out of the way until suspicion had passed. It then appeared that he figured only in the original plan of abducting Lincoln, and was to have caught him on the stage when the rest of the villains had thrown him over from the box.

The appearance and demeanor of the court, it must be admitted, were neither solemn nor impressive. The members of the commission sat about in various negligent attitudes, and a general appearance of disorder was evident. Many ladies were present, and their irrepressible whispering was a continual nuisance to the reporters, who desired to keep track of the evidence. The witnesses were first examined by the judge-advocate, the members of the court putting in a question now and then, and the counsel for the prisoners taking up the cross-examination, each counselor attending only to the witness whose testimony affected his own client. The witnesses were brought in without regard to any particular criminal, all being tried at once. Occasionally an attorney for one prisoner would "develop" the witness under examination in such a manner as to injure the cause of another of the defendants, and then a petty quarrel would ensue between the different counsel.

Of the eight prisoners at the bar, Payne, Atzerot, Herold, and Mrs. Surratt were declared by the court guilty of murder, and were hanged on July 7, 1865. O'Laughlin, Arnold, and Dr. Mudd were found guilty of being accessory to the conspiracy, and were sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor for life. Spangler, who impressed most people as being a weak creature, unaware of being con

cerned in any real crime, was sentenced to six years' imprisonment, and, with O'Laughlin, Arnold, and Mudd, was sent to the forts of the Dry Tortugas. Dr. Mudd was pardoned by President Johnson in February, 1869, and Arnold and Spangler about a month later in the same year. O'Laughlin died of yellow fever while in prison at Fort Jefferson, Florida. John H. Surratt, who was at first believed to have been the would-be assassin of Mr. Seward, escaped from Washington immediately after the tragedy, and fled to Canada; thence he went to Italy, where he enlisted in the Papal Zouaves, but was traced by the sleuth-hounds of the United States detective force, and was brought back to this country on an American frigate in December, 1866, and tried, but not convicted.

A painful and depressing feature of this tragical business was the ease with which many well-meaning but unreasonable people not only appeared to forget the awfulness of the crime committed, but made objection to the findings of the court as well. Judge John A. Bingham, who assisted the judge-advocate in the trial, was unjustly, even wickedly, pursued by some of these wrong-headed persons for the part he took in the conviction of Mrs. Surratt. All the evidence in her case pointed unerringly to her guilt as an intelligent accomplice of the assassins. And the fact that Payne sought her house as a place of refuge after his murderous assault upon Seward, was only one of many more conclusive evidences of her active share in the great conspiracy. Her sex appears to have confused the judgment of many who did not follow the trial with attentiveness.

It was natural, but to a lover of Lincoln almost surprising, that while the lifeless form of the martyr was being borne home to Illinois, the newly installed President, Andrew Johnson, was surrounded, courted, and flattered by eager crowds of courtiers and office-seekers in Washington. If Johnson had just been inaugurated, after a political campaign in which he had defeated Lincoln, and was expected to overturn everything that remained of his predecessor's work, the appearance of things would not have been different from what it was. Multitudes from every part of the country rushed upon Washington, some with windy and turgid addresses to the new President, and many more with applications for official favor. To a thoughtful man this exhibition was disgusting beyond description.

Nor was one's respect for a pure democracy heightened by the habitual pose of President Johnson. It was a remarkable illustration of the elasticity and steadiness of our form of government that its machinery moved on without a jar, without tumult, when the head was suddenly stricken down. But the vulgar clamor of the crowds that beset Johnson, the boisterous ravings of the successor of Lincoln, and the complete absorption of Washington quidnuncs in speculations on the "policy" of the new head of the Government, saddened those who regarded this ignoble spectacle with hearts sore with grief for the loss of him who was yet unburied.

All these petty details are but a small part of our history; but they do belong to history. Posterity is already making up its verdict. We must be con

tent to leave to posterity the final adjustment of all things. Smaller men are passing out of human memory. In the words of one who knew him well, Lincoln "belongs to the ages."

CHAPTER IX

LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE

MID WAR'S ALARMS-THE BOY OF THE WHITE HOUSE — THE PEST OF PLACE-HUNTERS LINCOLN'S STORIES

-SOME OF HIS LITERARY TENDENCIESFOR POETRY ·

PRO

HIS METHODICAL HABITS

- FONDNESS

ROBABLY no family that ever lived in the Executive Mansion was so irregular in its methods of living as were the Lincolns. Naturally, Mr. Lincoln was methodical in his habits; he was scrupulously exact in all the details of his office, and his care for written documents was sometimes carried to an extreme; he appeared to have the Chinese reverence for a written paper. But the exigencies of those stormy times prevented him from being regular in his manner of life in the White House; and the example of the head of the family could not fail to affect all of the other members. Never very attentive to the demands or the attractions of the table, his incessant cares, his anxieties, and the engrossing calls upon his time (which he had not the skill to parry), left him with very little opportunity to attend to the simplest duties of the head of a family. Of his per