THE BLOODY JUNTO; OR, THE ESCAPE OF JOHN WILKES BOOTH. A STORY CONTAINING MANY INTERESTING PARTICULARS IN REGARD TO THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF MRS. SURRATT AND OTHER SO CALLED CONSPIRATORS.
BYCAPT. R. H. CROZIER, A. M.,
Author of "THE CONFEDERATE SPY."LITTLE ROCK, ARK: WOODRUFF & BLOCHER, PRINTERS. (Gazette Office.)
1869.Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by WOODRUFF & BLOCHER, In the office of the Clerk of the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
PREFACE.
BEFORE the perusal of the present volume is commenced, we desire to say that by the term Yankees, we do not wish to be understood as including the whole North, indiscriminately. There are many good and true conservative men and women in the North, whom it would be manifestly unjust to embrace in the charges adduced in the progress of our story. To such we willingly disclaim all intention of showing the least disrespect. We have exclusive reference to those vile, malignant traducers of the down-trodden South, who, not satisfied with gloating over the distressing prospects of a ruined country, are seeking to trample a brave, heroic, but defenceless people into the very dust of national degradation. To this class we have no apology whatever to make.
Lest we should be accused of plagiarism, we will here state that we have consulted a pamphlet entitled "The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth," written by a worshiper of the late Abraham Lincoln. In a few chapters we have taken some short paragraphs and sentences without the usual marks of quotation. We have done this not because we wished to appropriate another's literary property, but because these paragraphs, sentences, and in some instances parts of sentences, are so scattering, disconnected and interwoven with our own narrative, that to give credit by inverted commas at every quotation might distract our kind reader's attention. Besides this, we have taken the liberty more than once of arranging, correcting and modifying a sentence, in order to adapt it to the story, so that the original author would not recognize it as his, without an intimation. This little pamphlet has been published as a true history, and has long since answered its design; we feel, therefore, in making this use of its few pages, that we have not encroached upon the rights of authorship. Lest our readers should be misled by the length of this explanation, and induced to believe that we have quoted too freely, it is proper to say that if all the scattered extracts and disjointed sentences taken from the pamphlet were collected together, they would not cover more than fifteen pages of the present volume.
We desire further to say, that it is no easy task to write a really interesting story upon events of recent occurrence. The reason is obvious. Inconsistencies and errors are too easily detected when the reader is well acquainted with facts and localities. The farther back in the past the scenes of a story are dated, the less disposed will be the reader to question their accuracy, and to doubt their actual occurrence. Hence we are aware that the present volume details circumstances that may appear to the critical reader strangely at variance from the truth; but these inconsistences will disappear in the course of time, when the lapse of years shall have somewhat obscured incidents well known by the present generation. But we deem it useless to offer apologies which, in a preface, are generally disregarded or misconstrued. We will let our readers form their own opinions of this work, written amid the cares and during the spare moments of a laborious profession.
THE AUTHOR.
Hickory Plain, Prairie County, Arkansas, 1868.