The Special Judge-Advocate then proceeds to sum up the evidence, in doing which he leaves nothing to the free agency of the Court. He, first, by a review of the testimony of the Montgomeries and Conovers, proves to his own and, presumably, to the Court's satisfaction, that "Davis, Thompson, Cleary, Tucker, Clay, Young, Harper, Booth and John H. Surratt did combine and conspire together in Canada to kill and murder Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Wm. H. Seward and Ulysses S. Grant."
"Surely no word further need be spoken to show that John Wilkes Booth was in this conspiracy; that John H. Surratt was in this conspiracy; and that Jefferson Davis, and his several agents named, in Canada, were in this conspiracy.
"Whatever may be the conviction of others, my own conviction is that Jefferson Davis is as clearly proven guilty of this conspiracy as is John Wilkes Booth, by whose hand Jefferson Davis inflicted the mortal wound upon Abraham Lincoln."
After such utterances as these, it is hardly necessary to state that this impartial Judge declares every single person on trial, as well as John H. Surratt, guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt.
"That John H. Surratt, George A. Atzerodt, Mary E. Surratt, David E. Herold, and Louis Payne entered into this conspiracy with Booth, is so very clear upon the testimony, that little time need be occupied in bringing again before the Court the evidence which establishes it.
"It is almost imposing upon the patience of the Court to consume time in demonstrating the fact, which none conversant with the testimony of this case can for a moment doubt, that John H. Surratt and Mary E. Surratt were as surely in the conspiracy to murder the President as was John Wilkes Booth himself."
He lets out the secret that the mother is on trial as a substitute for her son, whom the Secretary of War and the Bureau of Military Justice had failed to capture, by saying:
"Nothing but his conscious coward guilt could possibly induce him to absent himself from his mother, as he does, upon her trial."
After having reiterated over and over again, with all the authority of his office, what he had for hours endeavoured to enforce by all the resources of his intellect, that the guilt "of all these parties, both present and absent" is proved "beyond any doubt whatever," and "is no longer an open question;" he closes by formally, and with a very cheap show of magnanimity, leaving "the decision of this dread issue" to the Court.