T. M. Harris

“ Surratt, who was buried in the grounds of the old arsenal, being a nameless grave, is wasted eloquence in the mind of every loyal man and woman in the country, as the heniousness of the crime of which she was convicted, made it fitting that she should sleep in a nameless grave, and that the spot of her resting-place be unknown, as an admonition to all traitors to their country, and its free institutions of government, and whose disloyalty fits them for the highest crimes that man can commit, of the infamy that awaits them in the just verdict of an outraged people. ”

“ Whatever else may befall, I trust in God that in this, as in every other American court, the rights of the whole people will be respected, and that the republic in this, its supreme hour of trial, will be true to itself and just to all—ready to protect the rights of the humblest, to redress every wrong, to avenge every crime, to vindicate the majesty of law, and to maintain inviolate the Constitution, whether assailed secretly or openly, by hosts armed with gold, or armed with steel. ”

“ Are they not citizens? Why not clamor against slaying for their crime of treason, which is cognizable in the civil courts, by your rifled ordnance and the leaden hail of your musketry in battle, these public enemies, without trial by jury? Are they not citizens? Why is the clamor confined exclusively to the trial by military tribunals of justice of traitorous spies, traitorous conspirators, and assassins hired to do secretly what the armed rebel attempts to do openly—murder your nationality by assassinating its defenders and its executive officers? ”

“ I can not be misled in supposing that the relations between the President and the Cabinet are relations of honor, and that, therefore, they cannot be held to oblige any member of his Cabinet to protect, by his concealment, and thus become a moral accomplice in it—any criminal or wrongful act into which the President may be drawn by a guilty ambition, or by any other unworthy passion or purpose. In a word, the rule never has been and never should be so construed as to become a shelter for perjury or crime. ”

“ Has the Congress, to whom is committed the sovereignty of the whole people to declare war, by legislation restricted the President, or attempted to restrict him, in the prosecution of this war for the Union, from exercising all the "powers" and adopting all the "proceedings" usually approved and employed by the civilized world? He would, in my judgment, be a bold man who asserted that Congress has so legislated; and the Congress which should by law fetter the executive arm when raised for the common defense would, in my opinion, be false to their oath. ”

“ But when a woman opens her house to murderers and conspirators, infuses the poison of her own malice into their hearts, and urges them to the crime of murder and treason, I say boldly, as an American officer, public safety, public duty, requires that an example be made of her conduct. Murder! gentlemen of the jury. Who composed that military commission? They are no better men than you are, but you will not be offended with me if I say they are as good men as you are, or I, or any of us. ”

“ Historians and text writers on the law may treat of the heinousness of the crime of imagining the death of a weak or a wicked king or of a wise or benignant monarch, but you know, gentlemen, as well as you know that you exist, that to murder the duly elected President of the most powerful people on earth, is not less atrocious in its character than to compass the death of a king, or an emperor, albeit he may have sprang from the loins of the people, who have made him their representative head, and may have no royal blood coursing through his veins. ”

“ I have said this, not by way of apology for anything the government has done or attempted to do in the progress of this trial, but to expose the animus of the argument, and to repel the accusation against my country sent out to the world by the counsel. From anything that he has said, I have yet to learn that the American people have not the right to make their inquiries secretly, touching a general conspiracy in aid of an existing rebellion, which involves their nationality and the peace and security of all. ”

“ From this decision of the people there lies no appeal on this earth. Who can rightfully challenge the authority of the American people to decide such questions for themselves? The voice of the people, thus solemnly proclaimed, by the omnipotence of the ballot in favor of the righteous order of their murdered President, issued by him for the common defense, for the preservation of the Constitution, and for the enforcement of the laws of the Union, ought to be accepted, and will be accepted, I trust, by all just men, as the voice of God. ”

“ There was no doubt an element, perhaps a large element of the population of the Southern States, that was in full sympathy with this policy; but such a policy could only have been abhorrent to the honorable foe who bravely confronted us on the field of conflict. It was the stay-at-home-and-fight element that sanctioned these atrocities. War is cruel when conducted on the strictest rules of civilized warfare. War is destructive; it is harsh and unrelenting. Foeman must meet foeman with his steel. It is a game in which human life is always the price of success and the cost of failure. ”

“ The murder itself was almost forgotten by those who wished to screen the murderers, and the most wicked theories were broached and sown broadcast by men, who, under cloak of reverence for what they called the law, toiled with herculean energy to weaken the arm of the Government, extended in time of war to save the servants of the people from being slaughtered by assassins in public places, and tracked even to their firesides by the agents and friends of slavery. ”

“ Can it be that this Constitution of ours, so divine in its spirit of justice, so beneficent in its results, so full of wisdom and goodness and truth, under which we became one people, a great and powerful nationality, has in terms or by implication denied to this people the power to crush armed rebellion by war, and to arrest and punish, during the existence of such rebellion, according to the laws of war and the usages of nations, secret conspirators who aid and abet the public enemy? ”

“ I will yield to no man in reverence for or obedience to the Constitution of my country, esteeming it, as I do, a new evangel to the nations, embodying the democracy of the New Testament—the absolute equality of all men before the law, in respect of those rights of human nature which are the gift of God, and therefore as universal as the material structure of man. ”

“ You cannot say 'Guilty,' under the Court's instruction, or 'Not guilty,' under the Court's instruction. If you say 'Guilty,' you say 'Guilty as indicted,' upon your conscience resting the weight of the guilt. If your verdict should be 'Guilty,' it will be followed by blood, for you see there is no mercy anywhere in those that represent the government. If your verdict is guilty, then, indeed, you look upon a dying man. Upon your consciences will rest the responsibility of that verdict. ”

“ He sees a gentleman whom he takes to be an American. He seeks his friend McMillen, and discloses to him his fears, saying: "I think that man is an American detective." Upon being asked by the doctor what he had done that he should be afraid of a detective, he replied: "If you knew all the things I have done, it would make you stare." Murder is a crime that will out. It imposes a weight of guilt upon the conscience that will, at some unguarded moment, let the fearful secret slip through the door of the lips that are most firmly closed by a purpose of concealment. ”

“ According to the gentleman's notion, when a murder is committed the government should not do anything towards ascertaining who perpetrated that murder; and if the government did undertake to investigate the matter and endeavor to find out whether the man charged with the crime is guilty or not guilty the government and all connected with it must be expected to be assailed as 'blood hounds of the law,' and as seeking 'to lap their tongues in the blood of the innocent.' Is that the business of government, and is it the business of counsel under any circumstances thus to charge the government? ”

“ That people now, as ever, proclaim the self-evident truth that whenever government becomes subversive of the ends of its creation, it is the right and duty of the people to alter or abolish it; but during these four years of conflict they have as clearly proclaimed, as was their right and duty, both by law and by arms, that the government of their own choice, humanely and wisely administered, oppressive of none and just to all, shall not be overthrown by privy conspiracy or armed rebellion. ”

“ Here we learn that civil government is the ordinance of God; and so he who assassinates a ruler, not only sets at naught God's image in man, but despises his ordinance for the welfare, protection, and peace of society.
This treasonable aspect of his crime, although it could not, for the reasons stated, be embraced in his indictment, yet, as we shall see, was a matter of which the court and jury could take judicial cognizance.
Here we have a man on trial for participation in the murder of a President; yet, in his indictment, he is only charged with the murder of one Abraham Lincoln. ”

“ Why should the people be less proud or less regardful of the life of a ruler selected by themselves, from among themselves, than they would be of the life of him who claimed to rule over them of his own right? When this question can be sensibly answered, I shall be willing to admit that the life of a President is less worth preserving than that of a king, and that to destroy the life of a President is a crime of less atrocity than to merely desire the death of a prince ”

“ Davis replied, referring to the assassination, "Well, general, I don't know; if it were to be done at all, it were better that it were well done; and if the same had been done to Andy Johnson, the beast, and to Secretary Stanton, the job would then be complete."
Accomplished as this man was in all the arts of a conspirator, he was not equal to the task—as happily, in the good providence of God, no mortal man is—of concealing, by any form of words, any great crime which he may have meditated or perpetrated either against his government or his fellow-men. ”

“ Will you try one who is not only absent from the court, but is dead? While trying one that is dead, will you deny to her the poor privilege of having the last word she uttered on earth spoken in her vindication? Were you afraid of it? Did you feel that the words would sink deep into the hearts of everybody that was here in this room, and in the United States, and cause to well up from that heart a fountain of mercy, rich and pure as the fountain that sprang from the rock at the bidding of the sacred rod? ”

“ I know that imagination revolts at the execution of one of the tender sex. But when the daughter of Herodias murdered John the Baptist, she deserved death. When Lucretia Borgia darkened the history of her country by her horrid crimes, she deserved death. And when Mary E. Surratt murdered Abraham Lincoln, the great moral hero of the age in which he lived, the patriot and philanthropist of the nineteenth century, she deserved death. ”

“ This people have such an educated and profound respect for law and justice, such a love of mercy, that they have in the midst of this greatest of civil wars systematized and brought into regular order tribunals that before this war existed under the law of war, but without general rule. To condemn the tribunals that have been established under this bureau is to condemn and denounce the war itself, or, justifying the war, to insist that it shall be prosecuted according to the harshest rules, and without the aid of laws, usages, and customary agencies for mitigating those rules. ”

“ I ask you to consider that we stand this day pleading for the violated majesty of the law, by the graves of half a million of martyred hero-patriots who sacrificed themselves for their country, the Constitution, and the laws, and who by their sublime examples have taught us that all must obey the law; that none are above the law; that no man lives for himself alone, but each for all, that some must die that the State may live ”

“ Is it not in vain, I ask you, Senators, that the people have thus vindicated by battle the supremacy of their own Constitution and laws, if, after all, their President is permitted to suspend their laws and dispense with the execution thereof at pleasure, and defy the power of the people to bring him to trial and judgment before the only tribunal authorized by the Constitution to try him? ”

“ A conspiracy is rarely, if ever, proved by positive testimony. When a crime of high magnitude is about to be perpetrated by a combination of individuals, they do not act openly but covertly and secretly. The purpose formed is known only to those who enter into it. Unless one of the original conspirators betray his companions and give evidence against them, their guilt can be proved only by circumstantial evidence.... ”

“ While, however, it is sadly apparent that I can remain here but a little while longer, I have not been able to bring myself to the belief that you will suffer the closing hours of my life to be darkened by a consciousness that this cloud, or even a shred of it, is still hanging over me—a cloud which can be dissipated at once and forever by a single word spoken by yourself in defense of the truth and in rebuke of a calumny, the merciless cruelty of which none can better understand than yourself. ”

“ I trust that I set as high value upon enlightened public opinion as any man. I recognize it as the reserved power of the people which creates and dissolves armies, which creates and dissolves legislative assemblies, which enacts and repeals fundamental laws, the better to provide for personal security by the due administration of justice. To that public opinion upon this very question of the usurpation of authority, of unlawful arrests, and unlawful imprisonments, and unlawful trials, condemnations, and executions by the late President of the United States, an appeal has already been taken. ”

“ The question before you is whether you have not had murder enough, and assassination enough, and crime enough, to enable us to have at least once before a civil tribunal in this land a trial and a verdict. Not a single one of all those engaged in the conspiracy has been tried before a civil tribunal; and the question now is, have you not had enough of this murder, enough of this assassination, to have at least one jury of the country say so, and to say that we will stop it? ”

“ It is a far more heinous crime to conspire against the government of the United States and to murder its President for the purpose of bringing anarchy and confusion on the land, than to murder a single individual. ”

“ The law of murder is too plain to need any, and you, gentlemen, are too intelligent not to understand it. Indeed, if we desire some explanation, we would prefer to give it to you in the way of argument, rather than trust it to the distinguished judge who presides. We would trust it to argument, because, with regard to these plain questions, all men can comprehend what the law is. We would prefer trusting it to the weight of our own character with the jury as men and lawyers. ”

“ If he was not a conspirator and a party to this great crime, how comes it that from that hour to this no man has seen him in the capital, nor has he been reported anywhere outside of Canada, having arrived at Montreal, as the testimony shows, on the 18th of April, four days after the murder? Nothing but his conscious coward guilt could possibly induce him to absent himself from his mother, as he does, upon her trial. Being one of these conspirators, as charged, every act of his in the prosecution of this crime is evidence against the other parties to the conspiracy. ”

“ Hamilton well said, "The Executive holds the sword of the community; the judiciary has no direction of the strength of society; it has neither force nor will; it has judgment alone, and is dependent for the execution of that upon the arm of the Executive." The people of these States so understood the Constitution and adopted it, and intended thereby, without limitation or restraint, to empower their Congress and Executive to authorize by law, and execute by force, whatever the public safety might require to suppress rebellion or repel invasion. ”