FREDERICK A. AIKEN (1810-1878)

In defending the unpopular cause of the British soldiers who were engaged in the Boston Massacre, John Adams said:—­

“May it please your honor and you, gentlemen of the jury, I am for the prisoner at the bar, and shall apologize for it only in the words of the Marquis of Beccaria:  ’If I can but be the instrument of preserving one life, his blessings and tears of transport shall be a sufficient compensation to me for the contempt of all mankind.’”

Something of the same idea inspires the fine opening of Aiken’s defense of Mrs. Surratt.  It lacks the sinewy assertiveness of Adams’s terse and almost defiant apology for doing his duty as a lawyer in spite of public opinion, but it justifies itself and the plea it introduces.

Until within the recent past, political antagonisms have been too strong to allow fair consideration for such orations as that of Aiken at the Surratt trial.  But this is no longer the case.  It can now be considered on its merits as an oration, without the assumption that it is necessary in connection with it to pass on the evidence behind it.

The assassins of President Lincoln were tried by military commission under the War Department’s order of May 6th, 1865.  The prosecution was conducted by Brigadier-General Joseph Holt, as judge advocate-general, with Brevet-Colonel H. L. Burnett, of Indiana, and Hon. John A. Bingham, of Ohio, assisting him.  The attorneys for the defense were Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland; Thomas Ewing, of Kansas; W. E. Doster, of Pennsylvania; Frederick A. Aiken, of the District of Columbia; Walter S. Cox, John W. Clampit, and F. Stone, of Maryland.  The fault of the Adams oration in the case of the Boston Massacre is one of excessive severity of logic.  Aiken errs in the direction of excessive ornament, but, considering the importance of the occasion and the great stress on all engaged in the trial as well as on the public, the florid style may have served better than the force of severe logic could have done.

DEFENSE OF MRS. MARY E. SURRATT

For the lawyer as well as the soldier, there is an equally pleasant duty—­an equally imperative command.  That duty is to shelter the innocent from injustice and wrong, to protect the weak from oppression, and to rally at all times and all occasions, when necessity demands it, to the special defense of those whom nature, custom, or circumstance may have placed in dependence upon our strength, honor, and cherishing regard.  That command emanates and reaches each class from the same authoritative and omnipotent source.  It comes from a superior whose right to command none dare question, and none dare disobey.  In this command there is nothing of that lex talionis which nearly two thousand years ago nailed to the cross its Divine Author.