This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ... L'envoy And thus the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges The Great Conspiracy postulated by the military commission, it is now conceded, never had an existence other than imaginary, and every person found guilty of being a party to it stands acquitted by public opinion--save the four who perished on the scaffold. Jefferson Davis and the Confederate agents were not tried at all. Davis outlived the charge, and statues have been erected to his memory around the base of which soldiers of the Union and soldiers of the Confederacy mingled their applause. When Thompson died, the flag of the United States was lowered at halfmast over the Department of the Interior in honor of him who once had been its head. Clay anticipated in his lifetime the vindication published by his widow after his death. Surratt still lives in the full enjoyment of his rights as a citizen. The convicts who were sent to the Dry Tortugas were pardoned by President Johnson before the expiration of his term, except the one who died in the meantime; and their pardon, as well as the discharge of Surratt, passed without a ripple upon the surface of human affairs, although, according to the evidence, they were parties to a plot which the prosecuting officers insisted was but a preparatory step to the assassination. It remains to pass judgment upon the woman whose life a majority of the commission was inclined to spare and who, if her life had been spared, might have been freed with her fellow-prisoners and restored to her children. The guilt of her companions in death was virtually undisputed. Her own was never more than a matter of conjecture; resting wholly on the testimony of two witnesses swearing against her in peril of their lives and whose evidence, even if credited, ..