金融英语辅导：TrialoftheLincolnAssassinationConspirators（2）

会计考友 · 发表于 2012-8-16 08:34:12

　　Confederate Terrorism on Trial
　　The War Department saw the trial as an opportunity to prosecute not only the eight charged conspirators, but also the already-dead Booth, Jefferson Davis, and the Confederate Secret Service. Prosecutors suggested that as the war turned in favor of the federal government, the Confederacy became increasingly willing to support dubious enterprises that would have been rejected under less desperate circumstances. Witnesses told of Confederate plots to destroy public buildings, burn steamboats, poison the public water supply of New York City, offer commissions to raiders of northern cities, mine a federal prison, starve Union prisoners-of-war, and even mount a biological attack.
　　The Confederate Congress appropriated five million dollars to support a clandestine campaign of subversion in February, 1864. Two months later, Jefferson Davis appointed Jacob Thompson (Secretary of Interior in the Buchanan Administration) and Clement Clay (a former United States Senator from Alabama) to head the operation. Both men would spend, along with a dozen or more other Confederates, most of the duration of the war in Canada coordinating and funding terrorism, according to over a dozen prosecution witnesses.
　　One of the most frightening plots--called by Special Judge Advocate (prosecutor) John A. Bingham "an infamous and fiendish project of importing pestilence"--hatched by the Confederate Secret Service working out of Canada may have caused 2,000 military and civilian deaths. The attack, according to witness Godfrey Hyams, came in the form of clothing "carefully infected in Bermuda with yellow fever, smallpox, and other contagious diseases." Some of the infected goods were to be placed in a valise intended for presentation to President Lincoln, while others were to be given or sold to Union troops. Hyams testified that the Confederate Government appropriated $200,000 for carrying out the attack, and that he was promised at least $60,000 (but received only $100) for his role in distributing nine trunks of the infected goods. Hyams said that the operation's mastermind, Dr. Luke P. Blackburn, who he met in Halifax, told him that trunk "Big Number 2" "will kill them at sixty yards distance." Hyams testified that he refused to deliver an infected trunk "as a donation to President Lincoln," but did place the others in channels of distribution near concentrations of Union soldiers. For his work, Hyams testified, he received congratulations from Clement Clay. Some of the infected goods were auctioned near a Union base of operations by Newbern, North Carolina shortly before nearly 2,000 citizens and soldiers died there during a yellow fever outbreak. Bingham attributed the epidemic to the Confederate plot, not knowing (as was discovered in 1901) that mosquitoes--not people--cause yellow fever.
　　The Assassination Conspiracy's Link to the Canadian Clique and Jefferson Davis
　　The prosecution offered evidence to show that the conspiracy against Abraham Lincoln and other high government officials began sometime after the battle at Gettysburg--probably in the summer of 1864. Witness Sanford Conover reported Confederate Secret Service head Jacob Thompson as identifying the goal of the conspiracy as to "leave the government entirely without a head" by killing not only Lincoln, but also Vice President Johnson, Secretary of War Stanton, Secretary of State Seward, and General Grant. Conover, a former employee of the Rebel war Department, quoted Thompson as saying there was "no provision in the Constitution of the United States by which, if these men were removed, they could elect another President."
　　Henry Van Steinacker, a Union soldier convicted of desertion, testified that while on a long horse ride in Virginia with John Wilkes Booth in late summer of 1863 Booth opined, "Old Abe must go up the spout [be killed], and the Confederacy will gain its independence." (Steinacker, whose real name was Hans Von Winklestein, was released from prison shortly after his testimony, causing some to question his credibility.) Several witnesses testified that by the fall of 1864 a proposal to assassinate or abduct Union leaders, presumably made by Booth, was under active review by Confederate officials in both Canada and Richmond. Witnesses told of frequently seeing Thompson and Clement Clay in Montreal in the company of of conspirators John Wilkes Booth, John Surratt, and Lewis Powell.
　　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 [on the dispatches from Richmond] 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."
　　David Herold's position was equally precarious. Apprehended with the President's assassin and having bragged about the crime--telling one prosecution witness, Willie Jett, as he crossed the Rappahannock, "We are the assassinators of the President"--Herold's attorney, Frederick Stone, placed whatever slender hopes for saving Herold's life on his client's simple-mindedness and youth. One defense witness called Herold "a light and trifling boy" who was "easily influenced," while a second said of Herold:"In mind, I consider him about eleven years of age." Stone argued to the Commission that Herold "was only wax in the hands of a man like Booth."
　　Unlike Lewis and Herold, the guilt of Ford's Theatre stagehand Edman Spangler was not beyond question, but prosecutors presented several witnesses who testified that Spangler played a critical--although minor--role in Booth's escape from theatre. Joseph Burroughs, better known as "Peanuts," a Ford's employee given the duty of guarding the stage-door during plays, testified that between nine and ten o'clock on the night of the assassination Spangler "told me to hold [Booth's] horse." Burroughs told the Commission that when he replied that "I had to go in to attend my door" Spangler said he should hold the horse anyway and "if there was any thing wrong to lay the blame on him." Other witnesses reported seeing Booth around seven-thirty that evening, standing at the back door of theatre and holding his horse and calling for "Ned" Spangler. John Sleichmann, a property man for theatre, testified that he saw Booth enter the back door of theatre and ask Spangler, "Ned, you'll help me all you can, won't you?" According to Sleichmann, Spangler replied, "Oh, yes." Joseph Stewart, a theatergoer with a front orchestra street who ran after Booth across the stage yelling, "Stop that man!," testified that he was "satisfied" that Spangler was the person he saw near the rear door who was in a position to block Booth's exit if he had been so inclined. Finally, John Miles, a Ford's employee, testified when he asked Spangler who it was he saw holding Booth's horse before his escape, Spangler replied, "Hush, don't say anything about it." Spangler's defense attorney, Thomas Ewing, argued that while the prosecution evidence might suggest Spangler agreed to assist Booth on April 14, it failed to prove that Spangler was aware of Booth's guilty purposes in requesting his assistance.
　　A letter from Samuel Arnold to Booth, dated March 27, 1865, and found in Booth's possession after the assassination provided compelling evidence that Arnold had willingly agreed to participate in the original plan to kidnap Lincoln and take him to Richmond. In his letter, Arnold wrote that "None, no, not one were more in favor of the enterprise than myself." Arnold's attorney, Walter Cox, argued that Arnold "backed out from this insane scheme of capture" and it was "abandoned somewhere about the middle of March." Arnold, he argued, left Washington for Maryland about March 20 and that there "is no evidence that connects" Arnold with the "dreadful conspiracy" of assassination. Cox told the Commission that Arnold's participation in the "mere unacted, still scheme" of abduction was "wholly different from the offense described in the charge."
　　Michael O'Laughlen, who boarded at the same home in Washington as Arnold, might qualify as the most forgotten of the eight conspirators on trial. The key evidence against O'Laughlen also links him to Booth's abandoned plan to abduct Lincoln. On March 13, Booth sent to O'Laughlen, then in Baltimore, a telegram from Washington: "Don't fear to neglect your business. You better come at once." Twelve days later, Booth sent another telegram to O'Laughlen: "Get word to Sam. Come on, with or without him, Wednesday morning. We sell that day for sure. Don't fail." Prosecutors suggested that the "business" referred to in Booth's telegraph was the kidnapping of Lincoln and that the "Sam" referred to in the second dispatch was Samuel Arnold. Bernard Early, an acquaintance of O'Laughlen's, testified that he rode into Washington with O'Laughlen from Baltimore on the day before the assassination. Early said that the next day he waited with O'Laughlen at the National Hotel, where Booth had taken a room, for forty-five minutes before sending "up some cards to Mr. Booth's room for O'Laughlen" and leaving. Most incriminating, perhaps, was the testimony of Major Kilburn Knox, who testified that about ten-thirty on the night of April 13 O'Laughlin, wearing black clothes and a slouch hat, entered the home of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and inquired of the Secretary's whereabouts. Knox said that O'Laughlen remained in the hall for a few minutes before being asked to leave. Two other witnesses also reported seeing O'Laughlen at the Secretary's home. Defense attorney Walter Cox argued that the prosecution witnesses were mistaken, and that on the night in question O'Laughlen innocently strolled the streets of the nation's capital enjoying the "night of illumination," the celebration of the Union victory that saw every public building in Washington lit with candles. Cox also argued that the evidence showed persuasively that O'Laughlen did nothing to further the assassination on the night of the fourteenth, which he spent drinking at Lichau House before departing for Baltimore the next day.
　　The prosecution argued that after the kidnapping plan changed to one of assassination, Booth assigned George Atzerodt the job of killing Vice-President Andrew Johnson. Colonel W. R. Nevins testified that on April 12 at the Kirkwood Hotel in Washington, Atzerodt asked him where he might find Vice President Johnson. Police investigator John Lee testified that he searched Atzerodt's room at the Kirkwood (the same hotel that the Vice President was then staying at) on the day after Lincoln's assassination and discovered under a loaded revolver, a bowie knife, a map of Virginia, three handkerchiefs, and a bank book of John Wilkes Booth. The prosecution also showed that Atzerodt had met frequently with Booth in front of the Pennsylvania House in Washington. John Fletcher, an employee of J. Naylor's livery stable testified that on April 14 Atzerodt showed up at the stable with co-defendant David Herold, bringing with them a dark-bay mare. Another witness told of Atzerodt's late night check-in (after midnight) on the night of Lincoln's assassination at the Pennsylvania House, his leaving again and returning around two, and then his checking out of the hotel between five and six in the morning.

会计考友 · 发表于 2012-8-16 08:34:13

　　George Atzerodt's attorney, Captain William E. Doster, argued that his client's cowardice made it unlikely that he played any significant role in the assassination conspiracy. "I intend to show," Doster told the Commission, "that this man is a constitutional coward; that if he had been assigned the duty of assassinating the Vice President, he could never have done it; and that, from his known cowardice, Booth probably did not assign to him any such duty." Doster presented defense witnesses who described Atzerodt as a "notorious coward"and as a man "remarkable for his cowardice."
　　President Andrew Johnson considered Mary Surratt the keeper of "the nest that hatched the egg." Numerous witnesses reported Booth, Herold, Powell and other conspirators as frequent visitors to Surratt's boarding house in Washington. Evidence of association with conspirators would, of course, not by itself sustain a conviction. Prosecutors produced witnesses who showed convincingly that Surratt lied when she told authorities, when asked if she knew Lewis Powell, "Before God, sir, I do not know this man." The most incriminating evidence against Surratt came, however, from two witnesses, Louis Weichmann and John Lloyd. Weichmann, a boarder in Surratt's home, testified that Booth gave him $10 on the Tuesday before the assassination which he was to use to hire a buggy to take Surratt to her tavern in Surrattsville to collect--according to Surratt--a small debt. Weichmann also told the Commission that on the day of the assassination, Mary Surratt sent Weichmann to hire a buggy for another two-hour ride to Surrattsville. Surratt and Weichmann arrived sometime after four at Surratt's tavern. According to Weichmann, Surratt went inside while Weichmann waited outside or spent time in the bar. Surratt remained inside about two hours. Between six and six-thirty, shortly before the began their return trip to Washington, Weichmann saw Surratt speaking privately in the parlor of the tavern with John Wilkes Booth. At nine o'clock, Weichmann saw Booth again when he came to the Surratt home for a last time. After the visit, according to Weichmann, Surratt's demeanor changed--she became "very nervous, agitated and restless."
　　The most damning evidence of all against Surratt came from Surrattsville tavern keeper John Lloyd. Lloyd told the Commission that five to six weeks before the assassination John Surratt, David Herold, and George Atzerodt came to Surrattsville to drop off at his tavern two carbines and ammunition. Lloyd testified that three days before the assassination, Mary Surratt told him that "the shooting irons" left at his place by the men weeks ago would be needed soon. Then on the day of the assassination, Surratt again brought up the subject, according to Lloyd:
　　On the 14th of April I went to Marlboro to attend a trial there; and in the evening, when I got home, which I should judge was about 5 o'clock, I found Mrs. Surratt there. She met me out by the wood-pile as I drove in with some fish and oysters in my buggy. She told me to have those shooting-irons ready that night, there would be some parties who would call for them. She gave me something wrapped in a piece of paper, which I took up stairs, and found to be a field-glass. She told me to get two bottles of whisky ready, and that these things were to be called for that night.
　　Surratt's attorney, Frederick Aiken, argued that Lloyd's evidence should be disbelieved because he was "a man addicted to the excessive use of intoxicating liquors" and was motivated to "exculpate himself by placing blame" on Mary Surratt.
　　The prosecution based its case against Dr. Samuel Mudd on the testimony of several witnesses that suggested a much closer relationship between the doctor and John Wilkes Booth--and other conspirators-- than Mudd would admit. Several witnesses testified that they saw Mudd with John Wilkes Booth on November 13, 1864 in Maryland. Witnesses said that Mudd during that November visit helped Booth buy a horse--a horse that he most likely used in his flight from Ford's theatre. Louis Weichmann testified that in late December he was walking with John Surratt near the National Hotel in Washington when Mudd, walking with Booth, called out "Surratt! Surratt!" According to Weichmann, the three men later excused themselves for private conversation over what Mudd claimed to be Booth's interest in purchasing real estate in Maryland. Attorney Marcus Norton testified that in early March, when he was in Washington to argue a case before the Supreme Court, a man he now recognized as Mudd excitedly burst into his room at the National Hotel. Norton said the man apologized for his entry, saying that he thought the room belonged to a man named "Booth"--who actually had rented the room directly above Norton's. A minister, William Evans, testified that he saw Mudd go into the home of Mary Surratt in early March of 1865. The evidence concerning Booth's prior dealings with Booth strongly suggested that Mudd lied to investigators when he denied having recognized Booth when he treated his broken leg on April 15. Alexander Lovett told the Commission that Mudd appeared suspicious from the start of his investigation: "When we first asked Dr. Mudd whether two strangers had been there, he seemed very much excited, and got pale as a sheet of paper and blue about his lips, like a man frightened at something he had done."
　　Prosecutors also produced witnesses who testified concerning certain statements Mudd allegedly made about President Lincoln and the federal government. Daniel Thomas testified that he heard Mudd state in early 1865--whether jokingly or not, he couldn't tell--that "the President, Cabinet, and other Union men" would "be killed in six or seven weeks." Mary Simms, a former slave of Mudd's, testified that during the war Mudd complained that Lincoln "stole [into office] at night, dressed in women's clothes" and if "he had come in right, they would have killed him." Another slave, Milo Gardiner, testified that he overheard a friend of Mudd's, Benjamin Gardiner, tell Mudd that "Lincoln was a goddamned old son of a bitch and ought have been dead long ago" and that Mudd replied "that was much of his mind."
　　Mudd's attorney, Thomas Ewing, argued that Mudd's only prior encounter with Booth had been the one in November and that all the later alleged meetings were fabrications of prosecution witnesses. Ewing contended that it was no crime to fix a broken leg, even if it were the leg of a presidential assassin and even if the doctor knew it was the leg of a presidential assassin. Ewing argued that the prosecution must prove more: that Mudd actually furthered the conspiracy in some way. Prosecutors responded by arguing that the evidence showed more than the defense admitted. They contended that Mudd furthered the conspiracy by, for example, pointing out to Herold the route that he and Booth should take upon leaving his farm.

		自动登录	找回密码
密码			立即注册

[FECT高级考试] 金融英语辅导：TrialoftheLincolnAssassinationConspirators（2）

金融英语辅导：TrialoftheLincolnAssassinationConspirators（2）