Thomas
Harris
was born in Virginia in 1817. A doctor before the American
Civil War, he joined the Union Army and soon reached the rank
of lieutenant colonel. He was appointed commander of the 3rd Independent
Division, Virginia in March, 1864. He was promoted to the rank of
major general after taking part in the Petersburg assault.
When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated
in April, 1865, Holt joined Edwin M. Stanton,
Secretary of War and James Speed, the
Attorney General, in calling for the conspirators to be tried by the
military commission. The new president, Andrew
Johnson, agreed and ordered the formation of a nine-man military
commission. This included Harris, David
Hunter, Robert Foster, August
Kautz,, Lewis Wallace and Albion
Howe. The Attorney General, James Speed,
selected Joseph Holt and John
Bingham as the government's chief prosecutors.
Mary Surratt, Lewis Paine, George
Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel
Mudd, Michael O'Laughlin, Edman
Spangler and Samuel Arnold were
all charged with conspiring to murder Lincoln. During the trial the
chief prosecutor, Joseph Holt, attempted
to persuade the military commission that Jefferson
Davis and the Confederate government had been involved in conspiracy.
Holt attempted to obscure the fact that there were two plots: the
first to kidnap and the second to assassinate. It was important for
the prosecution not to reveal the existence of a diary taken from
the body of John Wilkes Booth. The diary
made it clear that the assassination plan dated from 14th April. The
defence surprisingly did not call for Booth's diary to be produced
in court.
On 29th June, 1865 Mary Surratt, Lewis
Paine, George Atzerodt, David
Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael
O'Laughlin, Edman Spangler and
Samuel Arnold were found guilty of being
involved in the conspiracy to murder Abraham
Lincoln. Surratt, Paine, Atzerodt and Herold were hanged at Washington
Penitentiary on 7th July, 1865.
(1)
General
Thomas
Harris, letter to the
The New York Sun (4th August, 1901)
It
must be remembered that on the night of 17th April (1865) Payne returned
to her house, with pick-axe on the shoulder and cap made from his
shirt sleeve on his head.
The very act of this red-handed murderer fleeing to her home at such
a time, was in itself, the strongest and most damning evidence against
her.
Take away these two items of evidence - the terrible story of the
shooting irons and Payne's return, wipe them out, remove them for
the record, and Mr. Weichmann's evidence as to what he saw and heard
in Mrs. Surratt's house falls harmlessly to the ground.
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