Mary Surratt

... the only woman convicted and hung for the role she played during the War Between the States.

Mary Elizabeth Surratt became a widow at age 42, during the summer of 1862. Her husband left behind 287 acres in what is now Prince George’s County, Maryland. He had constructed a two-story house on the land that became known as Surrattsville. The house was converted into a tavern that served as a way station for the clandestine Confederate network. Mr. Surratt also left his wife a boarding house on H Street in Washington D.C. In October 1864, Mary and her three children permanently moved to that location and rented out the tavern to a man named John Lloyd.

Over the course of the next few months, 541 H Street would become the focal point in what is considered to be one of the most influential crimes in American history. John Wilkes Booth, who frequented the Surratt home, hatched his original kidnapping conspiracy there. Other players who were involved included Mary’s son John, George Atzeroldt, who was supposed to assassinate Vice President Johnson, and Lewis Powell (aka Lewis Paine), who was responsible for the vicious attack on Secretary of State William Seward the night of April 14, 1865, (the same night that President Lincoln was assassinated). David Herold, who was a friend of John Surratt and John Wilkes Booth, rode with Booth following the assassination. He was later captured at Garrett’s Farm, where Booth was shot to death by Sergeant Boston Corbett, who was part of the 16th New York Cavalry that cornered the two men inside a barn. Also participating in the conspiracy were Samuel Arnold, who was an original plotter in the kidnapping scheme, Michael O’Laughlen, who was had been sent to kill Secretary of War Edwin Stanton but failed, and Dr. Samuel Mudd, who treated Booth’s injuries after he escaped from Washington.

Booth intended to kidnap President Lincoln in order to force the Union to surrender captured Confederates. His plans were solidified by March 1865, but were postponed for various reasons, and proved futile once General Lee surrendered on April 9. Mary Surratt traveled to her tavern on April 13, where she allegedly told her renter, John Lloyd, “to have the shooting irons ready; there will be some parties call for them.”

Following the assassination, a woman whose niece worked for Mary contacted police, saying that suspicious men had been seen at Mary’s boarding house. Subsequently, everyone in the house, including Mary, was arrested. Before leaving, Mary was caught in a lie, denying that she knew Lewis Powell, who just happened to show up with a shovel, claiming that she required his services for digging a ditch.

At the trial, several eyewitnesses testified to her involvement in the assassination scheme, including George Atzeroldt. Some claimed that they had seen Mary conversing with Booth, who gave her a wrapped package containing field glasses that she was to leave with her tenant, John Lloyd. Although her son escaped conviction because he was in New York at the time, Mary was not so lucky. Tried before a military commission, the conspirators were found guilty. Mary was one of four sentenced to death by hanging. No one believed she would actually be put to death because of her gender, but regardless of her lawyers’ issuance of a writ of habeas corpus, the federal judge’s order to have her delivered to his courtroom on the morning of her execution (which was ignored), and pleas from her daughter, Anna, President Johnson refused to commute Mary’s sentence. Two days before her execution, the judge advocate general delivered a plea for her clemency to President Johnson, who later claimed that he received no such request until after the hanging.

Mary Surratt died in Washington’s Arsenal prison yard on July 7, 1865 with Lewis Powell, David Harold, and George Atzeroldt. As army personnel crowded into the yard to watch, the first woman to be executed by the U.S. government fell through the gallows’ trap doors alongside her co-conspirators. Whether she was actually guilty of the crimes she was accused of committing, or whether her sentence was unjustified and unfair, remains a topic of debate.

A film directed by Robert Redford, entitled “The Conspirator,” tells the story of Mary Surratt, and is set for release in March 2011. If you have the opportunity, visit Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. In the basement is housed a unique museum containing descriptions and artifacts surrounding this inauspicious act.

Another Anniversary for 2009

This year marks the 150th anniversary of John Brown's Raid at Harper's Ferry. For those unfamiliar with John Brown, he was a religious fanatic who was also a staunch abolitionist. He killed a bunch of slave owners in Kansas, and that is how it became known as "Bleeding Kansas." From there, he took his posse to Virginia, where he attempted to start an uprising. However, his plans backfired, as no slaves revolted. The U.S. Marines closed in, and captured John Brown. Sadly, the first man to die in the raid was a freed slave. Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart participated in the capture at the arsenal building. Strangely, those men would end up fighting for the Confederacy only two years later.

As John Brown was led to the gallows, he is quoted as predicting the bloody days to come: "I, John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood." Ominous, to say the least! One of the spectators to witness the hanging was John Wilkes Booth, who was Abraham Lincoln's assassin. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was also in attendance.

In honor of the anniversary of this profound event that some say started the Civil War, historians from Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland formed the John Brown Sesquicentennial Quad-State Committee to promote the event. They even staged a mock hanging!Events also included re-enactments, dramatic productions, art exhibits, academic lectures, and special tours. If you ever have the opportunity to see this historical town, I strongly recommend it.

The Case of John Wilkes Booth

Everyone knows who John Wilkes Booth was, or if they don't they should. He was the guy who shot President Lincoln in the back of the head at Ford's Theatre, jumped onto the stage after doing so, yelled, "Sic semper tyrannis" (Latin for "Thus always to tyrants"), and supposedly followed it up by exclaiming, "I have done it! The South is avenged!" He then high-tailed it to Virginia, dragging along an accomplice by the name of David Herold. It took the Union cavalry eleven days to track him down in a tobacco barn, but when they finally did, they set fire to it, and one soldier named Sergeant Boston Corbett shot the assassin, even though he had been ordered to bring Booth in alive.

Very strange things happened in accordance with this event. On November 9, 1863, President Lincoln attended a play in Washington D.C. entitled The Marble Heart. Among the cast was none other than John Wilkes Booth. The actor, who had plotted to kidnap Lincoln prior to the war's end, was photographed in the crowd that attended Lincoln's second inauguration.

After the assassination took place, it seems a curse was placed on many of the people who were involved. Dr. Mudd, who tended the actor's broken leg, was incarcerated for four years before being freed, due to his lifesaving efforts during the prison's yellow fever epidemic. He died at the age of 49, and is buried in the cemetery of the church where he first met John Wilkes Booth. Mary Todd Lincoln went bonkers, and eventually ended up living in a single room with a money belt around her waist, where she packed and unpacked her 64 crates of clothing until her death. Judge Holt, who sentenced the conspirators to hang, became a recluse as well, no doubt because he couldn't deal with the guilt of sentencing Mary Surratt, who many thought was innocent. Major Rathbone and his fiance, Clara, who were in the presidential box with Lincoln the night he was shot, got married, but sadly, on Christmas Day 1883, he shot her to death. Sergeant Corbett lost his marbles, also. He pulled a gun on two boys in Kansas, and was committed to the Topeka insane asylum. But in 1888, he escaped, and was never heard from again. And the Lincoln's oldest son, Robert, believed whole-heartedly that he was cursed. In 1881, while he was with President James Garfield, an assassin attacked and killed the president. Then in 1901, the same thing happened, only this time it was President William McKinley.

But what about John Wilkes Booth? He was a very popular actor at the time, and some think he killed Lincoln for his own notoriety. His brother, Edwin, who was a famous actor, too, received permission from Andrew Johnson, who had succeeded Lincoln, to bury his brother in an unmarked grave in the family plot in Baltimore. Prior to that, the killer's body had been buried under the floor of the Old Penitentiary's dining room. But for years, speculation circulated about John Wilkes Booth actual death. Some swore the body was that of another man because the wrong leg was broken, the scars didn't match up, etc. A conspiracy theory arose, and some believed that the man who had been buried was a prop: that the real John Wilkes Booth had escaped. Years after the assassination, people reported seeing him out West, in Europe, and in Japan. In 1994, the court ruled against exhuming the body to determine if it really was John Wilkes Booth who was buried there.