Abraham Lincoln - American Memory

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merely a suspicious person, but was, in fact, the murderer and assassin
of Abraham Lincoln. While I deem it my duty to say here, as I said
before, when these declarations uttered by the accused on Sunday,
the 16th, to Gardner and George D. Mudd, were attempted to be
offered on the part of the accused, that they are in no sense evi-
dence, and by the law were wholly inadmissible, yet I s tate it as my
conviction that, being upon the record upon motion of the accused
himself, so far as these declarations to Gardner and George D. Mudd
go, they are additional indications of the guilt of the accused, in
this, that they are manifestly suppressions of the truth and sugges-
tions of falsehood and deception ; they are but the utterances and
confessions of guilt.
To Lieutenant Lovett, Joshua Lloyd, and Simon Gavican, who, in
pursuit of the murderer, visited his house on the 18th of April, the
Tuesday after the murder, he denied positively, upon inquiry, that
two men had passed his house, or had come to his house on the
morning after the assassination. Two of these witnesses swear posi-
tively to his having made the denial, and the other says he hesitated
to answer the question he put to him; all of them agree that he
afterwards admitted that two men had been there, one of whom had
a broken limb, which he had* set; and when asked by this witness
who that man was. he said he did not know—that the man was a
stranger to him, and that the two had been there but a short time.
Lloyd asked him if he had ever seen any of the parties, Booth,
Herold and Surratt, and he said he had never seen them; while it
is positively proved that he was acquainted with John H. Surratt,
who had been in his house; that he knew Booth, and had introduced
Booth to Surratt last winter. Afterwards, on Friday, the 21st, he ad-
mitted to Lloyd that he had been introduced to Booth last fall,
and that this man, who came to his house on Saturday, the 15th, re-
mained there from about 4 o'clock in the morning until about 4 in the
afternoon; that one of them left his house on horseback, and the other
walking. In the first conversation he denied ever having seen these
men.
Colonel Wells also testifies that, in his conversation with Dr. Mudd
on Friday, the 21st, the prisoner said that he had gone to Bryan-
town, or near Bryantown, to see some friends on Saturday, and that
as he came back to his own house he saw the person he afterwards
supposed to be Herold passing to the left of his house towards the
barn, bnt that he did not see the other person at all after he left him
in hiB own house, about 1 o'clock. If this statement be true, how