Porter & Comstock

[STS Lincolnite]

(02-02-2016 03:52 AM)JosephARose Wrote:  In his diary, Comstock had written on May 8th: "Wish I could get off" the commission, and he objected to its being military, not civil, and secret. The next day, he described the "horrid sight" of the bound prisoners.

Porter, in Campaigning with Grant, page 510, wrote: "I was appointed a member of the court which was to try the prisoners. The defense, however, raised the objection that as I was a member of General Grant's military family, and as it was claimed that he was one of the high officials who was an intended victim of the assassins, I was disqualified from sitting in judgment upon them. The court very properly sustained the objection, and I was relieved, and another officer was substituted."

Joe, welcome. I was just sitting down to post the exact same quote from Porter (see above) when I read your post.

Porter goes on to relate that he did sit one day at the trial and describes the general condition of the prisoners. At no point did he mention that he took issue with their treatment or with the fact that the proceedings were closed.

If Porter is correct, it seems that there was an objection by the defense to the placement of Comstock and Porter (certainly Porter from his own account) on the grounds of the relationship with Grant (a claimed target of the plot) – the two in question being members of Grant's staff. That objection was upheld. Now, certainly the decision to uphold the objection would have been strongly influenced by the idea that a commissioner or commissioners had some disagreement with the treatment of the prisoners and the format of the trial (Comstock certainly did as alluded to in the quote above). Maybe the objection would not have been upheld if this was not the case – its hard to say for sure in retrospect. But as a matter of procedure (the nature of the objection), it seems they were officially relieved due to being on Grant’s staff and the potential for bias therein. This potential bias sort of gave Holt, Stanton, etc. a reasonable and appropriate excuse for relieving commissioners that may not have been in agreement with the Government’s prosecution procedures from the start.

All that is sort of splitting hairs, but is nonetheless an interesting and important distinction to me.

I can't help but feel that Marvel has unduly piled on Stanton in this particular instance with the statement: "Stanton replaced the uncooperative Comstock and Porter the following day." As I stated above, there appears to have been a defense objection to the presence of Comstock and Porter anyway which certainly warranted their removal (as Porter stated). The "secrecy" issue became moot when the trial was opened up.

In fact Stanton made comment about this to Gideon Welles as related in Welles' diary entry for May 12, 1865: "I inquired of the Secretary of War if there is any foundation for the assertion that the trial of the assassins is to be held in secret. He says it will not be secret, although the doors will not be open to the whole public immediately. Full and minute reports of all the testimony and proceedings will be taken and in due time published; and trusty and reliable persons, in limited numbers, will have permission to attend. This will relieve the proceeding of some of its objectionable features." Recalling John's words in post #6 above, "...Comstock went to the President with his complaints about the closed proceedings two days after testimony was first taken (i.e. the 14th). The following day, the proceedings were open to the public. Recall that Comstock originally registered his objections on the 8th." If I read John's statement correctly, Comstock went to the President on May 14th. Welles' diary indicates Stanton made his comments to Welles prior to that. A decision to have an opened up trial (after an initial period of closure) had already been made by May 12th, and maybe before. The 12th was merely when Stanton articulated it to Welles.

So the either plan had been to eventually open up the trial all along (I don't know if that is likely) or the concerns/opinions of Comstock and others regarding a closed trial were in fact heard, considered, and a change implemented with reasonable speed.