Eckert and Powell

[BettyO]

We know that Eckert was more or less instructed by Edwin M. Stanton to interrogate Lew Powell. Seemingly at first, it was a hard "tussle" with Eckert attempting to pull information from the reticent youth. According to Bates' Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, Eckert gained Powell's confidence after he offered the boy a piece of chewing tobacco and performed other "little kindnesses" for him. One wonders how much of Bates' information is gospel....particularly since Eckert, although required by Stanton to write a report on Powell's confessions, only consigned the information, if any, to various incomplete memorandums which he scattered about. Eckert also testified at the Surratt trial in 1867 and again at the Impeachment trial in 1869.

On the morning of the executions, Powell gave Eckert his pen knife. I was wondering if any of Powell's other person effects wound up in Eckert's hands....what do you think? Supposedly Mary Surratt's bonnet now in a small museum in Georgia, was found "walled up" in Eckert's spacious house. I have heard that Eckert died with Alzheimer's disease. Could he have hidden other "souvenirs" of the conspiracy trial within the walls of his home?