CHAPTER XVI.

FATHER WALTER.

From the time of the trial of the conspirators by a military commission, and of the execution of Mrs. Surratt by the order of President Johnson, Father Walter, a secular priest of Washington City, has made himself conspicuous by his efforts to pervert public opinion on the result of the trial of the conspirators by the Commission. Whilst rebel lawyers, editors, and politicians have boldly assailed the lawfulness of the Commission, and have denounced it as an unconstitutional tribunal, and have characterized the trial as a "Star Chamber" trial, as a contrivance for taking human life under a mockery of a judicial procedure, but with no purpose of securing the ends of justice, Father Walter and other priests whose sympathies were with the Southern Confederacy have earnestly seconded their efforts by the invention and circulation of cunningly devised falsehoods. Father Walter has every now and then bobbed up with the assertion of Mrs. Surratt's entire innocence. Knowing that not one in a thousand of our people has ever read the testimony on which she was convicted, he feels that he can boldly assert that "there was not evidence enough against her to hang a cat." He has also become bold enough to state as facts what the evidence shows to be falsehoods. As an example of this: in an article in the "Catholic Review" he asserts in regard to Mrs. Surratt's trip to Surrattsville on the afternoon of the day of the assassination that she had ordered her carriage for the trip, which was purely on private business, on the forenoon of that day, and before it was known that the President would go to the theatre. Why, if this was true, was it not proven in her defense? There was no such testimony produced. The testimony on this point against her was that shortly after two o'clock on that afternoon she went up stairs to Wiechmann's room, tapped at the door, and when it was opened she said to Mr. Wiechmann, "I have just received a letter from Mr. Calvert that makes it necessary for me to go to Surrattsville to-day and see Mr. Nothey. Would you be so good as to get a conveyance and drive me down?" Upon Wiechmann's consenting to do so, she handed him a ten dollar bill with which to procure a conveyance. Surely there is no evidence here that a carriage had been ordered already, as Wiechmann was left free to procure a conveyance where he might see fit.

Wiechmann went down stairs, and as he opened the front door he saw John Wilkes Booth, who was in the act, as it were, of pulling the front door bell. Booth entered the house.

When young Wiechmann returned, after having procured the buggy, he went up to his own room after some necessary articles of clothing, and as he again descended the stairs and passed by the parlor door he observed that Booth was in the parlor conversing with Mrs. Surratt. In a little while Booth came down to the front door steps, and waved his hand in token of adieu to Wiechmann, who was standing at the curb.

When Mrs. Surratt came and was in the act of getting into the buggy, she remembered that she had forgotten something, and said, "Wait a moment, until I go and get those things of Mr. Booth's." She returned from the parlor with a package which was done up in brown paper, the contents of which the witness did not see, but which was afterwards shown to have been the field-glass which Booth carried with him in his flight. This glass Booth sent to Lloyd by Mrs. Surratt, with a message to have it, with the two carbines and two bottles of whiskey, where they would be handy, as they would be called for that night. Lloyd swore that this was the message delivered to him by Mrs. Surratt in the private interview she sought with him in his back yard on his return home that evening, and that in accordance with these instructions he delivered them to Booth and Herold about midnight that night.[26] Now let us see about the private business on which she professed to be going, and on which she claimed on her trial that she went. The letter from Mr. Calvert was a demand for money that she owed him, and was written at Bladensburg on the 12th of April. On the afternoon of the 14th she presented herself to Wiechmann and claimed that she had just received it. It would seem very strange that it took this letter two days to reach her at a distance of only six miles. She claimed that she must go and see Mr. Nothey, who owed her, and get money from him to pay her debt to Mr. Calvert. Mr. Nothey lived five miles below Surrattsville, and as she claimed that she had just received Mr. Calvert's letter it was impossible that she could have made any arrangement with Nothey to meet her at Surrattsville that day. She did not meet him there, neither did she go to his house to see him. When she arrived at Surrattsville she took Wiechmann into the parlor at the hotel and asked him to write a letter for her to Mr. Nothey, which he did at her dictation; and this she sent to Mr. Nothey by a Mr. Bennett Gwinn, a neighbor of his, who happened to be passing down.

Now, in view of all these facts, can any one see how her private business was in any way subserved by her trip to Surrattsville on that afternoon? She could as easily have written to Mr. Nothey from Washington as from Surrattsville. A postage stamp, a sheet of paper and an envelope would have saved her six dollars, the cost of her trip, and would have served her business just as well. The truth is that this talk of going on private business of her own was all a fabrication, first to deceive Mr. Wiechmann as to the object of her trip, and then to be used, should it become necessary, in her defense. We have already seen what her real business was.

Father Walter falsifies again in the article referred to in saying that she did not see Lloyd on that afternoon, but delivered the things to his sister-in-law, Mrs. Offutt.[27] Both Lloyd and his sister-in-law testified to her interview with him in his back yard, and Lloyd testified as to what passed between them on that occasion.

It would seem that Father Walter is going on the theory that we have gotten so far past the time, and that the testimony has been so far forgotten that he can foist upon the public any statement that he may please to fabricate. We would kindly remind the reverend Father that no ultimate gain can be derived from an effort to suppress the truth. Neither can it be obliterated by our prejudices. We may misconstrue facts, but we cannot wipe them out by a mere stroke of the pen; and a fact once made can never be recalled. But I am not yet done with this Father. He prefaces his article in the "Review" with the statement that he heard Mrs. Surratt's last confession, and that whilst his priestly vows do not permit him to reveal the secrets of the confessional, yet from knowledge in his possession he is prepared to assert her entire innocence of this most atrocious crime. He means that we shall understand that were he at liberty to give her last confession to the world he could say that she then and there asserted her entire innocence.

Will Father Walter deny that under the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church he had an absolute right, with her consent, to make her confession public on this point? Nay more, could not Mrs. Surratt have compelled him to do so in vindication of her own good name, and of the honor of the church of which she was a member? And having this consent, was it not his most solemn duty to proclaim her confessed innocence in every public way, through the press, and even from the very steps of the gallows?

Why was not that confession made public? Why was it not reduced to writing and signed with her own hand? Why has it not in its entirety been given to the world? Why must the public wait twenty-seven years, and instead of having the full confession be required to content itself, in so great a case, with a mere assertion from the reverend Father, based on his alleged knowledge? Aye, just there's the rub!

That confession of Mrs. Surratt's would have proved very interesting reading, and might have let in a flood of light on some places that are now very dark; it would, indeed, have shown how far Mrs. Surratt was involved in the abduction and assassination plots, and to what degree she was the willing or unwilling tool of her son, and of John Wilkes Booth. That confession would have shown the object of Booth's visit to her on the very day and eve of the murder. It would have explained what she had in her mind when she carried Booth's field-glass into the country, and told Lloyd to have the "shooting-irons" and two bottles of whiskey ready on that fateful night of the 14th of April. And if she did not explain satisfactorily every item of testimony which bore so heavily against her, then her last confession was worth nothing.

Father Walter never had at any time Mrs. Surratt's consent to make her confession public, and he dare not do so now after twenty-seven years have elapsed since he shrove his unfortunate penitent.

Why, we repeat, did not Father Walter do this? He was interesting himself very much in her behalf in trying to get her a reprieve; why did he not use this as an argument with the President in her behalf that in her final confession she asserted her innocence? Why did he wait until the sentence had been confirmed by the President and a full cabinet without a dissenting voice, and then had been carried into execution, before he put into circulation the story of her confessed innocence? And why does he refer to his priestly vows as his excuse for this conduct, when he knows full well that having gained Mrs. Surratt's consent to make her confession public as an entirety, these vows imposed upon him no such restrictions? In vindication of the Commission, and also of the court of review,--the President and his cabinet,--we submit that the evidence shows her to have been guilty, no matter what she might have said in her final confession.

Perhaps she had been led to believe that President Lincoln was an execrable tyrant, and that his death was no more than that of the "meanest nigger in the army." Her remarks to her daughter the night her house was searched indicate the views she took of the subject. "Anna, come what will, I am resigned. I think that Booth was only an instrument in the hands of the Almighty to punish this wicked and licentious people."[28] To one who could have taken this view of the case, Booth's act could not have been regarded as a crime; and she who rendered him all the aid she could would feel no guilt. They were only co-operating with the Almighty in the execution of his vengeance. On the trial of John H. Surratt, Mr. Merrick brought Father Walter on to the stand and asked him if he had heard the last confession of Mrs. Surratt, to which the Father answered, "I did. I gave her communion on Friday and prepared her for death."

Mr. Merrick in his argument before the jury said: "I asked him 'Did she tell you as she was marching to the scaffold that she was an innocent woman?' I told him not to answer that question before I desired him to. He nodded his head, but did not answer that question, because he had no right, as the other side objected." Now what was the object of all this? Mr. Merrick brought the Father on to the stand and asked him a question that had not the slightest relevancy to any issue before that jury. He knew, of course, that the prosecution would object, and that the question could not be answered. It was a direct question, and could have been answered by, "She did" or "She did not." Why does not the Father answer at once? He had been cautioned not to do so until desired, and so he waits for the prosecution to object and estop him from answering the question. Mr. Merrick, however, in his argument assumes that the Father stood ready to say that, "She solemnly declared her entire innocence to me in her last confession," and throws the responsibility on the other side for not getting this answer. The argument was this: "You see that Father Walter stood ready to testify to this fact, but the prosecution objected, and so he could not do it."

Now, what has become of the Father's priestly vows behind which he has always been hiding? Or was all this a mere piece of acting, to give the counsel a point from which to denounce the government, the Commission, and all who were concerned in visiting justice upon the assassins?

We believe it to be true that the laws of his church did not forbid him to make public, with her consent or command, her last confession on this point, and that the Father in making the statements he does at this late day is simply practicing sleight-of-hand upon the public. It is a very strange circumstance, too, that whilst Payne, Arnold, O'Laughlin, Atzerodt, and even John H. Surratt admitted their connection with one or the other of the conspiracy plots, Mrs. Surratt has not left one word or line after her to explain away the incriminating evidence brought against her. The reason is plain; she could not have explained anything without involving herself and her son, and giving away the whole case.

For twenty-six years Father Walter and his rebel co-adjutors have kept a paragraph going the rounds of the papers, stating as a fact that all the members of the Commission but one are dead, and that they died miserable deaths, which marked them as the subjects of heaven's vengeance, and that some of them perished from the violence of their own hands, being crazed with remorse.

The truth is that at this writing, April, 1892, all of the members of the Commission are alive except General Hunter and General Ekin. General Hunter lived to over four score years, and General Ekin to seventy-three. The present writer is nearly seventy-nine and is still able to vindicate the truth in the interest of a true history of his period. Is it not high time that the American people should be fully informed as to this most important episode in their history, in order that they may not be misled by men who were not the friends, but the enemies, of our government in its struggle for its preservation and perpetuation?