Members of the Military Commission for the Trial of the Lincoln Conspirators

Here are two more members of President Johnson's court of nine army officers appointed for the trial of the Lincoln conspirators, the Judge advocate, and one of his assistants. From left to right, they are: the Honorable Joseph Holt, Judge advocate; General Robert S. Foster; Colonel H. L. Burnett, who assisted Judge Holt; and Colonel C. R. Clendenin. The two members of the court not shown on this and a preceding page were General Albion P. Howe and Colonel C. H. Tompkins. The military trial in Washington before this court was as extraordinary, as were the methods of treating the prisoners, the chief of whom were kept chained and with heavy bags over their heads. Looking back, the whole affair seems more like a mediæval proceeding than a legal prosecution in the last century; but the nation was in a state of fever, and it was not to be expected that calmness would prevail in dealing with the conspirators. When the Lincoln memorial monument was dedicated at Springfield, October 15, 1874, the reticent Grant closed his eulogy with this tribute to Lincoln: "In his death the nation lost its greatest hero; in his death the South lost its most just friend."