The Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1865-05-20 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

THE HOMEWARD JOURNEY WITH BOOTH'S CORPSE.  —• They sewed him up in a saddle blanket (writes the Ncto York World). This was his shroud—too like a soldier's. Harrold, meantime, had been tied to a tree, but was now released for the march. Colonel Conger puthed on immediately for Washington ; the cortege was to follow. Booth's only arms were his larbine, knife and two revolvers. They found about him bills of exchange, Canada money, and a diary. A venerable old negro living in the vicinity had the misfortune to possess a horse. This horse was a relic of former generations, and showed by his protruding ribs the general leanness of the land. He moved in an eccentric amble, and when put upon his speed was generally run backward. To this old negro's horse was harnessed a very shaky and absurd waggon, which rattled like approaching dissolution, and each part of it ran without any connection cr correspondence with any other part. It had no tailboard, and its shafts were sharp as famine, and into this mimicry of a vehicle the murderer was to be sent to the Potomac River, while the man he had murdered was moving in state across the mourning continent. The old negro geared up his waggon by means of a set of fossil harness, and when it was backed to Garrett's porch they laid within it the discoloured cJrpse. The corpse was tied with ropes around the legs, and made fast to the waggon sides. Harrold's legs were tied to stirrups, and he was placed in the centre of four murderous-looking cavalrymen. The two sons of Garrett were also taken along, despite the sobs and petitions of the old folks and women, but the rebel captain who had given Booth a lift got off amid the night's agitations, and was not re-arrested. So moved the cavalcade of retribution, with death in its midst, along the road to Port Royal. When the waggon started, Booth's wound, till now scarcely dribbling, began to run anew. It fell through the crack of the waggon, and fell dripping upon the axle, and spotting the road with terrible wafers. It stained the planks and soaked the blankets ; and the old negro, at a stoppage, dabbled his hands in it by mistake. He drew back instantly with a shudder and stifled expletive, " Gor-r-r, dat'll never come off in de world; its murderer's blood." He wrung his hands, and looked imploringly at the officers, and shuddered again," Gor-r-r, I wouldn't have drat on me fur toueand, tousand dollars." The progress of the team wairslow, with Ire.; ueut danger of shipwreck altogether; but toward noon the cortege filed through Port Royal, where the citizens came out to ask the matter, and why a man's body, covered with sombre blankets, was going by with so great an escort. They were told that it was a wounded Confederate, and, so held their tongues. The ferry, again in requisition, took them over by squads, and they pushed from Fort Conway to Belle Plain, which they reached in the middle of the afternoon. All the way the blood dribbled from the corpse in a slow, incessant, sanguine exudation. The old negro was niggardly dismissed with two paper dollars. The dead man untied and cast upon the vessel's deck, steam gotten up in a little while, and the broad Potomac shores saw this skeleton ship flit by, as the evening sun threw gashes and blots of unhealthy light along the river surface.