Northwest enterprise. [volume] (Anacortes, Wash. Ter.) 1882-1887, 1882-10-07
gfnia In a row-boat from below Fort To-

her tavern at Surrattsville and moved
to Washington and opened boarding.
house. She had an interesting daugh-
ter, and was herself rather cemely
widow about 40 years old. The ladies
never had such an elegant acquaintance
as Booth, and he soon got power over
them and over their country friends.
John Surratt was kept in Lower Mary
land running the blockade, carrying the
rebel mailand picking little money,
and indulging in some visions of wealth
to be got through Booths genius. Sur
ratt made one or two visits to Rich
mond, and the rebel Secretary of
State intl:.sted him with packages to
Canada.
Booth was native of Hartford coun-
ty, Maryland, and had its local patriot
ism. He was an actor in Richmond at
the time John Brown was hung, and
went up to see the execution. There he
met John T. Beall, who was afterward
hung on Governors island, and their
acquaintance was very confidential.
Booth labored hard to have Beall par
doned by Lincoln, but Intellectually.
Beall had been pirate about the mouth
of the Potomac at the beginning of the
war, and afterward on the lakes. and
was one of the set OF young desperadoes
in Canada, and he was hung on the oath
of February, 1865, on Governors island.
About eight weeks after that Booth shot
Lincoln, and some say that his original
ambition, to make him prisoner, had
given way to revenge ON Bealps 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 them into his Or
iginal scheme to capture Lincoln. bnt
when they found it was to he murder
their ideas were confirmed that Booth
was crazy man, and they left him. A
poor, vulgar, whisky-ridden scene
shifter at Ford's Theater, named Span
gler, was ultimately used for the assas-
sination scheme by Booth.s 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 aud Ooe-
dience of "Quantrell, q James or a
Younger" At Mrs. Sulratt's house in
Washington all this jnnto We're 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 particularly isolated yet GEN.
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. Atzerolt. Payne
and Harold were in the city. He hired
horses for them from the llvery-stables
as soon as he heard Lincoln was to be at
the theater. John Surratt was of 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-
l. ~ ko 81
Surrattsville that afternoon. He gave
her the money to hire buggy and take
a field-glass ont with her, aud 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 q clerk who boarded in her
house to drive her all that ten miles
over the hi Is to Surrattsville nnd back
again, and he had to give the testimony
against her. She started out about 3
or 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and did not
reach Washington again TIL 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 the ruad was
clear. In an hour or SO a'terward 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