And what shall we say of William H. Seward?
If that great man told Judge Bingham in 1865 what the Judge, after Seward was dead, first says he did, why had William H. Seward kept silent so many years, and at last died and made no sign? He must have heard the charge, so infamous if false, and, if Judge Bingham be believed, he must have known it to be false.
He must have heard the statement of Judge Pierrepont in open court in 1867. He must have known of the President's sending for the record and of the explosion thereupon in the Department of War. Why did he not at that crisis come forward with the proof of which the Judge-Advocate was so dreadfully in need?
The Secretary of State could not have intrenched himself behind the inviolability of proceedings of Cabinet meetings, as did the over-scrupulous Attorney-General, because, according to Judge Bingham, he himself had betrayed the secret long before.
And why did not Judge Bingham force him to speak, or else make public his interview with him, while Seward was alive and could either affirm or contradict it?
No, these two eminent lawyers, yoked together as the common mark of what they call a "most atrocious slander," originating with a President of the United States, bruited about everywhere both in official and private circles, wait eight long years, and until after the death of the head of that President's Cabinet, from whose lips one of them at least had heard at its very inception a solemn refutation of the black lie, before they venture to proclaim it to the world.
Mr. Bingham admits in his letter that, in 1865, "he desired to make" the facts he had ascertained "public." Why did he not "make public" what Seward had told him, while Seward was living?
He furnishes no answer to this question, and until he does, his testimony on the matter is tainted with a most reasonable suspicion.
And, besides, what we know of the situation of the Secretary of State at the time of the execution of Mrs. Surratt, of his subsequent career, and of his lofty character as a man, is sufficient to stamp the account of Judge Bingham as incredible.
William H. Seward, one of the most distinguished statesmen of the era of the civil war, one of the most illustrious founders of the republican party, and one of the most trusted advisers of Abraham Lincoln, remained in the Cabinet of Andrew Johnson until the close of his administration. He united in the pardon of Mudd, Spangler and Arnold. He stood by the President fearlessly in the dark days of the impeachment, and when the President had become the target of the daily curses of thousands of Seward's former political friends. Had he known that the accusation against General Holt was false, and at the same time heard the daily reiteration of its truth from the lips of his Chief, he would not have remained an hour in the Cabinet of such a monumental slanderer. So far from allowing the ceremonial restraints of Cabinet rules to make him a silent accomplice in a foul falsehood, he would have proclaimed the truth, if necessary, even from the steps of the Capitol.