Who's good at tracking obscure details?

[Susan Higginbotham]

I don't know about the beggar part, but a blind man did testify at the trial, although not against Mary in particular. From Poore's transcript:

SAMUEL P. JONES (blind),

a witness called for the prosecution, being duly sworn, testified as follows:—

By the JUDGE ADVOCATE:

Q. Have you resided in Richmond at any time during the war?
A. I have.
Q. State any conversations you may have heard there, to which officers of the Rebel Government were parties, in regard to the contemplated assassination of the President of the United States.
A. The nearest I know any thing to that point among the officers there is their common conversation in camp, as I would go about amongst them; and their conversations would be of this nature: That all suspicious persons, or those kind of people they were not certain were of their way of thinking, they would hush up as soon as they came near them. But, after I found out what I could learn in reference to these things, they were desperately anxious that any such as this should be accomplished.
Q. Will you state any particular occasion?
A. In a general way, I have heard sums offered, to be paid with a Confederate sum, for any person or persons to go North and assassinate the President.

[43]

Q. Do you remember any occasion when such offers were made, or any amount named, and by what kind of officers?
A. At this moment, I cannot tell you the particular names of shoulder-straps, &c.
Q. Do you remember any occasion,—some dinner occasion?
A. I can tell you this. I heard a citizen make the remark once, that he would give from his private purse $10,000, in addition to the Confederate amount, to have the President assassinated,—to bring him to Richmond, dead or alive, for proof.
Q. What was meant by that phrase, “In addition to the Confederate amount”?
A. I know nothing about that, any more than the way they would express it. I should judge, from drawing an inference, that there was any amount offered by the Government, in that trashy paper, to assassinate any officials that were hindering their cause; and even I have heard it down as low as a private or citizen. For instance, if it is not digressing from the purpose, I know of a Ken-tuckian, but cannot tell you the name now, that was putting up at the Exchange Hotel, or otherwise Ballard House (they belong to the same property, and are connected by a bridge over Franklin Street). He was arrested under suspicion of being a spy. I can tell you the name now: his name was Webster, if I remember rightly. I always supposed, from what I understood, that he came down to buy goods; but they took him as a spy, and hung him. Whether it was in reference to this assassination, I cannot say.
Q. I understood you to say that it was a subject of general conversation among the rebel officers?
A. It was. The rebel officers, as they would be sitting around their tent-doors, would be conversing on such a subject a great deal. They would be saying they would like to see his head brought there, dead or alive, and they should think it could be done; and I have heard such things stated as that they had certain persons undertaking it.

I can poke around for the Edward Fitzgerald thing if I have the citation.