It is agreed on all hands that the President approved of the death-sentence on Wednesday, at the confidential interview between Holt and himself, and, at that very time, and by the same warrant, appointed Friday the 7th, for the executions. The whole matter was begun and ended in an hour.
There was neither opportunity, nor, if there had been, use, to hold a Cabinet consultation upon the question of commutation after that.
The President had reviewed the record, and, without consultation with any human being but Holt, put his name to the death-warrant. Why consult his confidential advisers after he had decided the whole matter? Holt himself says that, at this private interview, it was not he, but Andrew Johnson, who had fully made up his mind that Mrs. Surratt must be put to death; that the President needed no urging or advice on that subject; that he inveighed against the women of the South with a ferocity which reminds us of the loyal Bingham himself. Holt says that the President himself, without a suggestion from him, was "prompt and decided" "as to _when_ the execution should take place," "and in the same spirit too, in which he subsequently suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus, he fixed the Friday following." Why call in his "advisers" after he had, with the approval of his judgment and his conscience, put his hand to the work of blood! Besides, if he needed such a supererogatory endorsement of his "advisers," there was no time to get it.
The record with the death-warrant went direct to the Adjutant-General's office that very Wednesday. Holt cannot remember whether he took it or not, nor can the Adjutant-General remember when or how he received it. But this is of no consequence. The order for the execution was drawn on that day, the necessary copies made that day; it was promulgated on the morning of Thursday the 6th, and on that day at _noon_, the warrant for her death, within twenty-four hours, was read to the fainting woman in her cell. All day long, on the 6th, the White House was besieged by her friends, her priests and her daughter, to obtain a reprieve. The guardians of the President had no time to hold Cabinet consultations over foregone dooms of death. They were too busy intercepting verbal prayers for mercy, holding shut the doors of the President's private room, sending away all petitioners, for a few more hours' life, to the merciful Judge-Advocate, making sure that there should be four pine coffins and four newly dug graves, and that the Habeas Corpus should not leave one empty. Hold a Cabinet meeting after the President had signed the bloody warrant, and Stanton had once clutched it! Reopen the perilous question to hear Welles and Dennison, and McCulloch and Seward, to say nothing of Harlan and Speed And Stanton, discuss a petition addressed to the President who had already denied it! "Five members of our court have been suborned by their feelings to swerve from their duty. We run no more risks of soft-hearted gallantry this time amid the members of the Cabinet. Let the funeral games begin."