Why was Booth admitted into the presidential box?

[RJNorton]

(04-29-2015 09:13 AM)loetar44 Wrote:  To illustrate that the execution of Mary Surratt was wrong and an injustice that can never be rectified. Guilty or innocent, she was a civilian tried in a military tribunal, so her trial was illegal.

Hi Kees. I know a lot of experts agree with you, but I believe others (such as Dr. Steers) do not. One place to read Dr. Steers' opinion is in Chapter 10 of His Name Is Still Mudd. In 1865 Attorney General James Speed wrote an opinion on the use of a military tribunal in this particular case (mentioned in Scott's article). Dr. Steers summarizes and writes, "Its essence, however, reduces down to two important and substantive points: that the offenses which the accused were charged with were offenses against the laws of war, and that the defendants were, in fact, "belligerents" who served as, "secret but active participants (spies) in the recent hostilities."

I am not totally clear - did Speed write his opinion before the trial started or after the trial ended? In his assassination encyclopedia Dr. Steers writes, "Just when Speed wrote his opinion and delivered it to Johnson is unclear."

The article Scott sent says it was written afterwards, and the footnote cites Speed himself as the source. Also, John Fazio, in his book says Speed gave a verbal opinion only prior to the trial; the written opinion came afterwards.

I will post Speed's concluding paragraphs, but the entire opinion can be read here.

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"The law of nations; which is the result of the experience and wisdom of ages, has decided that jayhawkers, banditti, &c, are offenders against the laws of nature, and of war, and as such amenable to the military. Our Constitution has made those laws a part of the law of the land. Obedience to the Constitution and the law, then, requires that the military should do their whole duty; they must not only meet and fight the enemies of the country in open battle, but they must kill or take the secret enemies of the country, and try and execute them according to the laws of war. The civil tribunals of the country cannot rightfully interfere with the military in the performance of their high, arduous, and perilous, but lawful duties. That Booth and his associates were secret active public enemies, no mind that contemplates the facts can doubt. The exclamation used by him when he escaped from the box on to the stage, after he had fired the fatal shot, sic semper tyrannis, and his dying message, "say to my mother that I died for my country" show that he was not an assassin from private malice, but that he acted as a public foe. Such a deed is expressly laid down by Yattel, in his work on the law of nations, as an offence against the laws of war, and a great crime. "I give, then, the name of assassination to a treacherous murder, whether the perpetrators of the deed be the subjects of the party whom we cause to be assassinated or of our own sovereign, or that it be executed by any other emissary introducing himself as a suppliant, a refugee, or a deserter, or, in fine, as a stranger." (Vattel, 339.)

Neither the civil nor the military department of the government should regard itself as wiser and better than the Constitution and the laws that exist under or are made in pursuance thereof. Each department should, in peace and in war, confining itself to its own proper sphere of action, diligently and fearlessly perform its legitimate functions, and in the mode prescribed by the Constitution and the law. Such obedience to and observance of law will maintain peace when it exists, and will soonest relieve the country from the abnormal state of war.

My conclusion, therefore, is, that if the persons who are charged with the assassination of the President committed the deed as public enemies, as I believe they did, and whether they did or not is a question to be decided by the tribunal before which they are tried, they not only can, but ought to be tried before a military tribunal. If the persons charged have offended against the laws of war, it would be as palpably wrong for the military to hand them over to the civil courts, as it would be wrong in a civil court to convict a man of murder who had, in time of war, killed another in battle."

I am, sir, most respectfully, your obedient servant,

JAMES SPEED, Attorney General.
To the President.