The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1881-08-05


given way to revenge on Beall's account.
Booth, whose boyhood was mainly spent
in Baltimore, had two schoolmates
named Arnold and O'Laughlin, over
whom he had a marked influence, and
who were both impecunious and dissi-
pated. He tempted thom into his or
iginal scheme to capture Lincoln. but
wnen they found 1t was to be IA murder
their ideas were confirmed that Booth
was a crazy man, and they left him.
poor, vulgar, whisky-ridden scene
shifter at Ford's Theater, named Span
gler, was ultimately used for the assas-
sination scheme by Booth. He tried to
tempt several actors into the plot, no
doubt desiring some intellectual associ-
ates, or men at least above the vulgar
grade of his Marylanders. The man
Powell who was tried under the name of
Payne was young rebel desperate from
Georgia or Florida, who had probably
been sent to Booth from among the
guerrillas. He was the only one who
did his part with the stolidness and obe-
dience of q "Quantrell, a James or a
Younger" At Mrs. Surratt's house in
Washington all this junto were in the
habit of meeting. They also met at
drinking house on Louisiana avenue, on
the second floor. Individual members
of this crowd would call ON Booth at the
National Hotel, where he boarded.
Mrs. Surratt's house in Washington
was in q particularly isolated yet CEN
tral portion of the town, on the edge OF
Judiciary square, which was then mere
common, and beyond, toward the east
ern branch, the country was all goose
pasture, without graded streets, and cut
up by army teams. Mrs. Surratt's part
in the business was 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. EAtzerodt, Payne
and Harold were in the city. He hired
horses for them from the livery-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 er-
rands. accessory to the assassination. at
Surrattsville that afternoon. He gave
her the money to hire a buggy and take
n field glass out with her, and tell her
tenant to be up at midnight and have a
bottle of whisky ready, as the guns
..1nnnc,fn1 OF no 70
would he called for about that
houG The foolish woman, probably
enamored of the man, did his behest.
She got q 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 az night. Ten minutes alter she
returned some one rang her door bell
and she attended to it III person. The
boarder thinks it was Booth, who had
come to see il she had performed her
GRAND and if everything on the road was
clear. In an hour or so atterward the
President was shot. If Surratt had re-
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 a 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 MIR.
Seward. Regrets were felt that a wom-
an should suffer SO ANONYMOUSLY, and
President johnson and Judge Advocate
Holt long afterward had sharp contro-
versy on the subject. Both were South
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 1t was only on
the 10Th 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 a 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, CT 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-