boldly, and to denounce the character and conduct of witnesses. But no honorable gentleman should take advantage of his position at the bar to do injustice to an individual who happens to be in the unfortunate attitude of a witness upon the stand. I make no such accusation against the learned gentleman. It is a question which addresses itself to his own judgment, conscience, and honor, and every lawyer should be his own judge of his professional duty.

Mr. BRADLEY, Sr. To what do you refer? I do not understand you.
Mr. BRADLEY, jr. Nor I either.

The DISTRICT ATTORNEY. Well, I will explain afterwards. I am speaking of the reference made to the witnesses by Mr. Bradley, jr., in his opening address. By a parity of reasoning, gentlemen, and upon the same principle, it is the privilege and often the duty of the prosecuting officer to denounce the parties indicted and arraigned for high crimes and misdemeanors, but it would be improper for counsel to treat such matters as personal, and to indulge in personal or offensive remarks to each other, for reasons too obvious to mention. Entertaining these sentiments, I shall endeavor on this occasion, as I hope to do on all occasions, to meet the learned counsel in kind and courteous, but open, bold, and manly argument. I shall endeavor to present this case in a spirit of justice and fairness to the accused, but I shall speak of this traitor, murderer, and assassin, his associates in crime, and the rebel spy who comes here to shield him from the consequences of his crime, as they deserve. I cannot regard this cruel, miserable murderer and assassin as a representative man of the South; as an embodiment and impersonation of southern honor and southern chivalry ; and if an attempt should be made by smiles, by inuendoes, or, as Hamlet says, "by any other such ambiguous giving out," to present him to the imagination of this jury as an embodiment and impersonation of southern honor and chivalry, I call upon you to spurn it as an insult to every honest man, born and reared upon southern soil. Southern men do not justify assassination and cold-blooded, deliberate, cruel murder. I am aware that I address southern men, with southern sympathies. I say this in no offensive sense. (A brief pause.) Loyal men, men true to the laws and the Constitution of our common country: What honorable man, north, south, east, or west, will proclaim to the civilized world that he justifies, palliates, sympathizes with a traitor, a spy, and an assassin, who shed, as I shall show you, innocent blood for money? What honorable confederate officer or soldier, and there were some there, as I am free to admit, for I thank God that I do not cherish in my heart a sectional sentiment. I would not abuse a northern man before a southern audience, nor would I abuse a southern man before a northern audience. I ask the question, what honorable confederate officer or soldier has taken that stand to shield this assassin from the consequences of his crime? A spy, fresh from Morgan's band of murderers, horse-thieves, and guerillas, with unblushing effrontery, has alone come here to represent to an American jury and an American audience that this is a man to be treated as a lion and a hero. Give me a jury of honorable confederate soldiers, give me a jury of young rebels, with arms in their hands, who entered into this fierce and cruel war, under the delusion that they were doing God's service, many of them honest and honorable men, misled by wicked, designing and ambious politicians, and let me tell the sad story of this cruel, cruel murder, and they would hang this wretch as high as Old John Brown, or Haman. Born, gentlemen of the jury, on the soil of the Old Dominion, I am endeared to her by the strongest, tenderest, and holiest ties that could entwine around a human heart. There lie entombed the bones of my ancestors, and of my own honored father, who carried to his grave the terrible yet honorable wounds he received while fighting, not for a section, but for this whole country. Feebly endeavoring to imitate the example, and to follow his precept, during the cruel war that swept over the face of our country, I was true to the federal cause; not because I loved Virginia less, but this Union more; because

I honestly believed that the true honor and interest of my native State were involved in the preservation and perpetuation of the federal Union. I never found that I injured myself in the estimation of a northern gentleman or lady by boldly avowing my personal affection for the people of my native State. I differed from them upon principle; but with regard to this all honorable men can agree, that the murder and the assassination of any man, whether he be President or a feeble, unpretending American citizen, sitting by the side of his wife, is a crime which deserves the anathemas and the indignation of every man who has a heart to love and a soul to feel for the honor of his country. Who are the men of course I make no allusion to counsel-who sympathize with this prisoner and his horrid crime? The original secessionists, the persons who filled this land with widows and with orphans, who stirred up strife among brethren, and whose coward hearts quailed in the hour of battle and of danger. Perhaps party spirit may pervade this audience-I trust not-but I call upon you, gentlemen, to exorcise the infernal spirit from the halls of justice; preserve the integrity and purity of the judicial ermine, and wipe this deep and damning stain from the escutcheon of your country.

I beg your pardon, gentlemen, for having detained you thus long with these prefatory remarks. To you I know that words of admonition are unnecessary. You fully understand and appreciate, I have no doubt, all the issues submitted to you for your decision. The scene before us is as solemn as the grave. You behold in the person of the prisoner at the bar a dying man. He has forfeited his life to society by a deed of blood and horror almost unprecedented in the annals of ancient or of modern history. The voice of reason and of public justice alike demand this satisfaction to an outraged and violated law. We must be cruel only to be kind. We must punish the guilty only to protect the innocent. You have been subjected to a searching examination by one of the honorable judges who presides at this tribunal, and in response to the interrogatories submitted to you, you have sworn to decide this case according to the evidence, appealing to the searcher of all hearts to test the sincerity and integrity of that impressive and solemn adjuration. I was struck with the language and manner of one of your number when the question was put to him. I know him, and have known him long He said, "I will decide this case according to the law and the evidence." These are the very words. And let me say here that it is a matter of mutual congratulation that a jury has been selected agreeable to both parties; the representatives of the wealth, the intelligence, and the commercial and business character of this community; gentlemen against whose character, as has been already intimated, there cannot be a whisper of suspicion. I would trust you with my life and my honor; and I will trust you with the honor of my country.

But

did you not make a mistake? You never read a law book in your life. How then can you decide according to the law? Yet that is your oath. Take care; not for a world would you violate that solemn obligation. How are you to decide according to the law, never having made law your study. The national legislature has wisely provided against that difficulty. A gentleman learned in the law, who has given days and nights, months and years to the investigation of this abstruse and complicated science, distinguished for his morality, as every judge should be-for his responsibilities are equal to those of a minister of the gospel who proclaims the glad tidings of salvation-under the solemn obligation of an official oath, tells you what the law is. You look to him exclusively, for the responsibility rests entirely with him. He enunciates and elucidates the principles of law by which this case is to be tried and decided. A juror who swears to decide according the law, and departs but a hair's breadth from the instructions of the court, and decides according to his own abstract notions of right and wrong-pardon me for saying so, I do it in no offensive sensecommits the awful and Heaven daring crime of perjury. The judge who wil

fully misrepresents the law commits the same crime. The juror who departs from the instruction of the judge-pardon me for repeating, gentlemen-commits the same awful and Heaven-daring crime. If I should wilfully misrepresent the law for the purpose of misleading the judge, I would commit a great sin in the sight of God and my country; but I am liable to err, and it is for the judge to determine the mooted questions between us; your province being simply to ascertain whether the facts which he declares essential to the conviction of the prisoner appear in the evidence. If they do, you will render a verdict responsive to the spirit of those instructions, leaving the consequences to Him who knows the end from the beginning, and orders all things aright. Now, I undertake to show-mark me, for I make the statement fully sensible of all the obligations that attach to my official position-I undertake to show that every fact which this judge will and must say, if he decides according to the law, is essential to the conviction of the prisoner, has been established by evidence, clear, conclusive, crushing, overwhelming. I undertake to show that every link has been forged by as honest licks as the blacksmith forges a chain, to bind the prisoner at the bar to the body of the atrocious crime charged in this indictment. Every privilege has been accorded to the prisoner, which the benignant spirit of our institutions, sanctioned by the wisdom and experience of ages, accords to every party charged with the commission of crime. He has had a jury mutually selected by us, to which there can be no objection. He has been defended by eminent counsel, and with a zeal, eloquence and ability alike creditable to their country and to the honorable profession which they dignify and adorn. We have, then, gentlemen of the jury, every assurance that you will discharge the high and solemn duty which devolves upon you with intelligence, firmness, and fidelity.

Before proceeding to the discussion of the several propositions of law and questions of fact involved in this discussion, although I am aware that I shall be wearying you, I shall be pardoned, I trust, for making a few additional preliminary observations. Do you remember the feelings which inspired your hearts when the telegraphic wires first whispered the glad tidings that the national cause had triumphed over that cruel and causeless attempt at the nation's life; when you realized the fact that peace, sweet, gentle peace, had returned once more to take up its abode in our beloved and bleeding country? Do you remember how your bosoms heaved and swelled with emotions of patriotic pride and pleasure as the booming cannon proclaimed the gratitude of a brave, generous, loyal, and devoted people? Do you remember the prospects, so bright and joyous, so full of life, light, and hope, as the war clouds were seen passing away to the shades of eternal night, and the rainbow of peace appeared to our delighted vision, spanning the whole political horizon? Oh, do you remember the feelings which seemed to possess your very souls as your wife and children bowed with you around the family altar to offer the incense of praise and adoration to the God of our fathers and our God, for his great deliverance? for it has been truly said, that "it was the Lord's doing, and it was marvellous in our eyes."

In that hour of the nation's jubilee, when a song of triumph seemed to 1ise from the great heart of the American people to Heaven, tell me, gentlemen of the jury, did you not feel your heart instinctively turned and warmed towards that great and good man who had been mainly instrumental, in the hands of the Almighty, for the salvation of your country? I do not ask what your feelings for him previously may have been. I know that he was the object of special hatred and malice to the enemies of your country. I know that no words of denunciation and abuse were too opprobrious to be heaped upon his devoted head; but, to indulge a familiar paraphrase, "all his feelings seemed to lean on mercy's side." Hear him give expression to the feelings of his heart, in those

memorable words, so familiar to the public ear, and which ought to be inscribed in letters of gold on the portals of your national Capitol, “With malice towards none, with charity for all, let us with firmness pursue the right, as God gives us to see the right." "This Duncan was so clear in his great office, and bore his faculties so meek, that his virtues seemed to plead like angels, trumpettongued, against the deep damnation of his taking off." He needs no eulogium to embalm his memory in the hearts of his countrymen. There it will remain green and fresh forever and forever. I speak to men who, perhaps, may have differed from him politically. You knew him personally. The name of Abraham Lincoln will be remembered by the world, in the strong and expressive language of another, "while liberty is a blessing, and tyranny a curse." Behold that tall, familiar figure. I know to whom I speak. The time was when it created in your mind a feeling of political hostility, and perhaps of personal enmity, for you considered him the representative of a hostile party; but you gradually learned to respect, then to honor, and at last to love the kind, gentle, and generous soul it represented. Tell me, did you ever have any transactions with him? Was he not kind, gentle, patient, forbearing. and charitable? It was a standing order, if I have been correctly informed, that wherever he was, or however employed, he was always to be seen where a question of life or death was concerned. However this may be, he thinks proper to exercise the privilege of the humblest citizen in the community, in company with his own wife. And, Almighty God! has it come to this, that an American citizen cannot feel safe while he walks, or sits, or sleeps by the side of his own wife? In the sacred presence of woman-and be it said to our eternal credit, that no nation is more courteous and more honorable in their treatment of the fairer sex than the American people-in her company, with a few invited friends, for the purpose of getting a little recreation from his labors, he goes to a place of public entertainment, in the very midst of the national metropolis, and almost within sight of the presidential mansion. He is unconscious of the slightest design upon his life. What and whom has he to fear? He is received with acclamations by his assembled countrymen, in the language of the witness, Major Rathbone, with "vociferous cheers." He is escorted to a private box specially prepared for him, decorated and adorned with the American flag, the emblem alike of freedom and protection. There he is. The American Union has survived the shock of contending armies, and "the untold dangers of treason, rebellion, and privy conspiracy"-borrowed words, and familiar in the history of the church. There he stands upon the very summit of human prosperity, dignity, grandeur, and glory. His enemies are at his mercy and under his feet. But, mark you, no word of bitterness escapes his lips.

Tell me, if you can, of an unkind, ungenerous, or uncharitable sentiment he has ever expressed. If I have been correctly informed, he remembers that the hour of victory was the hour of magnanimity. At that time his heart was overflowing with sympathy and love, not only for those misguided men who rushed madly into the rebellion in obedience to the orders of their commanders, whom they did not understand, regardless because unconscious of their great crime and its consequences; but even for those cruel and bloody traitors who raised their parricidal arms against the government which had never harmed, but which had ever sheltered and protected them. Of him I might say, as was said of another distinguished public character, under somewhat similar circumstances, "O, what an elevation! but alas, alas, what a fall!" Our joy is suddenly turned into deepest sorrow. The emblem of freedom which recently floated so proudly over land and sea is draped with the emblems of mourning, and a nation in tears follow their beloved and honored chief to a patriot's and a martyr's grave. Gentlemen of the jury, shall I review the horrid details of this cruel and bloody tragedy? It is daguerreotyped upon your minds and memories. Perhaps even now, like some horrible panorama, it

is passing before your imaginations. Like Sergeant Dye, it may have disturbed your thoughts by day, and your dreams by night. See him, seated as I have already described. At that very hour the assassin is stealing upon him, and the instrument of death is aimed at that noble head which had guided the ship of state through the storm of civil war to the haven of permanent and honorable peace. As I have heard a somewhat similar scene described, "you see the flash, you hear the report of a single pistol, and the disembodied, immortal spirit of Abraham Lincoln stands before the Judge of all the earth." We can follow him no more, gentlemen of the jury, it is said, with our mortal vision. But may we not, without impiety, indulge the hope that the eye of faith can follow the great patriot and philanthropist to the bosom of the blessed Saviour? For his mission upon earth was a mission of mercy. He left the realms of glory in part to burst the bondsman's chains and to set the captive free. Gentlemen of the jury, where are the men and the woman who committed this awful and Heaven-daring crime? I do not ask who fired the fatal shot; I do not ask who conceived; I do not ask who matured; but where are the men and the woman, however remotely connected with this crime, as a witness has strongly said, "against society and against civilization?" The Satan of this infernal conspiracy has gone to hell, there to atone in penal fires forever and forever for his horrid crime. But the Beelzebub still lives and moves upon the face of this green earth, as the dramatist says, "to mock the name of man." In John H. Surratt, the prisoner at the bar, you behold the Beelzebub of this infernal conspiracy. Second he may be in rank and power, but none the less in hatred, malice, and revenge, and to those red and bloody demons lurking in every wicked, base, depraved heart, and prompting to the commission of those crimes which shock and outrage human nature. He was false to his country, while professing allegiance to its laws and institutions, and false to his government while enjoying its favor and protection. Not one of these misguided young men, who, in the honest belief that they were doing God's service, armed themselves like gallant soldiers to fight in what they believed to be a righteous cause. False to the mother who bore him, and whom he deserted in the hour of danger and of distress. The gallows upon which she expired should have been his throne. There he might have palliated or irradiated, with some show of gallantry and parental affection, the horrid crime he had committed. But false to every sentiment of truth, of honor, and of patriotism, he seeks to save his wretched life in the plains of Italy, or the sands of Egypt. But the avenger of God pursues and overtakes him. This doubly injured and insulted government stretches its long and strong arm across the ocean which rolled between him and the home he had dishonored, and he is here to-day before an honest jury of his country to pay the demands of an outraged and a violated law. I arraign him as the murderer and the assassin of Abraham Lincoln; for when John Wilkes Booth fired the fatal shot, where were the other conspirators, including the prisoner at the bar? It matters not where they were. However, a good deal has been said about that, and this question will be hereafter more fully discussed. Every man was at his place performing his part toward the execution of their common bloody purpose. This conspiracy may have been an infant at first, and gradually assumed the proportions of a giant, stretching its long and strong arms from the lakes to the Gulf, and from ocean to ocean. One may have been standing, as I have heard it strongly expressed, in the Arctic circle, another in the prairies of the west, and another in the ever-glades of Florida. In legal contemplation it was one great artificial person animated by the same spirit, and moving towards the same end. Every conspirator was a member. The act of one was the act of all. If this be so, as I shall hereafter discuss, by the law of God and of nations, every man connected with it is equally guilty of this horrid crime, which filled the great heart of Christendom with horror.

Now, permit me, gentlemen of the jury, to proceed more in detail to the argu