Military Response Time To Assassination

[L Verge]

I'm going with John on this one. I'm reminded of Mike Kauffman stating, when he used to narrate the Surratt Booth Tours - and as the bus chugged up Good Hope Road (then Harrison Street) -- that there were two forts at the top of Good Hope Hill and that Booth and Herold rode past them as the first alert was being sent as to what had happened. I believe also that some of the communication lines had been disassembled in Southern Maryland by this time (at least the one at Chapel Point), so that would hamper military communications.

Search teams would be further hindered by having to go into Southern Maryland and the Northern Neck of Virginia where the inhabitants had learned a long time ago to "just know nothing." They were getting very little cooperation there. John Lloyd even told the troops when they arrived in Surrattsville the next morning that the fugitives had taken off in a different direction than was correct. In a day when things moved a lot slower, the pursuers were on the right trail and the heels of Booth within twelve hours. The pair's convenient stop-over at Dr. Mudd's bought them some time because the good doctor's house was pretty well off the beaten path.

Louis Weichmann and Mr. Holohan were offering information about goings-on at the Surratt boardinghouse and where John-John might be. I don't have a book in front of me, but I believe that they were dispatched to Canada with government agents in pretty quick order.

Finally, as to the attorneys: The children of Mary Surratt were still dickering with Frederick Aiken and John Clampitt over reducing the fees months after their mother's execution. The pair finally agreed to lower the amount, but not eliminate it entirely - so they got paid.
There was a similar situation with Thomas Ewing and Dr. Mudd. There is a letter somewhere showing that Ewing was asking financial advice from his father regarding the fees charged to the Mudds. I also believe that Herold's family could afford a lawyer. His mother might have been a widow, but her husband had left her fairly well off with substantial pieces of real estate to dicker with.