Mary Surratt--remember that name.
Popular actor and infamous assassin John Wilkes Booth, son of famed Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth, was a rabid Southern sympathizer. Booth hatched a plot to kidnap the 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, mainly to hold him hostage for the purpose of securing the release of Confederate soldiers being held as prisoners by the Union army.
Aided by two childhood friends from Baltimore (later indicted for conspiring to murder Lincoln), Booth's plan was to kidnap Lincoln at Ford's Theatre--where the president often visited to unwind during the final stages of the Civil War--tie him up and lower him from the presidential box onto the stage.
One of Booth's cohorts scoffed at the idea and the impracticality of pulling it off. That kidnap attempt was abandoned. Later, another plan developed. Lincoln was to be captured while seated in his carriage on the way to see a play titled Still Waters Run Deep, a benefit at Campbell General Hospital for wounded Union soldiers just outside Washington, D.C.. This plot also failed, as Lincoln decided to stay in town that evening in mid-March of 1865.
Booth attended Lincoln's last public speech in Washington on April 11, mere days before he killed Lincoln at Ford's Theatre. What perhaps pushed Booth to kill instead of capture was the president's comments during that speech which included allowing black suffrage.
In the week before the assassination of President Lincoln on April 14, 1865, a plot to kill Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and cabinet members was conceived at a boarding house in downtown Washington. Booth thought that the dismemberment of Lincoln's staff would create chaos; thus Confederate prisoners being held would be released to live to "fight another day."
The boarding house was owned and managed by John Surratt Sr. and his wife, Mary. The Surratts were typical run-of-the-mill Southern Confederates. In fact, most if not all of those in Maryland and the states surrounding the District of Columbia were anti-Union. John Surratt Sr. died in 1862 and left the boarding house and a tavern he owned in Surrattsville, Md. (now Clinton, Md.) to Mary. They had a son, John Jr., and a daughter, Anna.
Booth shot President Lincoln at short range with a derringer while Lincoln was seated in the theater's presidential box at approximately 10:17 p.m. April 14. After a brief struggle with Lincoln's guest Major Henry Rathbone (who initially grabbed and held the assassin after witnessing Booth shoot Lincoln), Booth dropped his one-shot derringer, retrieved a Bowie knife from his waistband, and slashed wildly and upwardly at Rathbone's arm, causing Rathbone to release his grip.
Booth then vaulted over the balustrade onto the stage. Upon getting up from his knees, he confronted the shocked audience, who didn't yet know what they were witnessing. Booth approached the front of the stage and, holding his knife up high, shouted "Sic Semper Tyrannis" (Latin for "thus always to tyrants," the motto of Virginia and the phrase that supposedly originated from Marcus Junius Brutus during the assassination of Caesar). He then exited the stage to the back door of the theater, where he jumped on his horse and fled to southern Maryland.
Booth and one of eight initial conspirators were on the lam for 10 days before Booth was cornered in a tobacco barn and shot. The conspirator with him gave himself up to authorities that surrounded the barn. Booth, who was determined not to be taken alive, refused to come out after being ordered to do so. A Union soldier named Boston Corbett shot Booth with his revolver between the slats of the barn. Some surmise he shot the assassin against orders.
Abraham Lincoln died early in the morning on April 15. Andrew Johnson was unscathed when one of Booth's co-conspirators, assigned to murder the vice president, got cold feet. Johnson was sworn in as president shortly after Lincoln's death.
Boarding house owner Mary Surratt had a son named John H. Surratt Jr. He was a Southern sympathizer and knew he and Booth had something in common. Surratt Jr. was recruited by the Confederacy as a secret agent and spent most of his time delivering messages and escorting other agents between Richmond, Va., and Canada. Mary knew about the conspiracy and allowed Booth, her son and other conspirators to use her boarding house as a meeting place. Mary was pro-Confederate, and was enamored of the handsome actor Booth.
Shortly after the assassination, the eight conspirators were rounded up and sent to prison to await a military tribunal ordered by President Johnson. The trial started on May 10, 1865, and all were found guilty. Four were sentenced to the gallows, the rest to life in prison. John Surratt Jr. was indicted but had fled the country before he could be captured and brought to trial.
Mary Surratt met her demise at the end of a rope, making her the first woman to be executed in the United States. The military tribunal recommended a pardon and vacating of the death sentence for Mary, based on her sex and gender. The plea for clemency of Surratt's sentence to President Johnson was delivered by Judge Joseph Holt, representing the military tribunal.
After Mary Surratt was executed, President Johnson said he never saw the clemency plea. He added that "she kept the nest that hatched the egg," which suggests Johnson was bolstering his belief that she was guilty and deserved the harshest sentence allowed.
Randal Berry is a musician, a former snake wrangler at the Little Rock Zoo, and an amateur historian.
Editorial on 04/15/2018