seen, and the brightness of the sun made her vail quite transparent. Her
eyes were seen to be of a soft gray; her brown hair lay smoothly upon a
full, square forehead; the contour of her face was comely, but her teeth
had the imperfectness of those of most southern women, being few and
irregular. Until the lips were opened she did not reveal them. Her
figure was not quite full enough to be denominated buxom, yet had all
the promise of venerable old age, had nature been permitted its due
course. She was of the medium height, and modest--as what woman would
not be under such searching survey? At first she was very feeble, and
leaned her head upon alternate sides of her arm-chair in nervous spasms;
but now and then, when a sort of wail just issued from her lips, the
priest placed before her the crucifix to lull her fearful spirit. All
the while the good fathers Wigett and Walter murmured their low, tender
cadences, and now and then the woman's face lost its deadly fear, and
took a bold, cognizable survey of the spectators. She wore a robe of
dark woolen, no collar, and common shoes of black listing. Her general
expression was that of acute suffering, vanishing at times as if by the
conjuration of her pride, and again returning in a paroxysm as she
looked at the dreadful rope dangling before her. This woman, to whom,
the priests have made their industrious moan, holding up the effigy of
Christ when their own appeals became of no avail, perched there in the
lofty air, counting her breaths, counting the winkfuls of light,
counting the final wrestles of her breaking heart, had been the belle of
her section, and many good men had courted her hand. She had led a
pleasant life, and children had been born to her--who shared her
mediocre ambition and the invincibility of her will. If the charge of
her guilt were proven, she was the Lady Macbeth of the west.
But women know nothing of consequences. She alone of all her sex stands
now in this thrilled and ghastly perspective, and in immediate
association with three creatures in whose company it is no fame to die:
a little crying boy, a greasy unkempt sniveller, and a confessed
desperado. Her base and fugitive son, to know the infamy of his
cowardice and die of his shame, should have seen his mother writhing in
her seat upon the throne his wickedness established for her.
Payne, the strangest criminal in our history, was alone dignified and
self possessed. He wore a closely-fitting knit shirt, a sailor's straw
hat tied with a ribbon, and dark pantaloons, but no shoes. His collar,
cut very low, showed the tremendous muscularity of his neck, and the
breadth of his breast was more conspicuous by the manner in which the
pinioned arms thrust it forward. His height, his vigor, his glare made
him the strong central figure of this interelementary tableaux. He said
no word; his eyes were red as with the penitential weeping of a
courageous man, and the smooth hardness of his skin seemed like a
polished muscle. He did not look abroad inquisitively, nor within
intuitively. He had no accusation, no despair, no dreaminess. He was
only looking at death as for one long expected, and not a tremor nor a
shock stirred his long stately limbs; withal, his blue eye was milder
than when I saw him last, as if some bitterness, or stolidness, or
obstinate pride had been exorcised, perhaps by the candor of confession.
Now and then he looked half-pityingly at the woman, and only once moved
his lips, as if in supplication. Few who looked at him, forgetful of his
crime, did not respect him. He seemed to feel that no man was more than
his peer, and one of his last commands was a word of regret to Mr.
Seward.
I have a doubt that this man is entirely a member of our nervous race. I
believe that a fiber of the aboriginal runs through his tough sinews. At
times he looked entirely an Indian. His hair is tufted, and will not lie
smoothly. His cheek-bones are large and high set. There is a tint in his
complexion. Perhaps the Seminole blood of his swampy state left a trace
of its combative nature there.
Payne was a preacher's son, and not the worst graduate of his class. His
real name is Lewis Thornton Powell.
He died without taking the hand of any living friend.
Even the squalid Atzerott was not so poor. I felt a pity for his
physical rather than his vital or spiritual peril. It seemed a
profanation to break the iron column of his neck, and give to the worm
his belted chest.
But I remember that he would have slain a sick old man.
The third condemned, although whimpering, had far more grit than I
anticipated; he was inquisitive and flippant-faced, and looked at the
noose flaunting before him, and the people gathered below, and the
haggard face of Atzerott, as if entirely conscious and incapable of
abstraction.
Harold would have enjoyed this execution vastly as a spectator. He was,
I think, capable of a greater degree of depravity than any of his
accomplices. Atzerott might have made a sneak thief, Booth a forger, but
Harold was not far from a professional pickpocket. He was keen-eyed,
insolent, idle, and, by a small experience in Houston street, would have
been qualified for a first-class "knuck." He had not, like the rest, any
political suggestion for the murder of the heads of the nation; and upon
the gallows, in his dirty felt hat, soiled cloth coat, light pantaloons
and stockings, he seemed unworthy of his manacles.
A very fussy Dutchman tied him up and fanned him, and he wept
forgetfully, but did not make a halt or absurd spectacle.
Atzerott was my ideal of a man to be hung--a dilution of Wallack's
rendering of the last hours of Fagan, the Jew; a sort of sick man, quite
garrulous and smitten, with his head thrown forward, muttering to the
air, and a pallidness transparent through his dirt as he jabbered
prayers and pleas confusedly, and looked in a complaining sort of way at
the noose, as if not quite certain that it might not have designs upon
him.
He wore a greyish coat, black vest, light pantaloons and slippers, and a
white affair on his head, perhaps a handkerchief.
His spiritual adviser stood behind him, evidently disgusted with him.
Atzerott lost his life through too much gabbing. He could have had
serious designs upon nothing greater than a chicken, but talked
assassination with the silent and absolute Booth, until entrapped into
conspiracy and the gallows, much against his calculation. This man was
visited by his mother and a poor, ignorant woman with whom he cohabited.
He was the picture of despair, and died ridiculously, whistling up his
courage.
These were the dramatis personę, no more to be sketched, no more to be
cross-examined, no more to be shackled, soon to be cold in their
coffins.
They were, altogether, a motley and miserable set. Ravaillae might have
looked well swinging in chains; Charlotte Corday is said to have died
like an actress; Beale hung not without dignity, but these people,
aspiring to overturn a nation, bore the appearance of a troop of
ignorant folks, expiating the blood-shed of a brawl.
When General Hartrauft ceased reading there was momentary lull, broken
only by the cadences of the priests.
Then the Rev. Mr. Gillette addressed the spectators in a deep impressive
tone. The prisoner, Lewis Thornton Powell, otherwise Payne, requested
him to thus publicly and sincerely return his thanks to General
Hartrauft, the other officers, the soldiers, and all persons who had
charge of him and had attended him. Not one unkind word, look, or
gesture, had been given to him by any one. Dr. Gillette then followed in
a fervent prayer in behalf of the prisoner, during which Payne's eyes
momentarily filled with tears, and he followed in the prayer with
visible feeling.
Rev. Dr. Olds followed, saying in behalf of the prisoner, David E.
Harold, that he tendered his forgiveness to all who had wronged him, and
asked the forgiveness of all whom he had wronged. He gave his thanks to
the officers and guards for kindnesses rendered him. He hoped that he
had died in charity with all men and at peace with God. Dr. Olds
concluded with a feeling prayer for the prisoner.
Rev. Dr. Butler then made a similar return of thanks on behalf of George
A. Atzerott for kindness received from his guards and attendants, and
concluded with an earnest invocation in behalf of the criminal, saying
that the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin, and asking that God
Almighty might have mercy upon this man.
The solemnity of this portion of the scene may be imagined, the several
clergyman speaking in order the dying testament of their clients, and
making the hot hours fresh with the soft harmonies of their
benedictions.
The two holy fathers having received Mrs. Surratt's confession, after
the custom of their creed observed silence. In this, as in other
respects, Mrs. Surratt's last hours were entirely modest and womanly.
The stage was still filled with people; the crisis of the occasion had
come; the chairs were all withdrawn, and the condemned stood upon their
feet.
The process of tying the limbs began.
It was with a shudder, almost a blush, that I saw an officer gather the
ropes tightly three times about the robes of Mrs. Surratt, and bind her
ankles with cords. She half fainted, and sank backward upon the
attendants, her limbs yielding to the extremity of her terror, but
uttering no cry, only a kind of sick groaning, like one in the weakness
of fever, when a wry medicine must be taken.
Payne, with his feet firmly laced together, stood straight as one of the
scaffold beams, and braced himself up so stoutly that this in part
prevented the breaking of his neck.
Harold stood well beneath the drop, still whimpering at the lips, but
taut, and short, and boyish.
Atzerott, in his grovelling attitude, while they tied him began to
indulge in his old vice of gabbing. He evidently wished to make his
finale more effective than his previous cowardly role, and perhaps was
strengthening his fortitude with a speech, as we sometimes do of dark
nights with a whistle.
"Gentlemen," he said, with a sort of choke and gasp, "take ware." He
evidently meant "beware," or "take care," and confounded them.
Again, when the white death-cap was drawn over his face, he continued to
cry out under it, once saying, "Good bye, shentlemens, who is before me
now;" and again, "May we meet in the other world." Finally he drifted
away with low, half-intelligible ebullitions, as "God help me," "oh!
oh!" and the like.
The rest said nothing, except Mrs. Surratt, who asked to be supported,
that she might not fall, but Harold protested against the knot with
which he was to be dislocated, it being as huge as one's double fist.
In fact all the mechanical preparations were clumsy and inartistic, and
the final scenes of the execution, therefore, revolting in the extreme.
When the death-caps were all drawn over the faces of the prisoners, and
they stood in line in the awful suspense between absolute life and
immediate death, a man at the neck of each adjusting the cord, the knot
beneath the ears of each protruded five or six inches, and the cord was
so thick that it could not be made to press tightly against the flesh.
So they stood, while nearly a thousand faces from window, roof, wall,
yard and housetop, gazed, the scaffold behind them still densely packed
with the assistants, and the four executioners beneath, standing at
their swinging beams. The priests continued to murmur prayers. The
people were dumb, as if each witness stood alone with none near by to
talk to him.
An instant this continued, while an officer on the plot before, motioned
back the assistants, and then with a forward thrust of his hand,
signaled the executioners.
The great beams were darted against the props simultaneously. The two
traps fell with a slam. The four bodies dropped like a single thing,
outside the yet crowded remnant of the gallows floor, and swayed and
turned, to and fro, here and there, forward and backward, and with many
a helpless spasm, while the spectators took a little rush forward, and
the ropes were taut as the struggling pulses of the dying.
Mrs. Surratt's neck was broken immediately; she scarcely drew one
breath. Her short woman's figure, with the skirts looped closely about
it, merely dangled by the vibration of her swift descent, and with the
knot holding true under the ear, her head leaned sideways, and her
pinioned arms seemed content with their confinement.
Payne died a horrible death; the knot slipped to the back of his neck,
and bent his head forward on his breast, so that he strangled as he drew
his deep chest almost to his chin, and the knees contracted till they
almost seemed to touch his abdomen. The veins in his great wrists were
like whip-cords, expanded to twice their natural dimensions, and the
huge neck grew almost black with the dark blood that rushed in a flood
to the circling rope. A long while he swayed and twisted and struggled,
till at last nature ceased her rebellion and life went out unwillingly.
Harold also passed through some struggles. It is doubtful that his neck
was broken. The perspiration dripped from his feet, and he swung in the
hot noon just living enough to make death irritable.
Atzerott died easily. Life did not care to fight for his possession.
The two central figures lived long after the two upon the flanks.
There they hung, bundles of carcass and old clothes, four in a row, and
past all conspiracy or ambition, the river rolling by without a sound,
and men watching them with a shiver, while the heat of the day seemed
suddenly abated, as if by the sudden opening of a tomb.
The officers conversed in a half-audible tone; the reporters put up
their books; the assistants descended from the gallows; and the medical
men drew near. No wind stirred the unbreathing bodies, they were stone
dead.
The bodies were allowed to hang about twenty minutes, when surgeon Otis,
U. S. V., and Assistant Surgeons Woodward and Porter, U. S. A., examined
them and pronounced all dead. In about ten minutes more a ladder was
placed against the scaffold preparatory to cutting the bodies down. An
over-zealous soldier on the platform reached over and severed the cord,
letting one body fall with a thump, when he was immediately ordered down
and reprimanded. The body of Atzerott was placed in a strong white pine
box, and the other bodies cut down in the following order, Harold,
Powell, and Mrs. Surratt.
The carcasses thus recovered were given over to a squad of soldiers and
each placed in a pine box without uncovering the faces. The boxes were
forthwith placed in the pits prepared for them, and directly all but the
memory of their offense passed from the recording daylight.
In the gloomy shadow of that arsenal lies all the motive, and essay of a
crime which might have changed the destinies of our race. It will be
forever a place of suspicion and marvel, the haunted spot of the
Capitol, and the terror of all who to end a fancied evil, cut their way
to right with a dagger.
EXTRA MURAL SCENES.
As everything connected with this expiation will be greedily read I
compile from gossip and report a statement of the last intramural hours
of the prisoners.
During the morning a female friend of Atzerott, from Port Tobacco, had
an interview with him--she leaving him about eleven o'clock. He made the
following statement:
He took a room at the Kirkwood House on Thursday, in order to get a pass
from Vice-President Johnson to go to Richmond. Booth was to lease the
Richmond theater and the President was to be invited to attend it when
visiting Richmond, and captured there. Harold brought the pistol and
knife to the room about half-past two o'clock on Friday. He (Atzerott)
said he would have nothing to do with the murder of Johnson, when Booth
said that Harold had more courage than Atzerott, and he wanted Atzerott
to be with Harold to urge him to do it. There was a meeting at a
restaurant about the middle of March, at which John Surratt, O'Laughlin,
Booth, Arnold, Payne, Harold and himself were present, when a plan to
capture the President was discussed. They had heard the President was to
visit a camp, and they proposed to capture him, coach and all, drive
through long old fields to "T. B.," where the coach was to be left and
fresh horses were to be got, and the party would proceed to the river to
take a boat. Harold took a buggy to "T. B." in anticipation that Mr.
Lincoln would be captured, and he was to go with the party to the river.
Slavery had put him on the side of the South. He had heard it preached
in church that the curse of God was upon the slaves, for they were
turned black. He always hated the nigger and felt that they should be
kept in ignorance. He had not received any money from Booth, although he
had been promised that if they were successful they should never want,
that they would be honored throughout the South, and that they could
secure an exchange of prisoners and the recognition of the confederacy.
Harold slept well several hours, but most of the night he was sitting
up, either engaged with his pastor, Rev. Mr. Olds, of Christ Church, or
in prayer. His sisters were with him from an early hour this morning to
twelve o'clock; they being present when he partook of the sacrament at
the hands of Dr. Olds. The parting was particularly affecting. Harold
conversed freely with them, and expressed himself prepared to die.
Powell conversed with Dr. Gillette and Dr. Striker on religious topics
during the morning, sitting erect, as he did in the court-room. From his
conversation it appears that he was raised religiously, and belonged to
the Baptist church until after the breaking out of the rebellion. He
appeared to be sincerely repentant, and in his cell shed tears freely.
He gave his advisers several commissions of a private character, and
stated that he was willing to meet his God, asking all men to forgive,
and forgiving all who had done aught against him. Colonel Doster, his
counsel, also took leave of him during the morning, as well as with
Atzerott.
Mrs. Surratt's daughter was with her at an early hour. One of her male
friends also had an interview with her, and received directions
concerning the disposition of her property. During the night and morning
she received the ministrations of Revs. J. A. Walter and B. F. Wigett,
and conversed freely with them, expressing, while protesting her
innocence, her willingness to meet her God. Her counsel, Messrs. Aiken &
Clampitt, took leave of her during the morning.
A singular feature of this execution was the arrest of General Hancock
this morning, who appeared in court, to answer a writ of _habeas
corpus_, with a full staff. It is well to notice that this execution by
military order has not, therefore, passed without civil protest.
President Johnson extended to General Hancock the right conferred upon
the President by Congress of setting aside the _habeas corpus_.
As usual in such executions as this, there were many stirring outside
episodes, and much shrewd mixture of tragedy and business. A
photographer took note of the scene in all its phases, from a window of
a portion of the jail. Six artists were present, and thirty seven
special correspondents, who came to Washington only for this occasion.
The passes to the execution were written not printed, and, excepting the
bungling mechanism of the scaffold, the sorrowful event went off with
more than usual good order. Every body feels relieved to night, because
half of the crime is buried.
On Monday, Mudd, Arnold, O'Laughlin, and Spangler, will go northward to
prison. The three former for life, the last for six years.
Applications for pardon were made yesterday and to-day to President
Johnson, by Mrs. Samuel Mudd, who is quite woe-begone and disappointed,
in behalf of her husband, by the sisters of Harold, and by Miss Ann
Surratt. Harold's sisters, dressed in full mourning and heavily veiled,
made their appearance at the White House, for the purpose of interceding
with the President in behalf of their brother. Failing to see the
President, they addressed a note to Mrs. Johnson, and expressed a hope
that she would not turn a deaf ear to their pleadings. Mrs. Johnson
being quite sick, it was deemed expedient by the ushers not to deliver
the note, when, as a last expedient, the ladies asked permission to
forward a note to Mrs. Patterson, the President's daughter, which
privilege was not granted, as Mrs. Patterson is also quite indisposed
to-day. The poor girls went away with their last hope shattered.
The misery of the pretty and heart-broken daughter of Mrs. Surratt is
the talk of the city. This girl appears to have loved her mother with
all the petulant passion of a child. She visited her constantly, and
to-day made so stirring an effort to obtain her life that her devotion
takes half the disgrace from the mother. She got the priests to speak in
her behalf. Early to-day she knelt in the cell at her mother's feet, and
sobbed, with now and then a pitiful scream till the gloomy corridors
rang. She endeavored to win from Payne a statement that her mother was
not accessory, and, as a last resort, flung herself upon the steps of
the White-House, and made that portal memorable by her filial tears.
About half-past 8 o'clock this morning, Miss Surratt, accompanied by a
female friend, again visited the White-House, for the purpose of
obtaining an interview with the President. The latter having given
orders that he would receive no one to-day, the door-keeper stopped Miss
Surratt at the foot of the steps leading up to the President's office,
and would not permit her to proceed further. She then asked permission
to see General Muzzy, the president's military secretary, who promptly
answered the summons, and came down stairs where Miss Surratt was
standing. As soon as the general made his appearance, Miss Surratt threw
herself upon her knees before him, and catching him by the coat, with
loud sobs and streaming eyes, implored him to assist her in obtaining a
hearing with the President. General Muzzy, in as tender a manner as
possible, informed Miss Surratt that he could not comply with her
request, as President Johnson's orders were imperative, and he would
receive no one. Upon General Muzzy returning to his office, Miss Surratt
threw herself upon the stair steps, where she remained a considerable
length of time, sobbing aloud in the greatest anguish, protesting her
mother's innocence, and imploring every one who came near her to
intercede in her mother's behalf.
While thus weeping she declared her mother was too good and kind to be
guilty of the enormous crime of which she was convicted, and asserted
that if her mother was put to death she wished to die also. She was
finally allowed to sit in the east room, where she lay in wait for all
who entered, hoping to make them efficacious in her behalf, all the
while uttering her weary heart in a woman's touching cries: but at last,
certain of disappointment, she drove again to the jail and lay in her
mother's cell, with the heavy face of one who brings ill-news. The
parting will consecrate those gloomy walls. The daughter saw the mother
pinioned and kissed her wet face as she went shuddering to the scaffold.
The last words of Mrs. Surratt, as she went out of the jail, were
addressed to a gentleman whom she had known.
"Good-bye, take care of Annie."
To-night there is crape on the door of the Surratt's, and a lonely lamp
shines at a single window, where the sad orphan is thinking of her
bereavement.
The bodies of the dead have been applied for but at present will not
given up.
Judge Holt was petitioned all last night for the lives and liberties of
the condemned, but he was inexorable.
The soldiers who hung the condemned were appointed against their will. I
forbear to give their names as they do not wish the repute of
executioners. They all belonged to the Fourteenth Veteran Reserve
Infantry.
Here endeth the story of this tragedy upon a tragedy. All are glad that
it is done. I am glad particularly. It has cost me how many journeying
to Washington, how many hot midnights at the telegraph office, how many
gallops into wild places, and how much revolting familiarity with blood.
The end has come. The slain, both good and evil, are in their graves,
out of the reach of hangman and assassin. Only the correspondent never
dies. He is the true Pantheist--going out of nature for a week, but
bursting forth afresh in a day, and so insinuating himself into the
history of our era that it is beginning to be hard to find out where the
event ends and the writer begins.