金融英语保险语证卷业务相关辅导23
Richard Montgomery, a Union double agent in Canada, reported Thompson as saying in January 1865 that it would be a "blessing" to "rid the world" of Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant. Montgomery testified that Thompson revealed that a "proposition" had been made by a group of "bold, daring men" to do just that.Samuel Chester testified that beginning in November 1864 Booth tried to recruit his participation in a plot to abduct Lincoln and take him to Richmond, where he would be held until he could be exchanged for Confederate prisoners-of-war. Initially, it seems, the proposal (either to abduct or assassinate Lincoln) was rejected in Richmond, as Montgomery quotes Montreal clique member Beverly Tucker as complaining that it was "too bad that they boys had not been allowed to act when they wanted to."
Henry Finegas testified as to overhearing a conversation, made in "a low tone of voice" in Montreal in mid-February between Confederate clique members George Sanders and William Cleary:
Sanders: If the boys only have luck, Lincoln won't trouble us much longer.
Cleary: Is everything going well?
Sanders: Oh, yes. Booth is bossing the job.
Key government witness Louis Weichmann-- a boarder at Mary Surratt's and a friend of Booth, Powell, and other conspirators--testified that on March 27, 1865 John Surratt visited Richmond and conferred with Confederate Attorney General Judah Benjamin and President Jefferson Davis. Surratt returned from Richmond to Washington, before heading north out of the Capital on April 3. On April 6, John Surratt arrived in Montreal carrying with him--according to the prosecution's theory--final approval for Booth's assassination attempt. Sanford Conover, a former employee of the Rebel War Department, testified that he was present at a meeting in the Montreal hotel room of Jacob Thompson when dispatches brought by Surratt from Richmond, including a letter in cipher from Jefferson Davis, were discussed. According to Conover's testimony--strongly attacked by latter-day supporters of Davis--"Thompson laid his hand and said, "This makes the thing all right." A Canadian banker testified that Jacob Thompson withdrew $184,000 from the over $600,000 in his private Montreal account on April 6. Special Judge Advocate John Bingham, in his summation for the government, found the evidence against Jefferson Davis damning:
What more is wanting? Surely no word further need be spoken to show that John Wilkes Booth was in this conspiracy; that John Surratt was in this conspiracy; and that Jefferson Davis and his several agents named, in Canada, were in this conspiracy....Whatever may be the conviction of others, my own conviction is that Jefferson Davis is as clearly proven guilty of this conspiracy as John Wilkes Booth, by whose hand Jefferson Davis inflicted the mortal wound on Abraham Lincoln.
Bingham found further confirmation of Davis's guilt in a letter of October 13, 1864, discovered in the possession of Booth after the assassination of Lincoln. The ciphered letter, which notified Booth that "their friends would be set to work as he had directed," was proven to have been typed on a cipher machine recovered from a room in Davis's State Department in Richmond. Finally, Bingham found incriminating Davis's reaction in North Carolina upon learning of the President's assassination: "If it were to be done at all, it were better that it were well done."
Evidence Concerning the Eight Prisoners
As each of the eight defendants played different roles in the assassination conspiracy, the evidence of guilt varied as well. The connection of Lewis Powell and David Herold to the conspiracy was clear almost beyond question, while the case against others--notably Dr. Samuel Mudd and Mary Surratt--was considerably more circumstantial.
Many trial observers found Lewis Powell, the handsome young defendant who maintained a posture of studied indifference to the proceedings, to be the most intriguing of the prisoners. The case against Powell was overwhelming. Even Lewis Powell's attorney, William Doster, recognized his complicity in the plot was beyond question. Identified as Seward's attacker by Seward's servant, found with blood on his shirt and the initials of John Wilkes Booth in his boots, and identified by Louis Weichmann as the man who called himself "Wood" and who--claiming to be a Baptist preacher and wearing a large false mustache-- frequently called at Mary Surratt's home, where he would sometimes engage in two or three hour private conversations with Booth and John Surratt, Doster was left to argue that Powell's life should be spared because he suffered from a fanaticism that bordered on insanity. "I say he is the fanatic, and not the hired tool," Doster told the Commission. "He lives in that land of imagination where it seems to him legions of southern soldiers wait to crown him as their chief commander." Doster said that when he asked Powell why he did it, he replied, simply, "I believed it was my duty." Doster described Powell as an innocent farmboy turned assassin by circumstances beyond his control: "We know now that slavery made him immoral, that war made him a murderer, and that necessity, revenge, and delusion made him an assassin." Doster ended his remarkably eloquent plea for Powell's life by asking the Commission to "Let him live, if not for his sake, for our own."
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