Execution Stereoviews

[KateH.]

Thank you.

It's a shame that Atzerodt (or someone else) didn't speak up. But you make a good point. Would he have been believed? Plus, there might have been the fear of retribution since he was working for the CSA and would have known enough details of the plot to show he was involved somehow. But did he deserve to hang for keeping quiet? No. No one hanged Eugene Smith in 1894 when he didn't call H.H Holmes a bluff for claiming to be a mere "acquaintance" to the man who had worked beside him for five years. (A mistake which allowed three more victims to die). Booth got the "eye for an eye" punishment and that should have been the end of the deaths. I guess the Union forgot how Lincoln wanted to forgive southerners, too concerned with making bloody examples out of people who committed crimes that merited jail time but not suffocation in the hangman's noose.