Arrest of Atzerodt

[jonathan]

(08-21-2012 10:22 AM)BettyO Wrote:  Totally tragic all the way around. He simply had all areas of Lady Luck against him....personally, I feel that he should have gotten the same sentence as Spangler, O'Laughlen, Arnold, Mudd, et. al.....

I wonder how much his status as an immigrant was held against him? I have always wondered if he had communication problems, etc.

I've wondered about the "language barrier" also, as you see it mentioned from time to time. But Atzerodt came to the United States in 1843 or 1844, when he was 8 or 9 years old. Meaning he had lived here at least 20 years when he died. So surely in those 20 years he would have overcome the language barrier. I suppose there's the possibility that, living in Germantown, there was little English spoken. Two things about that bother me though. First, I've been to Germany, and I know that there is a lot of English spoken there, though I don't know if it would have been the same in the mid 1800's, and I don't know if it would have been the case where Atzerodt lived as a boy. Second, it's always been my impression that immigrants tend to be eager to adopt the language, and so it seems like a lot of English would have been spoken while George was growing up, even in Germantown, MD.