Arrest of Atzerodt

[jonathan]

(08-20-2012 04:28 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  In the statement Doster read to the court, Atzerodt said Booth told him that he would hang anyway, even if he didn't kill Johnson. Booth was right.

If Booth actually did say this to Atzerodt, I can't help but wonder if George was aware that it didn't have to be true. As I understand it, had he left the meeting and immediately gone to the authorities and warned them, he could have walked free, or at the very least gotten a much lighter sentence. But I tend to doubt that Atzerodt knew the finer points of that particular law, and instead just accepted Booth's word. For that matter, I guess it's unlikely that Booth knew the finer points of that law either. Of course, this assumes that Atzerodt was telling the truth about that meeting, which I believe is questionable to say the least. It's not very hard to imagine a scenario where the meeting occurs the way George says, then he leaves and tells the authorities what is happening, the attacks are thwarted, and Atzerodt is hailed as a hero. He could have gone down in history as a shining example of recognizing your mistakes before it's too late.

To me, it seems a natural follow up question would concern how much Atzerodt really cared if Lincoln, Johnson, and Seward lived or died. I believe he was under the impression that he was going to benefit financially from the plot, and I have to assume that money was what he cared about above all. If that was the case, it seems even more tragic for George that he apparently didn't know he could still avoid the noose, even at such a late hour. If we believe his account of that last meeting, his attitude was, "I'm not killing anybody. Those guys can do what they want, but I'm not killing anybody.". If this was the case, Atzerodt lost out on every point…..He didn't really care if the targets were attacked or not, he didn't get paid, and he didn't know enough about the law to avoid the noose! That's just tragic.