This text is part of:
[316]
he exclaimed: “Is the man mad?
Is he a fool?”
and declined any communication with him.
Again. See page 4, speaking of John H. Surratt.
Q.--“You say you saw him in Montreal in April, last?”
A.--“Yes, sir.”
Q.--“About what time in April was it?”
A.--“It was within a week before the President's assassination.
I think about the 6th and 7th of April--somewhere in that vicinity.”
Q.--“You say you saw him in Thompson's room?”
A.--“I saw him in Mr. Thompson's room.”
Q.--“State whether he gave any communication to Thompson in your presence in his room, and what that communication was.”
A.--“There was a conversation there at that time, from which it appeared that Mr. Surratt had brought dispatches from Richmond to Mr. Thompson.
These dispatches were the subject of the consultation.”
Q.--“From whom in Richmond were the dispatches brought?”
A.--“From Mr. Benjamin, and I think there was also a letter in cipher from Mr. Davis.
I am not so positive as to the cipher, but there was a letter from him, whether in cipher or not.”
Q.--“Do you mean Judah P. Benjamin, Secretary of State of the so-called Confederacy?”
A.--“Yes, sir.”
Q.--“You say the dispatches were the subject of conversation.
What did they say was the substance of the dispatches, or what did they purport to be?”
A.--“I had some conversation with Mr. Thompson previously on the subject of a plot to assassinate Mr. Lincoln, * * * and I had been invited to participate in that enterprise.”
(This is the alleged conversation fully described above and disproved.)
Q.--“By whom had you been so invited to participate in that enterprise?”
A.--“By Mr. Thompson, and on this occasion he laid his hand on the papers or dispatches there, and said this makes this thing all right, referring to the assent of the rebel authorities.”
Q.--“Did they speak of the persons that the rebel authorities had consented might be the victims of this plot?”
A.--“Yes, sir; Mr Lincoln, Mr. Johnson, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of State, and Judge Chase.”
Q.--“Did they say anything about any of the Generals?”
A.--“And Grant.”
Q.--“I am not sure whether you have stated precisely.
If you have not done it, I wish you would now, who were present at this conversation which you had with Jacob Thompson early in April, when he laid ”
Richmond, VA. 1881.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.