From The Pursuit & Arrest of John H. Surratt
© 2000 ProofmarkPreface
A popular president of the United States, elected in '60, is shot in the head and killed because of an unpopular civil war; he is succeeded by a vice president named Johnson. The thrice-named Southern assassin, connected with the intelligence service of a foreign power, is captured but, before he can be brought to justice, is shot to death himself. At least one other man, believed to be part of a larger conspiracy, is thought to have escaped the net. For those of us who lived through it, terrible memories of a tragic time. Yet, for all its similarities, this is not a story about the assassination of Kennedy, but of Lincoln.
If it had been written as fiction, no one would believe it; the odd twists of fate in John H. Surratt's escape, capture, subsequent escape, and final recapture are too contrived for even the most gullible of readers. But the events of his sixteen months on the run, as implausible as the plot of a bad thriller, actually happened.
The letters, telegrams, and despatches that follow evoke an era hard for those of us running on internet time to understand. How frustrating it must have been for the Secretary of State and his diplomats in the field, the Secretary of War, or the Attorney General of the United States, to communicate so slowly to each other the details of this quickly changing situation. Long before the invention of computers, satellites, fax machines, television, radio, or even the telephone, they were forced to use unreliable and insecure telegraph systems. When those failed, their only recourse were letters, sent by ship, which might scarcely arrive before the subject of their own words did.
Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, Jefferson Davis, the Stantons both father and son, Henry Beaumont de Saint Marie, and even the Pope, all have a part in this tale. From his mysterious and still controversial role in the death of the president to his ignominious delivery nearly two years, nine countries, and over ten thousand miles later&emdash; into the custody of the United States Marshal, after being buried for more than a century and a quarter in the dusty records of Congress, here at last is the saga of the pursuit and arrest of John H. Surratt.
Mark Wilson Seymour, editor
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