72 Years Ago the Lincoln ConspiratorsWoman and 3 MenDie on Gallows
(Rcoprocluceclfrom old abtdl IIIHarpet'a WMId)'.)Courtroom'lD old peftit•• tiary. Waahl.Dvto...during progr••• of trial of l.IDcolDcouplrcdora.
History Still Debates Trialof the Assassins
By FRANK CJPRIANI'AYOUNG woman whose veil
of anguilth could not con-ceal her pretty face burst
past an amazed soldier and intothe executive mansion of the Presi.dent of the United States. Shewas peremptorily stopped insideby other soldiers."The President-I t;llustsee him:'
she demanded.One of the soldiers brushed a
blue sle.ve acros. his .weatybrow. It was only Bo'clock in themorning. but already the begin·ning of another scorching day inWashington..• The President ain'ts•• in' anyone today, mi.s," he saidpolitely,but firmly."General Muzzey. then; would
you send for him?" Her voice em-phasized de&pair. The soldier wasabout to deny this request, too, butsomething told him this youngwoman was no ordinary WhiteHous. caller. ,Heacquiesced, Soonafterward General Muzzey, thePresident's milltary secretary. ap-peared. The girl fell at his f.et."Please, please, General Muz-
zey, help me see the President:'she cried,The generaf shook his head. He
could not grant that request: ThePresident was receiving no visitorsloday. He was sorry. He turnedaway. Her face ashen and herbody throbbing uncontrolably, theyoung woman prostrated herself.sobbing: " Mother is Innocent.molher is Innocenti Mother 1& toogood and kind to be guilty of thisgreat crime, and If she die. 1 mustdie, too," For an hour she re~mained in the White House, buther tears and lamentations benefit-ed her not at all.She did not get to see the Presi-
dent - and five hours later sheheard the thundering crash of agallows that cut acrose the nationand sent four hapleDs figures 10 ajerking stop at the end of as manylaut ropes,That crash dashed her desperate
hopes. It shrieked "Vengeancel ..lor the assassination of AbrahamLincoln, Civil war President of thaUnited States.The girl who made the futUe ef·
fort to see the President-AndrewJohnson. Lincoln's suee•• sor-wasMiss Anna Surratt. One of thelour who died on this July 7 after.noon of 1865 was her mother, Mrs.Mary E. Surratt. The others wereDavid E. Harold, George A. Atzer-edt, and Lewis Payne. UntU thelaet moment Anna Surratt stroveto save her mother, fier greatesthope reposing in a personal ap-peal she could not deliver to Presi·dent Johnson. 'The assaatlnatlon 01 Uncoln re-
mains one of the oreatest historiccrime. of all time, the bloody cul-mination of a fiendish plot. Butwhat kind of a plot? Of half anation fightino the other haU Infratricidal strUe? Or of a handfulof maniacal men? History pointsto the latter. And the trial of Un-coin's assassin.? Was it fair?Should it not have been held be-fore a civil court rather than amilitary tribunal? Hi,tory dis-agrees!Looi.back to U166: through the mel-
lowed perspectIve 01 leventy-twoyears. Consider the time. In earlyAprilLee surrendered and the Con·federacy fell, ending four years ofawful civil war. The north wasvictorious, the south vanqUished.But sore wounds still gaped, bitter-ness still rankled in the breasts ofmen. Peace had come- but notyet balm. .Then suddenly the as-sassins struck. John Wilkes Booth,actor and southern sympathizer,stole Into a box In Ford's theateron the night of April 14. He fireda fatal bullet into the head of theone man, Lincoln,who might quick-ly heal the wounds of war, Some-one else attempted to slay Secre-tary of State William Seward.
• ••A north jubilant over victory be"
came an Inluriated, a vengefulnorth. It moved swiftly to bring tojustice the perpetrators of thismonstrous deed.' QUieltly Ihe as-sassins were rounded up, andBooth hlmseU was trapped andslain. Secretary of War EdwinStanton and othera branded theslaying of Lincoln and tho attackon Secretary Seward a diabolicalplot of the Confederacy, extendingto personalities as high as Jeffer-son Davis, fugitive president ofthat Confederacy. They announcedt hat other government officers,among them the then Vlee Presi-dent, Andrew Johnson, and Gen.U. S. Grant. had also been markedfor death.In the government bastile cow-
ered eioht prisoners, one a woman.They were promptly charged with" traitorously" conspiring to mur-der and to assault to kill in afd 01the rebellion. The govemment de-creed they must be tried before amilitary tribunal- this. In Iplte ofthe fact that peace nominally hadbeen restored and the civil courtswere functioning.And yet it can be questioned
even now whether the civil COUrtlcould have functioned properly Inluch a case. The crime, eventhough committed alter the war, had ended, was war-Inspired.
Th. eight prisoners had nochoice. On May 9, pursuant to adeeree from President Johnson, themUitarycommissionconvened, com·priled, of nine military officers,seven of them generals. Maj. Gen.David Hunter prellded. Brig. Gen.Jo.eph Holt appeared 01 judge ed-vocate general, or prosecutor.The accused, Mr.. Surratt, Har-
old, Atzerodt. Pay n e , MichaelO'Laughlln, Ed war d Spangler,'Samuel Arnold, and Dr. Samuel A.Mudd, marched into the court
Harold Spangler
The government faced a differ-ent situation regarding Arnold,O'Laughlin, and Spanoler. It wastrue that Arnold had been a partyto Booth's original plot, which wasto capture, not kill, Lincoln. But itwas also true that Amold had with-drawn from the conlplracy longbefore Booth changed the IChem.to murder. O'LaughllnwQlt paint-ed all the .man who tried to leeGeneral Grant with the avowedpurpose of murdering him, buta host 01 wl!nesses alibied forO'Laughlin that he was with them,and nowhere near Grant or whereGrant was supposed to be, at theparticular time in question. As forSpangler, the govemment showedthat he probably arranged Booth'sget-away horse at Ford'i theaterthe night of the assasainatlon, butsince he worked at'the theater, andwas an admirer more· than anassociate oi Booth's, the govern-ment failed to prove his 'guiltyknowledge of Booth's plans.The proseeutors and court now
(Photo by Cel. B. P. Nlcltlba, u, s. A••••.•• Ac_.)The hcmgiDgof four of the coup1rator.. their bocUe. lIWlDgingfr.. after the dropplDg of the tra,..
under the heavy burden of Ironchains. Mrs. Surratt, dressed indeep black, was permitted to beseparaled from her co-defendantsbecause she was a woman.· Butshe, too, contemporary reports stat-ed, was chained. Hopelessnessdulled their eyes. Scour the courtas they might, they could see nofriends except their counlel-menwho realized the terrific oddsagainst them.The odds were terrlficlNot so much in the nine austere
men In uniform who were to jud'gothem as in the heinous enormity ofthe crime which had to be an-swered,Day alter day, as the days grew
hotter in Washington, the mill ofmilitary justice ground out Its caseagainst the eight defendants; morethan 130 government witnesses tes-tified. The defense itself calledmore than 125.
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No one questioned the fact thatBooth shot Lincoln. Therefore thecase against the prisoners depend-ed In no small measure upon theiractual or alleged associations withBooth. A multitude of witneRestook care of this important connec-tion. They saw Booth and. Mrs.Surratt together.' They saw herson, the lugitive conspirator, JohnSurratt; Dr. Mudd, and Booth to-gether. The y saw Booth andSpangler together. They sawBoothand O'Laughlln and Atzerodttogether. They saw Booth,Arnold,Payne, and Harold together. Thealliance seemed perfeCt.The cases against Payne, Harold.
and Atzerodt offered no unusualdifficulties of proof. Payne was In-
Mra. 81Ul'C1f:t
WASHINGTON
Booth "whenJohn was eb-.ent," He toldof driving herto Lloyd'l, atnearby Surratt·ville, and over-hearing herwhisper toLloyd to " havethoae thingsready.". Those" things" werecarbinel, se-creted withLloyd fiveweek. earlierby JohnSurratt.Harold, andAtzerodt. Lloyd himeelf assertedthat on the evening of the murderMrs. .Surratt cautioned him to"have them shooting Irons ready,as they will be wanted tonight."That midnight, Lloyd related, twomen, one with a broken leg, calledfor "them shooting irons," Themen were Boothand Harold; Boothhad just shot LincolnlIt was shown unquestionably
that Dr. Mudd set Booth's brokenleg (broken in his leap to the stagefrom Lincoln', box) in hi. homenear Bryantown, Md.. at dawn fol-lowing the shooting. It :wallshownthat soldiers pursuing Booth ques·tioned Mudd and he told themnothing 01 the dawn drama at hishome. It was shown that when hefinally did reveal that h. had as-sisted the Injured fugitive he de·nled he knew the man was Booth.It was shown that he had met Booththe previous winter in a proposedland deal, and so, the governmentcontended, should have reeogriizedhim.
If nothing else,ctrcumstancesweighed heavily again.t Mrs. Bur-ratt ClndDr. Mudd, and the news-'papers of the time commentedpointedly that they appeared gull·ty-" Dr, Mudd, certainly," Bothintroduced Impressive defenseswhich would have gone far In al-most any other case.But time. were bitter. 'n did not
help them, nor any of the other de-fendants, that the government pros-ecutors introduced such prejudicial
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VA.
•BOWLING GREENWhere Boothwas kill.d.
Map of regia aroUlldWcuhlDgtoD,ehowiD9locationof place. thcztfigured lD the c:oupiracy Ggaiut cmd
elaylDg of the Pr.ald.nf.
(~ClMI from ••• oW IIrelcIa ••.•• Harper'a Week.,..)Tha mUitary cODurli•• Jon be'ore which the couplrczton w.re tried. S.ated (l.ft to right)l Colo•• l ClendeDba,Brig. O.D. Howe. Brig. QeD,E1ldD. Maj. QeD.HUIlt.r.Brig. QeD. Fo.ter. Aut. Judga Adyoccd. BlDghema.cmdJudge AdYocateHolt. StcmdlDg(left to right): Brig. O.D. HcmiI. CoL TompJdu. MaJ. OeD. Wallace. Maj.
QeD.Eau••.•aDd CoLBara.tt.
deed the man "with the wildgleam in his eyes" who invadedthe home of Secretary Seward andknifed Seward as he lay 11lin bed.Seward's two Ions; his houseman.William Wells, and his nurse,Sergt. George Robinson, couldmake no mistake about him. AndHarold was captured with Boothwhen the latter was slain. Atzer-odt was easily shown to be theman who rented a room above An-drew Johnson's in the Kirkwoodhouse, concealing in that room abowie knife and a navy qun whichhe moant to u•• -but lost courage-on Johnson.
JLtaerodt Arnold
came to Mrs. Surratt and Dr.Mudd,the human question marks of thetrial to this day,
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It waa shown unquestionablythat Mrs. Surratt's home was usedby Booth and the other conspira-tors, Including her. Ion John. Thete.timonyof twomen.LewisWeich-mann and John,M. Lloyd, placedMrs. Surratt on the gallows.Weichmann, star boarder In herhome and star witnel8 for the gov-ernment, gave a graphic picture ofthe conspirators meeting In herhouse and of her meetings with
O'taugbllD
evidence as the cruel treatment ofUnion soldiers in Confederata pM.-ons, or an attempt to burn NewYork,or an attempt to spread pesti.lence in northern citie.. Paslionruled the day, but it Is well to re-member that witnesses did to.tifyagaln,t each and every defendantand on the whole painted a notunplClueiblepicture of guilt agalnatall.This Is safd even against the
knowledge that the trial of theeight defendant. was vigorously,if not ruthiessly, conducted, thatthe defense coun.el Were hand-cuffed by drClsttcprocedure. and
Booth
that debatable elements of defensewere frequently decided in favor ofthe proaecutton.The military court retired for de-
liberations on June 29 and reporiedits findings to President JohnllOnonJuly 5. These were deaUt for MrB,Surratt, Payne, Harold, and Atzer-odt: life imprisonment for Mudd,Arnold, and o'Laughlin, and sixyearll' imprJsonment for Spang ler,The commission appended a ree-ommendatlon 01 mercy for Mrs.Surratt, but President Johnson onJuly 6 approved the findings with-out change and decreed that thoexecutions take place on the fol-lOWingday,This was the day that Anna Sur-
ratt called in vain to see the onoman - President Johnson- whocould save her mother. On thatday also Mrs. Surratt's lawyerltried te lave her by means of awrit of habeas COrpUl,only t9 befolled by President Johnson's sus-pension of the writ .. especially inthis case." Historians have mulledover Johnson's conduct in Mr., Sur-ratt's case, some even imputingbase ~otives for his refusal to grantclemency; But it should be saidleT him, first, that perhaps he neversaw the court's recommendation 01mercy, and, second. that he felt, aspart of his Tennesse. creed, womenno I.ss than men should suffer fortheir crimes.A few minutes after 1 o'clock on
this day Mrs. Surratt, 111 andweighted down· with chains, wasled to the gallows. Payne, calmand deeply concerned over Mrs.Surratt, whom he had' just declaredInnocent of complicity in the crime,followed. Harold, red-eyed andweeping, came next, and thensullen-eYed Atzerodt. The sun b~aldown brightly. A soldier held anumbrella over Mrs. Surratt's head.Soldiers formed a hollow equare in. the yard. Clergymen intoned pray.ers. and PClyne,standing next toMrs. Surratt, listened to the prayersof her religious consolers andgazed upon her "as a fond childon a parent," In the old prisonbuilding that looked down uponthis unbeautiful summer scene satAnna Surratt lislening for her par-ticular crash of doom.
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The four prisoners were orderedto stand on the trapdoors. Theywere secured hand and loot wUhwhite cloth strips. The noosel weroladjusted, Through fevered lip3Mrs. Surratt pleaded, "Please don'tlet me fall," Atzerodt muttered:"Farewell, gentlemen: take care,and good.by, gentlemen who arebefore me:' Payne tightened hisllPl'. Harold wept qUietly.Downbelow two loldlers yanked
away the 'Woodenprops that heldup the trapdoors. Four bodies shotdownward. Abraham Uncoln's as.sassination was avenged.Since that day in July, 1865, when
Mrs. Surratt and the others paidthe supreme penalty for tho "greatconspiracY," hietoriana have prettywell agreed that Mrs. Surrattshould not have been hanged. Thismuch should be said: If Weich-mann's and Lloyd's .toriel againsther were true she should havebeen hanged. And this m\i'chshould be added: Had' she beentried by a civil court instead of amllitary court Ihe probably wouldnot have been hanged.This deduct(on is fair-It is based
on the trial of Mrs. Surratt'. sonJohn two years later: He, not hismother, was the archconlplratorwith Booth. He was tried In a civiloourt in 1867. Welchmann andWoyd \'Il\Idall the others te.tlliedagatnat him.And yet a civil jury could not
~.., on hie guilt.
