his head. âWell, they were. I know about that. The lawyers defending the men who went to jailâyou know, the one holding Boothâs horse and those boys from Baltimoreâthose lawyers were all right. They mostly made sense, you know, said things that helped their case. And the lawyers defending the ones who really did it, like Paine and the German guy who chickened out, what could theyâve done, anyway? Some cases canât nobody win.
âBut those ones representing that woman, every time they stood up, they made her case worse. Didnât sit right with me. Maybe she did it and sheâs nothing but pure evil, but when youâre sitting in a courtroom accused of a crime, you need help. Made me wonder whether they were paid to lose.â
Cook had grown increasingly animated. In a low voice, Fraser said, âSpeed, this is a public place here. These things, even if they happened a long time ago, theyâre still sensitive. Keep it down, okay?â
Cookâs face registered disdain, but he answered in a lower tone, âAnother thing, Iâm wondering why it couldnât be someone in the North be behind killing Lincoln. Didnât have to be the Confederates. Plenty of crackers and nigger-haters around Ohio, all through the North.â
âQuiet?â
âAll right, all right,â Cook said in a hoarse whisper that wasnât much softer. âBut you know thereâs lots in Indiana, New York. Shoot, you know that Sons of Liberty group, those Northern men wanted the South to win? One of them came right from Cadiz. My daddy used to talk about it. Made him mad.â
Fraser had heard enough. âThereâs no basis for that theory. Look at all those connections that Booth and the Surratts have with Confederates, but none with the Sons of Liberty or with Northern Copperheads.â
âHave you looked?â
Fraser shooed the idea away. âThereâs nothing about it in anything I read. Nothing to it. Nothing at all.â
âMen used to think the Sun moved around the Earth.â
Fraser didnât answer. His silence accomplished what his answers had not. Cook stopped talking.
While the forests of western Maryland sped by his window, Fraser thought that even if Cook tended to overdo it, this idea might be right. Fraser had to think about it quietly, not while being hectored by Cook. Mrs. Surratt could hardly have revealed to Mr. Bingham that the Confederates were connected to Booth, since thatâs what Mr. Bingham had been saying all along, right through the trialâthat the Confederacy sent Booth to kill Lincoln. Mrs. Surratt must have told him something else, something else that would threaten the republic in early July 1865.
And the secret was still explosive enough that in 1900, when he was dying and knew he was dying, Mr. Bingham would say only that there was a secret, not what it was. Why couldnât it be that Northerners were behind the Lincoln assassination?
It was getting awkward that Fraser hadnât told Cook about Mrs. Surrattâs confession to Mr. Bingham. He never decided not to tell Cook. It just never came up, and the longer it didnât, the harder it was going to be to tell. He needed to do it soon.
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They hired horses at the station and set off for Burkittsville, riding side by side through hilly country on a warm, glorious day. The farms they passed were small and neat, like those in eastern Ohio. Being close to Harpers Ferry prompted Cook to declaim on John Brown and his failed slave revolt in 1859. He quieted when they came upon a cemetery. Flowers lay on many graves. They dismounted and walked to the edge of a small crowd near a regal elm tree.
They listened to the last two speakers, a politician and a minister, for the Memorial Day observance. The minister spoke of the sacrifices of the Union dead and the Confederate dead, both of whom lay buried there. The politician talked about the Spanish-American War
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