The surviving conspirators, with the exception of John H. Surratt, were tried by military commission sitting in Washington in the months of May and June.  The charges against them specified that they were “incited and encouraged” to treason and murder by Jefferson Davis and the Confederate emissaries in Canada.  This was not proved on the trial; though the evidence bearing on the case showed frequent communications between Canada and Richmond and the Booth coterie in Washington, and some transactions in drafts at the Montreal Bank, where Jacob Thompson and Booth both kept accounts.  Mrs. Surratt, Payne, Herold, and Atzerodt were hanged on July 7; Mudd, Arnold, and O’Laughlin were imprisoned for life at the Tortugas, the term being afterward shortened; and Spangler, the scene-shifter at the theater, was sentenced to six years in jail.  John H. Surratt escaped to Canada, and from there to England.  He wandered over Europe, and finally was detected in Egypt and brought back to Washington in 1867, where his trial lasted two months, and ended in a disagreement of the jury.

Upon the hearts of a people glowing with the joy of victory, the news of the President’s assassination fell as a great shock.  It was the first time the telegraph had been called upon to spread over the world tidings of such deep and mournful significance.  In the stunning effect of the unspeakable calamity the country lost sight of the national success of the past week, and it thus came to pass that there was never any organized expression of the general exultation or rejoicing in the North over the downfall of the rebellion.  It was unquestionably best that it should be so; and Lincoln himself would not have had it otherwise.  He hated the arrogance of triumph; and even in his cruel death he would have been glad to know that his passage to eternity would prevent too loud an exultation over the vanquished.  As it was, the South could take no umbrage at a grief so genuine and so legitimate; the people of that section even shared, to a certain degree, in the lamentations over the bier of one whom in their inmost hearts they knew to have wished them well.

There was one exception to the general grief too remarkable to be passed over in silence.  Among the extreme radicals in Congress, Mr. Lincoln’s determined clemency and liberality toward the Southern people had made an impression so unfavorable that, though they were naturally shocked at his murder, they did not, among themselves, conceal their gratification that he was no longer in the way.  In a political caucus, held a few hours after the President’s death, “the feeling was nearly universal,” to quote the language of one of their most prominent representatives, “that the accession of Johnson to the presidency would prove a godsend to the country.”