Executed Lincoln’s Murderers

     Captain Christian Rath of Jackson, Mich., is a candidate for a singular position. He desires to be the official executioner of Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President McKinley. Captain Rath advances as his claim to this distinction that it was he who officiated at the death of the conspirators who were condemned for the murder of Abraham Lincoln. It was this veteran who supervised the execution of Mrs. Surratt, Paine, Herrold and Atzeroth, the persons who were found to be guilty, with John Wilkes Booth, in the plot to take the life of the great liberator. The captain is an old soldier of the Union. At the time of the trial of the conspirators he was provost marshal of the Washington prison. He assisted with his own hands in the erection of the scaffold on which the assassins died. He placed the ropes about their necks and in other ways facilitated the work of execution of the law’s mandate. He says he is willing to turn on the current which will end the life of Czolgosz, and will ask no pay for the service save his expenses to the place of execution.