I don't know how the folk came by these descriptions at the time other than what they were reading in the papers of course. A surprising assessment of Herold's sentence since Stanton had pretty much issued the edict that anyone "aiding and abetting the assassins" would hang....
I love these eye witness accounts, however! Great primary source documents....
"The Past is a foreign country...they do things differently there" - L. P. Hartley