THE HANGING OF MARY SURRATT

THE HANGING OF MARY SURRATT

Part 1 of 4

Mike Scruggs

For The Tribune Papers

On July 7, 1865, forty-two-year-old Mary Surratt, an attractive, dark-haired widow, was hanged on the gallows at the Old Arsenal Penitentiary in Washington along with three others convicted of complicity in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by a military court. Mary Surratt was the only woman of the four. She was, in fact, the first woman ever executed by the government of the United States. The execution of Mary Surratt was not a triumph of justice. It was a disgraceful political atrocity that still stains the national conscience and mars the American ideal of justice.

Americans have a strong tendency to whitewash history. It is more pleasant for us to believe and easier to teach our children that all our great leaders have been virtuous, that all our causes have been noble, and that all our courts have been just. No nation can long endure without a strong sense of patriotism. But genuine patriotism, a love of one’s country and people that endures over many generations, is undermined when truth is mangled in the service of propaganda or political ambitions. Truth and love are inseparable. Patriotism without truth is a monstrous imposter.

The Lincoln assassination conspiracy trial was marked by judicial despotism, perjury, bribery, and even intimidation and torture of witnesses and defendants. The investigation, prosecution, trial, and sentences were all managed by the War Department under its ambitious Secretary, Edwin Stanton. Four of the eight defendants were hanged and the others sentenced to life imprisonment on an isolated island.

A principal objective of the conspiracy trial, conducted by nine high-ranking officers handpicked by Stanton, was the implication of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Lincoln’s assassination. But Stanton, like many of his Radical Republican allies in Congress and government, was also motivated by a consuming hatred for the South. Furthermore, he hoped to be elected President of the United States in 1868. According to the diary of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and biographical statements by many other Union political and military leaders, Stanton was noted for his manipulative, and often treacherous, political dealings. He had often manipulated Lincoln and other Cabinet Members, and for a short time, he was very successful in persuading or manipulating President Andrew Johnson into supporting his schemes for vengeance on the South.

Mary Surratt, the devout Catholic mother of three children ranging in age from twenty to twenty-four, was the owner of a boardinghouse in Washington. She also owned her former residence, the Surratt House and Tavern, and some farmland in the tiny community of Surrattsville (now Clinton), Maryland, southeast of Washington. But when her husband, John Surratt, Sr., died in 1862, she was unable to manage the facilities and rented them to John Lloyd, a Southern sympathizer with a problematic drinking habit. The Surratts were Southern sympathizers. They came from the strongly pro-Southern agricultural area of southern Maryland, where in better times they had owned several hundred acres of land and as many as twelve slaves. Her 24-year-old son, Isaac, was a sergeant in the 33rd Texas Cavalry, and her 20-year-old son, John, had become a Confederate courier. Both John and her attractive 22-year-old daughter, Anna, lived at the boardinghouse in Washington. Although Mary Surratt was definitely pro-Southern, she was not very political. Especially by late 1864, she only wanted her two sons home and safe. For that reason she was not comfortable with John’s courier trips and intrigues.

In December 1864, John ran into Dr. Samuel Mudd, who was visiting from southern Maryland. Dr. Mudd introduced him to John Wilkes Booth, one of America’s most famous actors. John became good friends with the 26-year-old actor and soon became involved in Booth’s plot to kidnap Abraham Lincoln in order to force a prisoner of war exchange or even end the war. The Confederate Government had considered such a plan in 1863 but rejected it. Jefferson Davis, in particular, was strongly opposed to such intrigues on both practical and philosophical grounds.

The wealthy and charismatic Booth generally stayed at the most expensive hotels in Washington, but he became a frequent visitor to the Surratt boardinghouse, where he befriended both the Surratts and their 20-year-old boarder, Louis Weichmann, a clerk at the Prisoner of War Commissariat. His planning and recruitment for his kidnapping plot were, however, mostly done at hotels and taverns. Booth managed to recruit six men for his daring abduction plot.

Lincoln sometimes traveled Washington at night with very little accompaniment. On March 20, the group was lying in wait for Lincoln on one of his customary routes, but he failed to show up. As a result, despite Booth’s fame and charisma, several of the group began to be disillusioned with him. These included John Surratt and at least three of the conspiracy defendants: Michael O’Laughlin, Sam Arnold, and even George Atzerodt, who was executed along with Mary Surratt. Lee’s surrender on April 9 further discouraged continuation with Booth’s machinations.

According to Booth’s diary, he did not decide to assassinate Lincoln until April 13 and did not know that Lincoln was coming to the Ford Theater until late in the afternoon on April 14, the day of the assassination. At 8:00 PM that night he met with Lewis Powell (alias Paine), a strapping former member of Mosby’s Confederate Rangers, David Herold, and George Atzerodt and announced his plan to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Powell would assassinate Secretary of State Seward, who was recovering at his home from a carriage accident, and Herold would assist with his getaway. Atzerodt would assassinate Vice President Johnson in his hotel, and Booth would shoot Lincoln at the Ford Theater.

Powell made a savage but unsuccessful knife attack on Seward with no help from Herold, who fled the scene early, leaving Powell to escape on foot. Atzerodt wandered around the town from bar to bar without any intention of assassinating Vice President Johnson. Booth, however, shot President Lincoln in the back of the head as he sat in his theater box. Lincoln died at 7:15 the next morning. The unfortunate Herold accidentally ran into the escaping Booth and was persuaded to assist him in escaping to Virginia.

Before the fall of Richmond early in April, John Surratt left Washington carrying important financial instructions to Confederate Commissioners in Montreal, Canada. From there he went to Elmira, New York, to investigate the possibility of rescuing Confederate POWs there. He never returned to Washington or knew until after the fact that Booth had changed his plans from kidnapping Lincoln to assassinating him. When he heard of the assassination, he fled to Canada and then Europe.

Once on an early visit to the Surratt home, Lewis Powell had inadvertently blurted out something about the abduction plot. John Surratt firmly berated him, saying that neither his mother nor his sister knew anything about such plans and emphatically stressed that he did not want them to know anything. Lewis Powell later proclaimed to the military court, his religious and legal counselors, and to his executioners that Mary Surratt was completely innocent of the charges against her or any wrongdoing. No one in the War Department or political chain of authority would listen. Every effort was made to isolate and silence the accused conspirators.

The government’s case against Mary Surratt was weak and largely circumstantial, but for some reason they made every effort not only to convict her of complicity in the assassination of Lincoln, but to make sure she received the death penalty. To make their case, they bribed, threatened, and even tortured witnesses and defendants. They suppressed critical evidence and used completely unrelated emotional issues, such as “starving Union prisoners or war,” to inflame the military court and the public against the defendants. There is substantial evidence that Secretary of War Stanton, Army Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, and several Stanton and Holt associates deliberately deceived President Andrew Johnson in respect to a clemency plea for Mary Surratt, which had been urged by a majority of the officers on the military court. To be continued.