon_ of the theater. 

I wonder if that were the least of Booth's crimes--to slay this publicservant in the stolen hour of recreation he enjoyed but seldom. Weworked his life out here, and killed him when he asked a holiday. 

Outside of this room there is an office, where his secretaries sat--aroom more narrow but as long--and opposite this adjacent office, asecond door, directly behind Mr. Lincoln's chair leads by a privatepassage to his family quarters. This passage is his only monument in thebuilding; he added nor subtracted nothing else; it tells a long story ofduns and loiterers, contract-hunters and seekers for commissions, garrulous parents on paltry errands, toadies without measure and talkerswithout conscience. They pressed upon him through the great dooropposite his window, and hat in hand, come courtsying to his chair, withan obsequious "Mr. President!"

If he dared, though the chief magistrate and commander of the army andnavy, to go out of the great door, these vampires leaped upon him withtheir Babylonian pleas, and barred his walk to his hearthside. He couldnot insult them since it was not in his nature, and perhaps many of themhad really urgent errands. So he called up the carpenter and ordered astrategic route cut from his office to his hearth, and perhaps told ofit after with much merriment. 

Here should be written the biography of his official life--in the roomwhere have concentrated all the wires of action, and where haveproceeded the resolves which vitalized in historic deeds. But only thegreat measures, however carried out, were conceived in this office. Thelittle ones proceeded from other places. . 

Here once came Mr. Stanton, saying in his hard and positive way:

"Mr. Lincoln, I have found it expedient to disgrace and arrest GeneralStone. "

"Stanton, " said Mr. Lincoln, with an emotion of pain, "when youconsidered it necessary to imprison General Stone, I am glad you did notconsult me about it. "

And for lack of such consultation, General Stone, I learn, now lies amaniac in the asylum. The groundless pretext, upon which he suffered thereputation of treason, issued from the Department of War--not from thisoffice. 

But as to his biography, it is to be written by Colonel Nicolay andMajor Hay. They are to go to Paris together, one as attache of legation, the other as consul, and while there, will undertake the labor. They arethe only men who know his life well enough to exhaust it, havingfollowed his official tasks as closely as they shared his social hours. 

Major Hay is a gentleman of literary force. Colonel Nicolay has a finejudgment of character and public measures. Together they should satisfyboth curiosity and history. 

As I hear from my acquaintances here these episodes of the President'slife, I recall many reminiscences of his ride from Springfield toHarrisburg, over much of which I passed. Then he left home and became aninhabitant of history. His face was solid and healthy, his step young, his speech and manner bold and kindly. I saw him at Trenton stand in theLegislature, and say, in his conversational intonation:

"We may have to put the foot down firm. "

How should we have hung upon his accents then had we anticipated hisvirtues and his fate. 

Death is requisite to make opinion grave. We looked upon Mr. Lincolnthen as an amusing sensation, and there was much guffaw as he wasregarded by the populace; he had not passed out of partisan ownership. Little by little, afterward, he won esteem, and often admiration, untilthe measure of his life was full, and the victories he had achieved madethe world applaud him. Yet, at this date, the President was sadlychanged. Four years of perplexity and devotion had wrinkled his face, and stooped his shoulders, and the failing eyes that glared upon theplay closed as his mission was completed, and the world had beeneducated enough to comprehend him. 

The White House has been more of a Republican mansion under his controlthan for many administrations. Uncouth guests came to it often, typicalof the simple western civilization of which he was a graduate, and whileno coarse altercation has ever ensued, the portal has swung wide forfive years. 

A friend, connected with a Washington newspaper, told me that he hadoccasion to see Mr. Lincoln one evening, and found that the latter hadgone to bed. But he was told to sit down in the office, and directly thePresident entered. He wore only a night shirt, and his long, lankhirsute limbs, as he sat down, inclined the guest to laughter. Mr. Lincoln disposed of his request at once, and manifested a desire totalk. So he reached for the cane which my friend carried and conversedin this manner:

"I always used a cane when I was a boy. It was a freak of mine. Myfavorite one was a knotted beech stick, and I carved the head myself. There's a mighty amount of character in sticks. Don't you think so? Youhave seen these fishing poles that fit into a cane? Well, that was anold idea of mine. Dogwood clubs were favorite ones with the boys. I'spose they use'em yet. Hickory is too heavy, unless you get it from ayoung sapling. Have you ever noticed how a stick in one's hand willchange his appearance? Old women and witches would'nt look so withoutsticks. Meg Merrilies understands that. "

In this way my friend, who is a clerk, in a newspaper office, heard thePresident talk for an hour. The undress of the man and the witness ofhis subject would be staples for merriment if we did not reflect thathis greatness was of no conventional cast, that the playfulness of hisnature and the simplicity of his illustration lightened public businessbut never arrested it. 

Another gentleman, whom I know, visited the President in high dudgeonone night. He was a newspaper proprietor and one of his editors had beenarrested. 

"Mr. Lincoln, " he said, "I have been off electioneering for yourre-election, and in my absence you have had my editor arrested. I won'tstand it, sir. I have fought better administrations than yours. "

"Why, John, " said the President, "I don't know much about it. I supposeyour boys have been too enterprizing. The fact is, I don't interferewith the press much, but I suppose I am responsible. "

"I want you to order the man's release to-night, " said the applicant. "Ishan't leave here till I get it. In fact, I am the man who should bearrested. Why don't you send me to Capitol Hill?"

This idea pleased the President exceedingly. He laughed the other intogood humor. 

"In fact, " he said, "I am under restraint here, and glad of any pretextto release a journalist. "

So he wrote the order, and the writer got his liberty. 

It must not be inferred from this, however, that the President was adevotee to literature. He had no professional enthusiasm for it. Theliterary coterie of the White House got little flattery but its memberswere treated as agreeable citizens and not as the architects of anybody's fortune. 

Willis went there much for awhile, but yielded to his old habit ofgossiping about the hall paper and the teapots. Emerson went there once, and was deferred to us if he were anything but a philosopher. Yet he sofar grasped the character of his host as to indite that noblehumanitarian eulogy upon him, delivered at Concord, and printed in theWORLD. It will not do to say definitely In this notice how severaloccasional writers visited the White House, heard the President's viewsand assented to them and afterward abused him. But these attained noremembrance nor tart reproach from that least retaliatory of men. Heharbored no malice, and is said to have often placed himself on thestand-point of Davis and Lee, and accounted for their defection while hecould not excuse it. 

He was a good reader, and took all the leading NEW YORK dailies everyday. His secretaries perused them and selected all the items which wouldinterest the President; these were read to him and considered. He boughtfew new books, but seemed ever alive to works of comic value; the veinof humor in him was not boisterous in its manifestations, but touchedthe geniality of his nature, and he reproduced all that he absorbed, toelucidate some new issue, or turn away argument by a laugh. 

As a jester, Mr. Lincoln's tendency was caricatured by the prints, butnot exaggerated. He probably told as many stories as are attributed tohim. Nor did he, as is averred, indulge in these jests on solemnoccasions. No man felt with such personal intensity the extent of thecasualties of his time, and he often gravely reasoned whether he couldbe in any way responsible for the bloodshed and devastation over whichit was his duty to preside. 

An acquaintance of mine--a private--once went to him to plead for aman's life. He had never seen the man for whom he pleaded, and had noacquaintance with the man's family. Mr. Lincoln was touched by hisdisinterestedness, and said to him:

"If I were anything but the President, I would be constantly working asyou have done. "

Whenever a doubt of one's guilt lay on his mind, the man was spared byhis direct interference. . 

There was an entire absence in the President's character of the heroicelement. He would do a great deed in _deshabille_ as promptly as in fulldress. He never aimed to be brilliant, unconsciously understanding thata great man's brilliancy is to be measured by the "wholeness" andsynthetic cast of his career rather than by any fitful ebullitions. Forthat reason we look in vain through his messages for "points. " His pointwas not to turn a sentence or an epigram, but to win an effect, regardless of the route to it. 

He was commonplace in his talk, and Chesterfield would have had nopatience with him; his dignity of character lay in his uprightnessrather than in his formal manner. Members of his government oftenreviewed him plainly in his presence. Yet he divined the true course, while they only argued it out. 

His good feeling was not only personal, but national. He had noprejudice against any race or potentate. And his democracy was of apractical, rather than of a demonstrative, nature. He was not Marat, butMoreau--not Paine and Jefferson; but Franklin. 

His domestic life was like a parlor of night-time, lit by the equalgrate of his genial and uniform kindness. Young Thaddy played with himupon the carpet; Robert came home from the war and talked to his fatheras to a school-mate, he was to Mrs. Lincoln as chivalrous on the lastday of his life as when he courted her. I have somewhere seen a pictureof Henry IV. Of France, riding his babies on his back: that was thePresident. 

So dwelt the citizen who is gone--a model in character if not inceremony, for good men to come who will take his place in the same WhiteHouse, and find their generation comparing them to the man thoughtworthy of assassination. I am glad to sit here in his chair, where hehas bent so often, --in the atmosphere of the household he purified, inthe sight of the green grass and the blue river he hallowed by gazingupon, in the very centre of the nation he preserved for the people, andclose the list of bloody deeds, of desperate fights of swift expiations, of renowned obsequies of which I have written, by inditing at his tablethe goodness of his life and the eternity of his memory. 

LETTER VIII. 

THE TRIAL. 

Washington, May 26. 

The most exciting trial of our times has obtained a very meagercommemoration in all but its literal features. The evidence adduced inthe course of it, has been too faithfully reported, through itsfar-fetched and monotonous irregularities, but nobody realizes theextraordinary scene from which so many columns emanate, either by aid ofthe reporters' scanty descriptions, or by the purblind sketches of theartists. 

Now that the evidence is growing vapid, and the obstinacy of themilitary commission has lost its coarse zest, we may find enough readersto warrant a fuller sketch of the conspirators' prison. 

About a mile below Washington, where the high Potomac Bluffs meet themarshy border of the Eastern branch, stands the United States arsenal, aseries of long, mathematically uninteresting brick buildings, with abroad lawn behind them, open to the water, and level military plazas, onwhich are piled pyramids of shell and ball, among acres of cannon andcannon-carriages, and caissons. A high wall, reaching circularly aroundthese buildings, shows above it, as one looks from Washington, thebarred windows of an older and more gloomy structure than the rest, which forms the city front of the group of which it is the principal. This was a penitentiary, but, long ago added to the arsenal, it has beenre-transformed to a court-room and jail, and in its third, or uppermoststory, the Military Commission is sitting. 

The main road to the arsenal is by a wide and vacant avenue, which abutsagainst a gate where automaton sentries walk, but the same gate can bestbe reached on foot by the shores of the Potomac, in the sight, of theforts, the shipping, and Alexandria. 

The scene at the arsenal in time of peace is common-place enough, exceptthat across the Eastern Branch the towers of the lunatic asylum, perchedupon a height, look down baronially; but this trial of murderers hasmade the spot a fair. 

A whole company of volunteers keeps the gate, through which are passingcabs, barouches, officers' ambulances, and a stream of folks on foot;while farther along almost a regiment crosses the drive, their huddledshelter tents extending entirely across the peninsula. These are playingcards on the ground, and tossing quoits, and sleeping on their faces, while a gunboat watches the river front, and under a circular wall aline of patrols, ten yards apart, go to and fro perpetually. 

It is 10 o'clock, and the court is soon to sit. Its members ride down insuperb ambulances and bring their friends along to show them the majestyof justice. A perfect park of carriages stands by the door to the left, and from these dismount major-generals' wives, in rustling silks;daughters of congressmen, attired like the lilies of the milliner;little girls who hope to be young ladies and have come with "Pa, " tolook at the assassins; even brides are here, in the fresh blush of theirnuptials, and they consider the late spectacle of the review as good aslost, if the court-scene be not added to it. These tender creatures havea weakness for the ring of manacles, the sight of folks to be suspendedin the air, the face of a woman confederate in blood. 

They chat with their polite guides, many of whom are gallant captains, and go one after another up the little flight of steps which leads tothe room of the officer of the day. 

He passes them, if he pleases, up the crooked stairways, and when theyhave climbed three of these, they enter a sort of garret-room, oblong, and plastered white, and about as large as an ordinary town-houseparlor. 

Four doors open into it--that by which we have entered, two from theleft, where the witnesses wait, and one at the end, near the left farcorner, which is the outlet from the cells. 

A railing, close up to the stairway door, gives a little space in theforeground for witnesses; two tables, transverse to this rail, are forthe commission and the press, the first-named being to the right;between these are a raised platform and pivot arm-chair for the witness;below are the sworn phonographers and the counsel for the accused, andthen another rail like that separating the crowd from the court, holdsbehind it the accused and their guards. 

These are they who are living not by years nor by weeks, but by breaths. They are motley enough, for the most part, sitting upon a long benchwith their backs against the wall, --ill-shaved, haggard, anxious, andthe dungeon door at their left opens now and then to show behind it amoving bayonet. There are women within the court proper, edging upon thereporters, introduced there by a fussy usher, and through four windowsfilters the imperfect daylight, making all things distinguishable, yetshadowy. The _coup d'oeil_ of this small and crowded scene is lively asa popular funeral. 

There is the witness with raised hand, pointing toward heaven, andlooking at Judge Holt. The gilt stars, bars, and orange-colored sashesof the commission; the women's brilliant silks and bonnets; the crowdingspectators, with their brains in their eyes; the blue coats of theguards; the working scribes; and last of all the line of culprits, whosesuspected guilt has made them worthy of all illustration. 

Between the angle of the wall and the studded door, under the heavy barof dressed stone which marks above the thickness of the gaol, sits allalone a woman's figure, clothed in solemn black. Her shadowy skirt hidesher feet, so that we cannot see whether they are riveted; her sleeves ofsable sweep down to her wrist, and dark gloves cover the plumpness ofher hand, while a palm-leaf fan nods to and fro to assist the obscurityof her vail of crape, descending from her widow's bonnet. 

A solitary woman, beginning the line of coarse indicted men, shrinkingbeneath the scornful eyes of her sex, and the as bold survey of men morepitiful, may well excite, despite her guilt, a moment of sympathy. 

Let men remember that she is the mother of a son who has fled to savehis forfeit life by deserting her to shame, and perhaps, to death. Letwomen, who will not mention her in mercy, learn from her end, in allsucceeding wars, to make patriotism of their household duties and notincite to blood. 

Mrs. Surratt is a graduate of that seminary which spits in soldiersfaces, denounces brave generals upon the rostrum, and cries out for aninterminable scaffold when all the bells are ringing peace. 

How far her wicked love influenced her to participation in the murderrests in her own breast, and up to this time she has not differed frommothers at large--to twist her own bow-string rather than build hisgibbet. 

Beneath her shadowy bonnet, over her fan-tip, we see two large, sadeyes, rising and falling, and now and then when the fan sways to andfro, the hair just turning gray with trouble, and the round face growingwan and seamed with terrible reflection, are seen a moment crouchinglow, as if she would wish to grovel upon the floor and bury her foreheadin her hands. 

Yet, sometimes, across Mrs. Surratt's face a stealthiness creeps--a sortof furtive, feline flashing of the eye, like that of one which means toleap sideways. At these times her face seems to grow hard and colorless, as if that tiger expression which Pradier caught upon the face ofBrinvilliers and fastened into a masque, had been repeated here. Not togrow mawkish while we must be kind, let us not forget that this woman isan old plotter. If she did not devise the assassination, she was privyto it long. She was an agent of contraband mails--a bold, crafty, assured rebel--perhaps a spy--and in the event of her condemnation, letthose who would plead for her spend half their pity upon that victimwhose heart was like a woman's, and whose hand was merciful as amother's. 

Before the door sits an officer, uncovered, who does not seem to laborunder any particular fear, chiefly because the captives are ironed toimmovability, and he stares and smiles alternately, as if he weresomewhat amiable and extremely bored. 

Next to the officer is a shabby-looking boy, whose seat is by the rightjamb of the jail door. Of all boys just old enough to feel their oats, this boy is the most commonplace. His parents would be likely to have nosanguine hopes of his reaching the presidency; for his head indicateslatent dementia, and a slice or two from it would recommend him, withoutexanimation, to the school for the feeble-minded. Better dressed, andwashed, and shaved, he might make a tolerable adornment to a hotel door, or even reach the dignity of a bar-keeper or an usher at a theatre. Butthat this fellow should occupy a leaf in history and be confounded witha tragedy entering into the literature of the world, reverses manifestdestiny, and leaves neither phrenology nor physiognomy a place to standupon. 

Come up! Gall, Spurzheim, and Lavater, and remark his sallow face, attenuated by base excesses! Do you know any forehead so broad whichmeans so little? the oyster could teach this man philosophy! His chin issharp, his eyes are blank blue, his short black hair curls over hisears, and his beard is of a prickly black, with a moustache which doesnot help his general contemptibleness. A dirty grayish shirt without alinen collar, is seen between the lapels of the greasy and dusty clothcoat, sloping at the shoulders; and under his worn brown trowsers, themanacle of iron makes an ugly garter to his carpet clipper. 

This is David Harold, who shared the wild night-ride of Booth, andbarely escaped that outlaw's death in the burning barn. 

He stoops to the rail of the dock, now and then, to chat with hisattorney, and a sort of blank anxiety which he wears, as his head turnshere and there, shifts to a frolicking smile. But a woman of unusualattractions enters the court, and Harold is much more interested in herthan in his acquittal. 

Great Caesar's dust, which stopped a knot-hole, has in this play boy aninverse parallel. He was at best hostler to a murderer, and failed inthat. His chief concern at present is to have somebody to talk to; andhe thinks upon the whole, that if an assassination is productive of solittle fun, he will have nothing to do with another one. 

That Harold has slipped into history gives us as much surprise as thathe has yet to suffer death gives us almost contempt for the scaffold. But if the scaffold must wait for only wise men to get upon it, it mustrot. Your wise man does no murder in the first place, and if so, in thesecond, he dodges the penalty. In this world, Harold, idiotcy is oftenerpunished than guilt. 

That Booth should have used Harold is very naturally accounted for. Actors live only to be admired; vanity rises to its climax in them. Booth preferred this sparrow to sing him peans rather than live by aneagle and be screamed at now and then. 

At the right hand side of Harold sits a soldier in blue, who isevidently thinking about a game of quoits with his comrades in the jailyard; he wonders why lawyers are so very dry, and is surprised to find atrial for murder as tedious as a thanksgiving sermon. 

But on the soldier's other hand is a figure which makes the center andcynosure of this thrilling scene. Taller by a whole head than either hiscompanions or the sentries, Payne, the assassin, sits erect, and flingshis barbarian eye to and fro, radiating the tremendous energy of hiscolossal physique. 

He is the only man worthy to have murdered Mr. Seward. When against thedelicate organization, the fine, subtle, nervous mind of the Secretaryof State, this giant, knife in hand, precipitated himself, two forms ofcivilization met as distinctly as when the savage Gauls invaded theRoman senate. 

Lawlessness and intelligence, the savage and the statesman, body andmind, fought together upon Mr. Seward's bed. 

The mystery attending Payne's home and parentage still exists to makehim more incomprehensible. Out of the vague, dim _ultima thule_, likethose Asiatic hordes which came from nowhere and shivered civilization, Payne suddenly appeared and fought his way to the _sanctum sanctorum_ oflaw. I think his part in the assassination more remarkable than Booth's, The latter's crime was shrewdly plotted, as by one measuringintelligence with the whole government. But Payne did not think--he onlystruck!

With this man's face before me as I write, I am reminded of some Maorichief waging war from the lust of blood or the pride of local dominion. His complexion is bloodless, yet so healthy that a passing observerwould afterward speak of it as ruddy. His face is broad, with acharacter nose, sensual lips, and very high cheek bones; the cranium isfull and the brow speaking, while the head runs back to an abnormal apexat the tip of the cerebellum. His straight, lusterless black hair, dulyparted, is at the summit so disturbed that tufts of it rise up like RedJacket's or Tecumseh's; but the head is kept well up, and rests upon awonderfully broad throat, muscular as one's thigh, and without anytrace, as he sits, of the protuberance called Adam's apple. Withal, theeye is the man Payne's power. It is dark and speechless, and rolls hereand there like that of a beast in a cage which strives in vain tounderstand the language of its captors. It seems to say, if anything, that, it has no sympathy with anybody approximate, and has submitted, like a lion bound, to the logic of conviction and of chains. 

Payne looks at none of his fellow-prisoners: assassins caught seldomcares to recognise each other; for while there is faithfulness amongthieves, there is none among murderers. His great white eyeball neverroves to anybody's in the dock, nor theirs to his. He has confessed hiscrime and they know it; so they have no mutual hope; they listen to theevidence because it concerns them; ho looks at it only, because itcannot save him. He is entirely beardless, yet in his boyish chin moreof a man physically than the rest, combined. 

While I watch this man I am constantly repeating to myself that stanzaof Bryant's:

 "Upon the market place he stood, -- A man of giant frame, Amid the gathering multitude That shrank to hear his name; All proud of step and firm of limb, His dark eye on the ground-- And silently they gazed on him, As on a lion bound. "

His dress, which we scarcely notice in the grander contrast of his poseand stature, is an old shirt of woolen blue, with a white nap at thebutton-holes, and upon his knees of black cloth he twirls, as if forrelaxation, between his powerful manacles, a soiled whitehandkerchief--if from his mother, we conjecture, a gift to a bloodhoundfrom his dam. His heavy handcuffs make his broad shoulders more narrow. Yet we can see by the outline of the sleeves what girth the muscles has, and the hand at the end of his long and bony arm is wide and huge, as ifit could wield a claymore as well as a dirk. He also wears carpetslippers, but his ankles are clogged with so heavy irons that two menmust carry them when he enters or leaves the dock. For this man therecan be no sentiment--no more than for a bull. The flesh on his face ishard, as if cast, rather than generated, and while we see how he towersabove the entire court, we watch him in wonder, as if he were somemaniac denizen of a zone where men without minds grow to the stature andpower of fiends. 

The face of Payne is not of the traditional southern peculiarities. Heresembles rather a Pennsylvania mountaineer than a Kentucky rustic. 

Three weeks ago I gave, in an account of the conspiracy which manygainsayed, but which the trial has fully confirmed, a sketch of thisman, to which I still adhere. He was furnished to Booth and John Surrattfrom Canada; sent upon special service with his life in his hands; andhe faced the murder he was to commit like any prize-fighter. I pityBeall, who died intelligently for a wretched essay against civilians, that his biography and fate must be matched by this savage's!

Next to Payne, and crouching under him like a frog under a rock, is aninconsiderable soldier, who chews his cud, and would cheerfully hang hisprotege for the sake of being rid of him. My sympathies are entirelyenlisted for this soldier; he has neither the joy of being acquitted, nor the excitement of being tried. He is quite a sizable man by himself, but Payne overhangs him, and the dullness of the trial quite stultifieshim. The few points of law which are admitted here are not so evident tothis soldier as the point of his bayonet. I see what ails him. 

He wants to swear. 

A beam running overhead divides the court lengthwise in half, and as theprisoners sit at the end of the court, the German Atzerott, or Adzerota, has a place just beneath the beam. This is very ominous for Atzerott. The filthiness of this man denies him sympathy. He is a disgustinglittle groveler of dry, sandy hair, oval head, ears set so close to thechin that one would think his sense of hearing limited to his jaws, anda complexion so yellow that the uncropped brownness of his beard doesnot materially darken it. He wears a grayish coat, low grimy shirt, andthe usual carpet slippers of threadbare red over his shifting andshiftless feet. His head is bent forward, and seems to be anxiouslytrying to catch the tenor of the trial. Many persons outside of thecourt, Atzerott, are equally puzzled!

From as much examination of this man as his insignificance permits, Ishould call him a "gabby" fellow--loud of resolution, ignoble of effort. Over his lager no man would be braver. His face is familiar to me from areview of those detective cabinets usually called "Rogues' Galleries. "As a "sneak thief" or "bagman, " I should convict him by his face; thesame indictment would make me acquit him instantly of assassination. Inthis estimate I rely upon evidence as well as upon appearance. Atzerottswaggered about Kirk wood's Hotel asking for the Vice-President's room;Payne or Booth would have done the murder silently. Nobody pities adirty man. The same arts of dress and cleanliness which please ladiesinfluence juries. 

Next to Atzerott sits a soldier--a very jolly and smooth facedsoldier--who at one time hears a witness say something laughable. Thesoldier immediately grins to the farthest point of his scalp. But he ischagrined to find that the joke is too trivial to admit of a laugh ofduration. Very few jokes before the present court do so. But thissoldier being of long charity and excellent patience, awaits the nextjoke like a veteran under orders, and reposes his chin upon the dock asif aware that between jokes there was ample time for a nap. 

The next prisoner to the right is O'Laughlin. He is a small man, abouttwenty-eight years of age, attired in a fine, soiled coat, but withoutwhite linen upon either his bosom or neck, and handcuffs rest hugelyupon his mediocrity. His moustache, eye-brows, and hair are regular andvery black. He does not look unlike Booth, though he seems to havelittle bodily power, and he is very anxious, as if more earnest than anyof the rest, to have a fair lease upon life. His countenance is notprepossessing, though he might be considered passably good looking in amixed company. 

Between O'Laughlin and the next prisoner, Spangler, sits a soldier inultramarine--a discontented soldier, a moody, dissatisfied, andarbitrary soldier. His definition of military justice is like the boy'sanswer at school to the familiar question upon the Constitution of theUnited 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 accusedpersons before a court-martial. 

Spangler, the scene-shifter and stage-carpenter, has the face andbearing of a day-laborer. His blue woollen shirt does not confuse him, as he is used to it. He has an oldish face, wrinkled by fearfulanticipations, and his hair is thin. He is awkwardly built, and watchesthe trial earnestly, as if striving to catch between the links ofevidence vistas of a life insured. This man has a simple and pleadingface, and there is something genial in his great, incoherentcountenance. He is said to have cleared the stage for Booth's escape, but this is indifferently testified to. He had often been asked by Boothto take a drink at the nearest bar. Persons who drink assure me that thegreatest mark of confidence which a great man can show a lesser one isto make that tender; this, therefore, explains Booth's power overSpangler. 

Spangler is the first scene-shifter who may become a _dramatis personæ_. 

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

Doctor Mudd has a New England and not a Maryland face. He compares, tothose on his left, as Hyperion to a squatter. His high, oval head isbald very far up, but not benevolently so, and it is covered with lightred hair, so thin as to contrast indifferently with the denseness of hisbeard and goatee. His nose would be insignificant but for its sharpness, and at the nostrils it is swelling and high-spirited. His eyes impingeupon his brows, and they are shining and rather dark, while the browsthemselves are so scantily clothed with hair that they seem quite naked. Mudd is neatly dressed in a green-grass duster, and white bosom andcollar; if he had no other advantages over his associates these lastwould give it to him. He keeps his feet upon the rail before him in truerepublican style, and rolls a morsel of tobacco under his tongue. 

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

On the right of Doctor Mudd sits a soldier, who is striving to lookthrough his legs at the judge-advocate, as if taking a sort of secretaim at that person, with the intent to fetch him down, because he makesthe 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 theleast implicated. He has a solid, pleasant face; has been a rebelsoldier, foolishly committed himself to Booth, with perhaps no intentionto do a crime, recanted in pen and ink, and was made a nationalcharacter. Had he recanted by word of mouth he might have saved himselfunpleasant dreams. This shows everybody the absurdity of writing whatthey can so easily say. The best thing Arnold ever wrote was his letterto Booth refusing to engage in murder. Yet this recantation is more inevidence 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 andardent, 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 officialreporters, and the Murphies, who could report the lightning, if it couldtalk, are slashing down history as it passes in at their ears and runsout at their fingers' ends. 

The counsel for the accused strike me as being commonplace lawyers. Theyeither have no chance or no pluck to assert the dignity of theirprofession. Reverdy Johnson is not here. The first day disgusted him, ashe is a practitioner of _law_. Yet the best word of the trial has beenhis:

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

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

Excepting Judge Holt, the court has shown as little ability as could beexpected from soldiers, placed in unenviable publicity, and upon a dutyfor which they are disqualified, both by education and acumen. Witnessthe lack of dignity in Hunter, who opened the court by a coarse allusionto "humbug chivalry;" of Lew. Wallace, whose heat and intolerance wereappropriately urged in the most exceptional English; of Howe, whosetirade against the rebel General Johnson was feeble as it wasungenerous! This court was needed to show us at least the petty tyrannyof martial law and the pettiness of martial jurists. The counsel for thedefence have just enough show to make the unfairness of the trialpartake of hypocrisy, and the wideness of the subjects discussed makesone 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. 

Washington, Friday, July 7th. 

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

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

It was a long and dusty avenue, along which rambled soldiers in bluishlywhite coats, cattle with their tongues out, straying from the herd, anda few negroes making for their cabins, which dotted the fiery and vacantlots of the suburbs. At the foot of this avenue, where a lukewarm riverholds between its dividing arms a dreary edifice of brick, the way wasfilled with collected cabs, and elbowing people, abutting against acircle of sentinels who kept the arsenal gate. The low, flat, dust-whitefields to the far left were also lined with patrols and soldiers lyingon the ground in squads beside their stacked muskets. Within these asecond blue and monotonous line extended. The drive from the arsenalgate to the arsenal's high and steel-spiked wall was beset by companiesof exacting sabremen, and all the river bank to the right was edged withblue and bayonets. This exhibition of war was the prelude to a veryghastly but very popular episode--an execution. Three men and a womanwere to be led out in shackles and hung to a beam. They had conspired totake life; they had thrilled the world with the partial consummation oftheir plot; they were to reach the last eminence of assassins, on thisparched and oppressive noon, by swinging in pinioned arms and muffledfaces in the presence of a thousand people. 

The bayonets at the gate were lifted as I produced my pass. It was thelast permission granted. In giving it away the General seemed relieved, for he had been sorely troubled by applications. Everybody who hadvisited Washington to seek for an office, sought to see this expiationalso. The officer at the gate looked at my pass suspiciously. "I don'tbelieve that all these papers have been genuine, " he said. Is anexecution, then, so great a warning to evil-doers, that men will commitforgery to see it?

I entered a large grassy yard, surrounded by an exceedingly high wall. On the top of this wall, soldiers with muskets in their hands, werethickly planted. The yard below was broken by irregular buildings ofbrick. I climbed by a flight of rickety outside stairs to the centralbuilding, where many officers were seated at the windows, and lookedawhile at the strange scene on the grassy plaza. On the left, the long, barred, impregnable penitentiary rose. The shady spots beneath it wereoccupied by huddling spectators. Soldiers were filling their canteens atthe pump. A face or two looked out from the barred jail. There were manyumbrellas hoisted on the ground to shelter civilians beneath them. Squads of officers and citizens lay along the narrow shadow of thewalls. The north side of the yard was enclosed on three sides by columnsof soldiers drawn up in regular order, the side next to the penitentiarybeing short to admit of ingress to the prisoner's door; but the oppositecolumn reached entirely up to the north wall. 

Within this enclosed area a structure to be inhabited by neither theliving nor the dead was fast approaching completion. It stood gaunt, lofty, long. Saws and hammers made dolorous music on it. Men, in theirshirt sleeves, were measuring it and directing its construction in abusiness way. Now and then some one would ascend its airy stair to testits firmness; others crawled beneath to wedge its slim supports, orcarry away the falling debris. 

Toward this skeleton edifice all looked with a strange nervousness. Itwas 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 noosedat the end. It was upheld by three props, one in the center and one ateach end. These props came all the way to the ground where they weremorticed in heavy bars. Midway of them a floor was laid, twenty bytwelve feet, held in its position on the farther side by shorter props, of which there were many, and reached by fifteen creaking steps, railedon either side. But this floor had no supports on the side nearest theeye, except two temporary rods, at the foot of which two inclined beamspointed menacingly, held in poise by ropes from the gallows floor. 

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

Two hinges only held it to its firmer half. These were to give way atthe fatal moment, and leave only the shallow and unreliable air for thebound 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 eachother at the edge of four newly excavated pits, the fresh earth of whichwas already dried and brittle in the burning noon. 

Here were to be interred the broken carcasses when the gallows had letgo its throttle. They were so placed as the victims should emerge fromthe gaol door they would be seen near the stair directly in the line ofmarch. 

And not far from these, in silence and darkness beneath the prison wherethey 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 canhear he had listened many a time to the rattle of their manacles uponthe stairs, to the drowsy hum of the trial and the buzz of the garrulousspectators; to the moaning, or the gibing, or the praying in the boltedcells where those whom kindred fate had given a little lease upon lifelay waiting for the terrible pronouncement. 

It was a long waiting, and the roof of a high house outside the wallswas seen to be densely packed with people. Others kept arriving momentby moment; soldiers were wondering when the swinging would begin andofficers arguing that the four folks "deserved it, damn them!" Gentlemenof experience were telling over the number of such expiations they hadwitnessed. Analytic people were comparing the various modes of shooting, garroting, and guillotining. Cigars were sending up spirals of soothingsmoke. There was a good deal of covert fear that a reprieve might begranted. Inquires were many and ingenuous for whisky, and one or twowere so deeply expectant that they fell asleep. 

How much those four dying, hoping, cringing, dreaming felons weregrudged their little gasp of life! It was to be a scene, not apostponement or a prolongation. "Who was to be the executioner?" "Whyhad not the renowned and artistic Isaacs been sent for from New York?""Would they probably die game, or grow weak-kneed in the lastextremity?" Ah, the gallows' workmen have completed the job! "Now thenwe should have it. "

Still there was delay. The sun peeped into the new-made graves and madeblistering hot the gallows' floor. The old pump made its familiar musicto the cool plash of blessed water. The grass withered in the fervidheat. The bronzed faces of the soldiers ran lumps of sweat. The fileupon the jail walls looked down into the wide yard yawningly. No windfluttered the two battle standards condemned to unfold their trophiesupon this coming profanation. Not yet arrived. Why? The extent of gracehas almost been attained. The sentence gave them only till two o'clock!Why are they so dilatory in wishing to be hanged?

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

First came a woman pinioned. 

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

One of these held against his breast a crucifix of jet, and in the foldsof his blue-fringed sash he carried an open breviary, while both of themmuttered the service for the dead. 

Four soldiers with musket at shoulder, followed, and a captain led theway to the gallows. 

The second party escorted a small and shambling German, whose head had along white cap upon it, rendering more filthy his dull complexion, andupon whose feet the chains clanked as he slowly advanced, preceded bytwo officers, flanked by a Lutheran clergyman, and followed, as hispredecessor, by an armed squad. 

The third, preacher and party, clustered about a shabby boy, whose limbstottered as he progressed. 

The fourth, walked in the shadow of a straight high stature, whose tawnyhair and large blue eye were suggestive rather of the barbarian stridingin his conqueror's triumph, than the assassin going to the gallows. 

All these, captives, priests, guards, and officers, nearly twenty inall, climbed slowly and solemnly the narrow steps; and upon four armchairs, stretching across the stage in the rear of the traps, thecondemned were seated with their spiritual attendants behind them. 

The findings and warrants were immediately read to the prisoners byGeneral Hartrauft in a quiet and respectful tone, an aid holding anumbrella over him meantime. These having been already published, andbeing besides very uninteresting to any body but the prisoners, werepaid little heed to, all the spectators interesting themselves in theprisoners. 

There was a fortuitous delicacy in this distribution, the woman beingplaced farthest from the social and physical dirtiness of Atzerott, andnearest the unblanched and manly physiognomy of Payne. 

She was not so pale that the clearness of her complexion could not beseen, and the brightness of the sun made her vail quite transparent. Hereyes were seen to be of a soft gray; her brown hair lay smoothly upon afull, square forehead; the contour of her face was comely, but her teethhad the imperfectness of those of most southern women, being few andirregular. Until the lips were opened she did not reveal them. Herfigure was not quite full enough to be denominated buxom, yet had allthe promise of venerable old age, had nature been permitted its duecourse. She was of the medium height, and modest--as what woman wouldnot be under such searching survey? At first she was very feeble, andleaned her head upon alternate sides of her arm-chair in nervous spasms;but now and then, when a sort of wail just issued from her lips, thepriest placed before her the crucifix to lull her fearful spirit. Allthe while the good fathers Wigett and Walter murmured their low, tendercadences, and now and then the woman's face lost its deadly fear, andtook a bold, cognizable survey of the spectators. She wore a robe ofdark woolen, no collar, and common shoes of black listing. Her generalexpression was that of acute suffering, vanishing at times as if by theconjuration of her pride, and again returning in a paroxysm as shelooked at the dreadful rope dangling before her. This woman, to whom, the priests have made their industrious moan, holding up the effigy ofChrist when their own appeals became of no avail, perched there in thelofty air, counting her breaths, counting the winkfuls of light, counting the final wrestles of her breaking heart, had been the belle ofher section, and many good men had courted her hand. She had led apleasant life, and children had been born to her--who shared hermediocre ambition and the invincibility of her will. If the charge ofher guilt were proven, she was the Lady Macbeth of the west. 

But women know nothing of consequences. She alone of all her sex standsnow in this thrilled and ghastly perspective, and in immediateassociation with three creatures in whose company it is no fame to die:a little crying boy, a greasy unkempt sniveller, and a confesseddesperado. Her base and fugitive son, to know the infamy of hiscowardice and die of his shame, should have seen his mother writhing inher seat upon the throne his wickedness established for her. 

Payne, the strangest criminal in our history, was alone dignified andself possessed. He wore a closely-fitting knit shirt, a sailor's strawhat tied with a ribbon, and dark pantaloons, but no shoes. His collar, cut very low, showed the tremendous muscularity of his neck, and thebreadth of his breast was more conspicuous by the manner in which thepinioned arms thrust it forward. His height, his vigor, his glare madehim the strong central figure of this interelementary tableaux. He saidno word; his eyes were red as with the penitential weeping of acourageous man, and the smooth hardness of his skin seemed like apolished muscle. He did not look abroad inquisitively, nor withinintuitively. He had no accusation, no despair, no dreaminess. He wasonly looking at death as for one long expected, and not a tremor nor ashock stirred his long stately limbs; withal, his blue eye was milderthan when I saw him last, as if some bitterness, or stolidness, orobstinate pride had been exorcised, perhaps by the candor of confession. Now and then he looked half-pityingly at the woman, and only once movedhis lips, as if in supplication. Few who looked at him, forgetful of hiscrime, did not respect him. He seemed to feel that no man was more thanhis peer, and one of his last commands was a word of regret to Mr. Seward. 

I have a doubt that this man is entirely a member of our nervous race. Ibelieve that a fiber of the aboriginal runs through his tough sinews. Attimes he looked entirely an Indian. His hair is tufted, and will not liesmoothly. His cheek-bones are large and high set. There is a tint in hiscomplexion. Perhaps the Seminole blood of his swampy state left a traceof its combative nature there. 

Payne was a preacher's son, and not the worst graduate of his class. Hisreal name is Lewis Thornton Powell. 

He died without taking the hand of any living friend. 

Even the squalid Atzerott was not so poor. I felt a pity for hisphysical rather than his vital or spiritual peril. It seemed aprofanation to break the iron column of his neck, and give to the wormhis belted chest. 

But I remember that he would have slain a sick old man. 

The third condemned, although whimpering, had far more grit than Ianticipated; he was inquisitive and flippant-faced, and looked at thenoose flaunting before him, and the people gathered below, and thehaggard face of Atzerott, as if entirely conscious and incapable ofabstraction. 

Harold would have enjoyed this execution vastly as a spectator. He was, I think, capable of a greater degree of depravity than any of hisaccomplices. Atzerott might have made a sneak thief, Booth a forger, butHarold was not far from a professional pickpocket. He was keen-eyed, insolent, idle, and, by a small experience in Houston street, would havebeen qualified for a first-class "knuck. " He had not, like the rest, anypolitical suggestion for the murder of the heads of the nation; and uponthe gallows, in his dirty felt hat, soiled cloth coat, light pantaloonsand stockings, he seemed unworthy of his manacles. 

A very fussy Dutchman tied him up and fanned him, and he weptforgetfully, but did not make a halt or absurd spectacle. 

Atzerott was my ideal of a man to be hung--a dilution of Wallack'srendering of the last hours of Fagan, the Jew; a sort of sick man, quitegarrulous and smitten, with his head thrown forward, muttering to theair, and a pallidness transparent through his dirt as he jabberedprayers and pleas confusedly, and looked in a complaining sort of way atthe noose, as if not quite certain that it might not have designs uponhim. 

He wore a greyish coat, black vest, light pantaloons and slippers, and awhite affair on his head, perhaps a handkerchief. 

His spiritual adviser stood behind him, evidently disgusted with him. 

Atzerott lost his life through too much gabbing. He could have hadserious designs upon nothing greater than a chicken, but talkedassassination with the silent and absolute Booth, until entrapped intoconspiracy and the gallows, much against his calculation. This man wasvisited by his mother and a poor, ignorant woman with whom he cohabited. He was the picture of despair, and died ridiculously, whistling up hiscourage. 

These were the dramatis personæ, no more to be sketched, no more to becross-examined, no more to be shackled, soon to be cold in theircoffins. 

They were, altogether, a motley and miserable set. Ravaillae might havelooked well swinging in chains; Charlotte Corday is said to have diedlike an actress; Beale hung not without dignity, but these people, aspiring to overturn a nation, bore the appearance of a troop ofignorant folks, expiating the blood-shed of a brawl. 

When General Hartrauft ceased reading there was momentary lull, brokenonly by the cadences of the priests. 

Then the Rev. Mr. Gillette addressed the spectators in a deep impressivetone. The prisoner, Lewis Thornton Powell, otherwise Payne, requestedhim to thus publicly and sincerely return his thanks to GeneralHartrauft, the other officers, the soldiers, and all persons who hadcharge of him and had attended him. Not one unkind word, look, orgesture, had been given to him by any one. Dr. Gillette then followed ina fervent prayer in behalf of the prisoner, during which Payne's eyesmomentarily filled with tears, and he followed in the prayer withvisible feeling. 

Rev. Dr. Olds followed, saying in behalf of the prisoner, David E. Harold, that he tendered his forgiveness to all who had wronged him, andasked the forgiveness of all whom he had wronged. He gave his thanks tothe officers and guards for kindnesses rendered him. He hoped that hehad died in charity with all men and at peace with God. Dr. Oldsconcluded with a feeling prayer for the prisoner. 

Rev. Dr. Butler then made a similar return of thanks on behalf of GeorgeA. Atzerott for kindness received from his guards and attendants, andconcluded with an earnest invocation in behalf of the criminal, sayingthat the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin, and asking that GodAlmighty might have mercy upon this man. 

The solemnity of this portion of the scene may be imagined, the severalclergyman speaking in order the dying testament of their clients, andmaking the hot hours fresh with the soft harmonies of theirbenedictions. 

The two holy fathers having received Mrs. Surratt's confession, afterthe custom of their creed observed silence. In this, as in otherrespects, Mrs. Surratt's last hours were entirely modest and womanly. 

The stage was still filled with people; the crisis of the occasion hadcome; the chairs were all withdrawn, and the condemned stood upon theirfeet. 

The process of tying the limbs began. 

It was with a shudder, almost a blush, that I saw an officer gather theropes tightly three times about the robes of Mrs. Surratt, and bind herankles with cords. She half fainted, and sank backward upon theattendants, her limbs yielding to the extremity of her terror, bututtering no cry, only a kind of sick groaning, like one in the weaknessof fever, when a wry medicine must be taken. 

Payne, with his feet firmly laced together, stood straight as one of thescaffold beams, and braced himself up so stoutly that this in partprevented the breaking of his neck. 

Harold stood well beneath the drop, still whimpering at the lips, buttaut, and short, and boyish. 

Atzerott, in his grovelling attitude, while they tied him began toindulge in his old vice of gabbing. He evidently wished to make hisfinale more effective than his previous cowardly role, and perhaps wasstrengthening his fortitude with a speech, as we sometimes do of darknights with a whistle. 

"Gentlemen, " he said, with a sort of choke and gasp, "take ware. " Heevidently meant "beware, " or "take care, " and confounded them. 

Again, when the white death-cap was drawn over his face, he continued tocry out under it, once saying, "Good bye, shentlemens, who is before menow;" and again, "May we meet in the other world. " Finally he driftedaway with low, half-intelligible ebullitions, as "God help me, " "oh!oh!" and the like. 

The rest said nothing, except Mrs. Surratt, who asked to be supported, that she might not fall, but Harold protested against the knot withwhich he was to be dislocated, it being as huge as one's double fist. 

In fact all the mechanical preparations were clumsy and inartistic, andthe final scenes of the execution, therefore, revolting in the extreme. When the death-caps were all drawn over the faces of the prisoners, andthey stood in line in the awful suspense between absolute life andimmediate death, a man at the neck of each adjusting the cord, the knotbeneath the ears of each protruded five or six inches, and the cord wasso thick that it could not be made to press tightly against the flesh. 

So they stood, while nearly a thousand faces from window, roof, wall, yard and housetop, gazed, the scaffold behind them still densely packedwith the assistants, and the four executioners beneath, standing attheir swinging beams. The priests continued to murmur prayers. Thepeople were dumb, as if each witness stood alone with none near by totalk to him. 

An instant this continued, while an officer on the plot before, motionedback the assistants, and then with a forward thrust of his hand, signaled the executioners. 

The great beams were darted against the props simultaneously. The twotraps fell with a slam. The four bodies dropped like a single thing, outside the yet crowded remnant of the gallows floor, and swayed andturned, to and fro, here and there, forward and backward, and with manya helpless spasm, while the spectators took a little rush forward, andthe ropes were taut as the struggling pulses of the dying. 

Mrs. Surratt's neck was broken immediately; she scarcely drew onebreath. Her short woman's figure, with the skirts looped closely aboutit, merely dangled by the vibration of her swift descent, and with theknot holding true under the ear, her head leaned sideways, and herpinioned arms seemed content with their confinement. 

Payne died a horrible death; the knot slipped to the back of his neck, and bent his head forward on his breast, so that he strangled as he drewhis deep chest almost to his chin, and the knees contracted till theyalmost seemed to touch his abdomen. The veins in his great wrists werelike whip-cords, expanded to twice their natural dimensions, and thehuge neck grew almost black with the dark blood that rushed in a floodto the circling rope. A long while he swayed and twisted and struggled, till at last nature ceased her rebellion and life went out unwillingly. 

Harold also passed through some struggles. It is doubtful that his neckwas broken. The perspiration dripped from his feet, and he swung in thehot noon just living enough to make death irritable. 

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 carcass and old clothes, four in a row, andpast all conspiracy or ambition, the river rolling by without a sound, and men watching them with a shiver, while the heat of the day seemedsuddenly abated, as if by the sudden opening of a tomb. 

The officers conversed in a half-audible tone; the reporters put uptheir books; the assistants descended from the gallows; and the medicalmen drew near. No wind stirred the unbreathing bodies, they were stonedead. 

The bodies were allowed to hang about twenty minutes, when surgeon Otis, U. S. V. , and Assistant Surgeons Woodward and Porter, U. S. A. , examinedthem and pronounced all dead. In about ten minutes more a ladder wasplaced against the scaffold preparatory to cutting the bodies down. Anover-zealous soldier on the platform reached over and severed the cord, letting one body fall with a thump, when he was immediately ordered downand reprimanded. The body of Atzerott was placed in a strong white pinebox, and the other bodies cut down in the following order, Harold, Powell, and Mrs. Surratt. 

The carcasses thus recovered were given over to a squad of soldiers andeach placed in a pine box without uncovering the faces. The boxes wereforthwith placed in the pits prepared for them, and directly all but thememory of their offense passed from the recording daylight. 

In the gloomy shadow of that arsenal lies all the motive, and essay of acrime which might have changed the destinies of our race. It will beforever a place of suspicion and marvel, the haunted spot of theCapitol, and the terror of all who to end a fancied evil, cut their wayto right with a dagger. 

EXTRA MURAL SCENES. 

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

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

He took a room at the Kirkwood House on Thursday, in order to get a passfrom Vice-President Johnson to go to Richmond. Booth was to lease theRichmond theater and the President was to be invited to attend it whenvisiting Richmond, and captured there. Harold brought the pistol andknife 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 Boothsaid that Harold had more courage than Atzerott, and he wanted Atzerottto be with Harold to urge him to do it. There was a meeting at arestaurant about the middle of March, at which John Surratt, O'Laughlin, Booth, Arnold, Payne, Harold and himself were present, when a plan tocapture the President was discussed. They had heard the President was tovisit a camp, and they proposed to capture him, coach and all, drivethrough long old fields to "T. B. , " where the coach was to be left andfresh horses were to be got, and the party would proceed to the river totake a boat. Harold took a buggy to "T. B. " in anticipation 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 preachedin church that the curse of God was upon the slaves, for they wereturned black. He always hated the nigger and felt that they should bekept in ignorance. He had not received any money from Booth, although hehad been promised that if they were successful they should never want, that they would be honored throughout the South, and that they couldsecure an exchange of prisoners and the recognition of the confederacy. 

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

Powell conversed with Dr. Gillette and Dr. Striker on religious topicsduring the morning, sitting erect, as he did in the court-room. From hisconversation it appears that he was raised religiously, and belonged tothe Baptist church until after the breaking out of the rebellion. Heappeared to be sincerely repentant, and in his cell shed tears freely. He gave his advisers several commissions of a private character, andstated that he was willing to meet his God, asking all men to forgive, and forgiving all who had done aught against him. Colonel Doster, hiscounsel, also took leave of him during the morning, as well as withAtzerott. 

Mrs. Surratt's daughter was with her at an early hour. One of her malefriends also had an interview with her, and received directionsconcerning the disposition of her property. During the night and morningshe received the ministrations of Revs. J. A. Walter and B. F. Wigett, and conversed freely with them, expressing, while protesting herinnocence, her willingness to meet her God. Her counsel, Messrs. Aiken &Clampitt, took leave of her during the morning. 

A singular feature of this execution was the arrest of General Hancockthis morning, who appeared in court, to answer a writ of _habeascorpus_, with a full staff. It is well to notice that this execution bymilitary order has not, therefore, passed without civil protest. President Johnson extended to General Hancock the right conferred uponthe President by Congress of setting aside the _habeas corpus_. 

As usual in such executions as this, there were many stirring outsideepisodes, and much shrewd mixture of tragedy and business. Aphotographer took note of the scene in all its phases, from a window ofa portion of the jail. Six artists were present, and thirty sevenspecial correspondents, who came to Washington only for this occasion. 

The passes to the execution were written not printed, and, excepting thebungling mechanism of the scaffold, the sorrowful event went off withmore than usual good order. Every body feels relieved to night, becausehalf of the crime is buried. 

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

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

The misery of the pretty and heart-broken daughter of Mrs. Surratt isthe talk of the city. This girl appears to have loved her mother withall the petulant passion of a child. She visited her constantly, andto-day made so stirring an effort to obtain her life that her devotiontakes half the disgrace from the mother. She got the priests to speak inher behalf. Early to-day she knelt in the cell at her mother's feet, andsobbed, with now and then a pitiful scream till the gloomy corridorsrang. She endeavored to win from Payne a statement that her mother wasnot accessory, and, as a last resort, flung herself upon the steps ofthe White-House, and made that portal memorable by her filial tears. About half-past 8 o'clock this morning, Miss Surratt, accompanied by afemale friend, again visited the White-House, for the purpose ofobtaining an interview with the President. The latter having givenorders that he would receive no one to-day, the door-keeper stopped MissSurratt at the foot of the steps leading up to the President's office, and would not permit her to proceed further. She then asked permissionto see General Muzzy, the president's military secretary, who promptlyanswered the summons, and came down stairs where Miss Surratt wasstanding. As soon as the general made his appearance, Miss Surratt threwherself upon her knees before him, and catching him by the coat, withloud sobs and streaming eyes, implored him to assist her in obtaining ahearing with the President. General Muzzy, in as tender a manner aspossible, informed Miss Surratt that he could not comply with herrequest, as President Johnson's orders were imperative, and he wouldreceive no one. Upon General Muzzy returning to his office, Miss Surrattthrew herself upon the stair steps, where she remained a considerablelength of time, sobbing aloud in the greatest anguish, protesting hermother's innocence, and imploring every one who came near her tointercede in her mother's behalf. 

While thus weeping she declared her mother was too good and kind to beguilty of the enormous crime of which she was convicted, and assertedthat if her mother was put to death she wished to die also. She wasfinally allowed to sit in the east room, where she lay in wait for allwho entered, hoping to make them efficacious in her behalf, all thewhile 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 hermother's cell, with the heavy face of one who brings ill-news. Theparting will consecrate those gloomy walls. The daughter saw the motherpinioned 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, wereaddressed to a gentleman whom she had known. 

"Good-bye, take care of Annie. "

To-night there is crape on the door of the Surratt's, and a lonely lampshines at a single window, where the sad orphan is thinking of herbereavement. 

The bodies of the dead have been applied for but at present will notgiven up. 

Judge Holt was petitioned all last night for the lives and liberties ofthe condemned, but he was inexorable. 

The soldiers who hung the condemned were appointed against their will. Iforbear to give their names as they do not wish the repute ofexecutioners. They all belonged to the Fourteenth Veteran ReserveInfantry. 

Here endeth the story of this tragedy upon a tragedy. All are glad thatit is done. I am glad particularly. It has cost me how many journeyingto Washington, how many hot midnights at the telegraph office, how manygallops 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 assassin. Only the correspondent neverdies. He is the true Pantheist--going out of nature for a week, butbursting forth afresh in a day, and so insinuating himself into thehistory of our era that it is beginning to be hard to find out where theevent ends and the writer begins. 

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