The life, crime, and capture of John Wilkes Booth,: with a full sketch of the conspiracy of which he was the leader, and the pursuit, trial and execution of his accomplices./ By George Alfred Townsend.

. IA:e BxectoM.
The commission has collectively an imposing appearance: the facee of
Judge Holt is swarthy; he questions with slow utterance, holding the
witness in his cold, measuring eye. Hunter, who sits at the oposite end
of the table, shuts his eyes now and then, either to sleep or think, or both,
and the other generals take a note or two, and watch for occasions to di
tinguish themselves.
Excepting Judge Holt, the court has shown as little ability as could be
expected from soldiers, placed in unenviable publicity, and upon a duty
for which they are disqualified, both by education and acumen. Witness
the lack of dignity in Hunter, who opened the court by a coarse allusion
to "humbug chivalry;" of Lew. Wallace, whose heat and intolerance were
appropriately urged in, the most exceptional English; of Howe, hose
tirade against the rebel General Johnson was feeble as it was ungenerous!
This court was needed to show us at least the petty tyranny of martial
law and the pettiness of martial jurists. Tlie counsel for the.defene have
just enough show to make the unfairness of the trial partake of hypocrisy,
and the. wideness of the subjects discussed makes one imagine that the
object of the commission is to write a cyclopedia, and not to hang or ac
quit six or eight miserable wretches.
' LETTTER IX.
THE EX 0UIONS.
WASHINGTON,'Friday, July 7tL
Thi trial is over; four of the conspirators have paid with their lives
t a penalty of the Great Conspiracy; the rest go to the jail, and with one
eoeeption for the remainder of their lives.
Whatever our individual theories may be, the great crime is ended, and
ths is the crowning scene:
it was a long and dusty avenue, along which rambled soldiers in bluish
ly white coats, cattle with their tongues out, straying from the herd, and a
.few negroes making for their cabins, which dotted the fiery and vacant lots
of tue suburbs. At the foot of this avenue, where a lukewarm river holds
betweeii its dividing arms a dreary edifice of brick, the way was filled with
collected cabs, and elbowing people, abutting against a circle of sentinels
who kept the arsenal gate. The low, flat, dust-white fields to the far left
were also lined with patrols and soldiers lying on the ground in squads beside their stacked muskets.. Within these a second blue and monotonous
line extended. The drive from the arsenal gate to the arsenal's high and
steel-spiked wall was beset by companies of exacting sabremen, and all
the river bank to the right was edged with blue and bayonets. This exhibition of wiar was the prelude to a'very ghastly but very popular episodean execution. Three men and a woman were to be led out in shackles and
hung to a beam. They had conspired to take life; they had thrilled the
world with the partial consummation of-their plot; they were to reach the
last eminence of assassins, on this parched and oppressive noon, by
swinging in pinioned arms and muffled faces in the presence of a thousand
people.
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