The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1881-08-12

pasture, without graded streets, and cut
up by army teams.s Mrs. Surratt's part
in the businessW allowing both her.
self and her house to be used by spies
and assassins, while she was living in
the Federal lines under protection, and
her family had taken the oath and they
received passes and safeguards. 1t seems
probable that Booth hastily resolved to
kill Lincoln on the particular day it was
accomplished, and had only that day to
do his work so he laid hands on what
tools were near by. Atzerodt, Payne
and Harold were in the city. He hired
horses for them from the hvery-stables
as soon as he heard Lincoln was to be at
the theater. John Surratt was off in
Canada, and he was making his way
back at the time of the murder. Booths
baseness consisted in going to Mrs Sur
rats house and getting her to do his err
rands, accessory to the assassination, at
Surratlsville that afternoon. He gave
her the money to hire buggy and take
feld-glass out with her, and tell her
tenant to be up at midnight and have q
bottle of whisky ready, as the guns
previously deposited at the tavern
would be called for about that
hour The foolish woman, probably
enamored of the man, did his behest.
She got a clerk who boarded IN her
house to drive her all that ten miles
over the hills to Surrattsville and back
again, and he had to give the testimony
against her. She started out about 3
OF o'clock in the afternoon, and did not
reach Washington again till nearly 8
O'clock at night. Ten minutes after she
returned some one rang her door bell
and she attended to it in person. The
| boarder thinks it was Booth, who had
come to see if she had performed her
errand and if everything on che road was
clear. In an hour or SO afterward the
President was shot. If Surratt had re-
turned to Washington city either at the
time Of the trial before the military COM
mission, or before the time fixed for his
mothers execution, her life would have
been spared. But he remained on the
south side of the st. Lawrence river,
within few miles of Montreal, hid
den in house, and never stood
forth to save her. President johnson,
therefore, refused to grant her pardon,
and she was hung with Atzerodt, who
was to have murdered President John
son; Harold, the companion of Booths
flight, and Payne, who stabbed Mr..
Seward. Regrets were felt that wom-
an should suffer 80 ANONYMOUSLY, and
President johnson and Judge Advocate
Holt long afterward had sharp contro-
versy on the subject. Both were South
ern Unionists-HOlt, native of Ken
lucky, and johnson from Tennessee.
The question now occurs as to how
Booth was to get himself off after he
had accomplished the forty miles to the
Potomac river, Virginia having disband-
ed her troops in the meantime. The
public will observe that it was only on
the 18th OF April that the army Of Lee
surrendered at Appomattox. Mr.. Lin
coin was murdered on the night of the
l4th Of April. 1t was not till the 18th
OF April that the remaining great army
of the Confederacy surrendered in North
Carolina Booth, therefore, believed he
would have an armed Confederacy to
escape to. His feelings, intensified by
the surrender Of Lee on the 10Th, which
he did not know of till the 18th, were
brought locally upon the purpose on
the morning of the 14th, when he heard
that Lincoln was to visit the theater in
honor Of Lees surrender. For six
months Booth had studied all these
roads and avenues of escape, and had
spent nearly all the money that he pos
sessed in keeping his band together,
and there was still chance that Joe
Johnston would hold out, or at any rate
there would be a guerrilla warfare
through the mountains, and the Con-
federates would rally again in the Gulf
States or Texas. No doubt he said to
himself. IT will kill this man in the
very moment of his celebrating Gen.
Lees conquest, and it will be an easy
thing for me to reach the Potomac be-
fore next morning and fall in with the
disbanded Confederates, who are going
to their homes, and they will pass me
along to the mountains, and can work
my way into Mexico, or, at the
worst, surrender with the rest.
Booth had scarcely any education, ex-
cept that of man Of the world; knew
nothing of law, particularly of interna-
body being hung in the war except his
friend, John Beall, and the hotel bum
mer Kennedy. He was desperate, dlssi-
pated, out of pocket, and had nursed up
this conspiracy until it possessed his in
tellect He saw it all slipping away, and
he resolved to deal blow. His plan
was to shoot Mr.. Lincoln after Mrs. Sur
RAFT had come back from Surrattsville,
show himself to the audience as the his
trionic avenger, vanish through the the
alter and have the scenes bar the way
behind him, and go out the back door
into the alley where his horse was wait
ing, and then mount bride to the navy
yard bridge, where he was to meet Har-
old, and in the morning, before day, he
would be at DIR. Mudd's. Meantime At
zerodt was to stab johnson at the Kirk
wood House, and Payne to stab Seward,
and these two were to cross the upper
bridge of the eastern branch. which
would compel them to make detour of
three or four miles, but they would Join
him either at Surrattsville or at Mudd's.
and then the four were to take to the
water, cross into King Georges county,
Va, and by 10 o'clock next morning the
Rappahannock river would be between
them and the Potomac. The fortifca-
tions of Washington would be forty or
fifty miles behind them to the northeast,
the army of Grant was away down below
the Appomattox river, and there was an
open and friendly country to go through
to escape to Southwestern Virginia and
Tennessee. This was probably Booths
programme.
But Atzerodt was coward and va
grant, and he got drunk, talked the
murder, rode his horse around town,
and, instead of joining Booth, he ran
away up into Western Maryland among
the native Dutch of his connections. and
was caught there some time afterward.
Harold waited for Booth somewhere
about Capitol hill, and they crossed the
Eastern branch bridge almost within
sight of each other. Payne undertook
to find the upper bridge, but in the
night. the roads cut up and leading in
every direction by reason of the military
encampments, he could not find the lane
leading to the bridge, and finally, seeing
that he could not catch Booth, he re-
turned to Mrs. Surratt's house three
nights after the murder.
Mr. Lincoln had been killed Friday.