Mary Surratt

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Mary Elizabeth Eugenia Jenkins Surratt (May/June 1823 in Waterloo, Maryland, USA – July 7, 1865 in Washington, D.C), was accused of taking part in the Abraham Lincoln assassination conspiracy. She was the first woman executed by the United States federal government, after being tried and found guilty, and was executed by hanging. She was the mother of John Surratt, also alleged to be involved in the conspiracy.

[edit] Early life

Mary was born to Archibald Jenkins and Elizabeth Anne in southern Maryland. She had two brothers. Her father died when she was two years old. Mary enrolled at a private Catholic girl's boarding school, Academy for Young Ladies, in Alexandria, Virginia. Mary Jenkins married John Harrison Surratt, a fellow Roman Catholic and a farmer of French and Spanish ancestry, in 1839, whose family had settled Maryland in the 18th century and where the community they lived, Surrattsville, was named for them. At the time of the wedding Mary was sixteen and Surratt was twenty-seven. They had three children, Isaac (1841), Elizabeth Susanna Surratt (1843-1904), and John, Jr. (1844). The Surratts engaged in many means of livelihood, consecutively and simultaneously, over the next two decades. They farmed tobacco on a 287-acre (1.16 km²) tract purchased in 1852 and supplemented their income by operating a general store, a gristmill, a tavern, and a post office. They were nevertheless continually plagued by financial worries, a problem exacerbated by John Surratt's alcoholism. Biographer Elizabeth Steger Trindal in her book Mary Surratt: An American Tragedy gives evidence that John Surratt was physically and emotionally abusive to his wife and may have even pressured her to prostitute herself to guests in their tavern (the latter based more upon century old speculation by her acquaintances than on solid evidence). Though the border state of Maryland was officially Union, as slaveowning farmers, the Surratts were Confederate sympathizers following the outbreak of the Civil War. Their tavern regularly hosted fellow sympathizers, including actor and fellow Marylander John Wilkes Booth, and their post office did double duty as a United States and Confederate post office. The full extent of the family's involvement in clandestine Confederate activities may never be known, but it is known for certain (being in fact introduced at her trial) that weapons and cash for Confederate agents were stored at their tavern. John Surratt died suddenly, probably of a heart attack, at the family homestead and tavern in August 1862. Though the marriage had not been happy, his death left his widow far from relieved as she was in desperate circumstances financially and even in danger of eviction. The family slaves had either run away or been repossessed (it is unknown exactly what became of them), the purchase of a substantial amount of property from them which had given hope of resolving the financial difficulties resulted in a default on the part of the buyers, and John's many creditors still pressed to collect. Mary leased the family farm and tavern to a former Washington D.C. policeman named John Lloyd and moved with her three children to the small but well located townhouse at 541 H Street inherited from John Surratt's relatives and transformed its upper floor into a boardinghouse, employing her only remaining asset in one of the few means considered respectable for an indigent young widow, and with the home's convenient location to government buildings she was able to eke out a very modest living for herself and her family.

[edit] Lincoln assassination connection

Surratt and her family were Southern sympathizers. Her older brother, Zadoc Jenkins, was arrested by Union forces for trying to prevent an occupying Federal soldier from voting in the Maryland elections that gave Lincoln a second term. Until his death in 1862, her husband, John Surratt Sr., had operated a tavern and U.S. Post Office (he served as U.S.Postmaster), which was also the polling place, at a crossroads that was known as Surrattsville, thirteen miles (19 km) southeast of Washington, D.C.. After the assassination, the town was renamed Robeysville and later Clinton, Maryland. In 1864, Mary Surratt rented the tavern and farm to John Lloyd, a former Washington policeman, and moved with her children to Washington, D.C., where she set up an eight-room boarding house on H Street. This boarding house was the site of meetings between her son and the other Lincoln conspirators, including John Wilkes Booth. Her son later admitted that he was actively involved in an earlier plot to kidnap the president, but claimed he was not involved in the assassination. He testified at his own trial that he had been in Elmira, New York enroute to Montreal, Canada, when Lincoln was shot. He also denied that his mother had been involved in the plot in any way.

On the day of the assassination, Mary rode out to her tavern with one of her boarders, Louis J. Weichmann, a young War Department clerk, who was a friend of her son, John Surratt, Jr. Although Mary Surratt claimed to have made the journey to collect back rent owed to her by her tenant, John Lloyd, Lloyd later testified against her, saying she gave him a package containing field glasses and told him to " make ready the shooting irons." This referred to two repeating carbines and seven revolvers that she had bought and stored for the conspirators on her property. After assassinating President Lincoln at Ford's Theater, John Wilkes Booth did in fact make his first stop at the Surrattsville tavern along with his accomplice David Herold. The innkeeper, John Lloyd, gave them whisky, pistols, and one of two Spencer carbines as well as the field glasses. He claimed Surratt had told him to do this when she arrived earlier that day. They then proceeded to travel south, helped by many of the same Southern sympathizers who had aided John Surratt in his activities as a courier for the Confederacy.

[edit] Arrest and trial

While Surratt was being questioned by police in her boarding house, Lewis Powell, the former John Mosby's Ranger, who had attempted to assassinate Secretary of State Seward, appeared at her door. Although witnesses testified she had met Powell several times, she denied ever having seen him before, thus linking her further to the conspiracy.

Held in military custody under sweltering conditions, Mary Surratt had her head enclosed in a padded canvas bag to prevent a suicide attempt. She was also kept manacled. She was constantly guarded by four soldiers. For two weeks after her arrest and before her trial, she was held on board a warship that was being used as a prison for the conspirators. Her cell only had a straw pallet and a bucket as furniture. During their trial, Surratt and the other alleged conspirators were taken to the old arsenal where the Military Tribunal took place. During the trial, a newspaper described her as a rather attractive five foot six inch buxom forty year old widow. She was the only woman conspirator and the oldest on trial. She and Lewis Powell received the most media attention. It was popularly believed that Mary was on trial as a means of forcing her son out of hiding. That did not happen, and she was found guilty by the military court and sentenced on June 30, 1865, to be "hanged by the neck til' she be dead" for treason, conspiracy, and plotting murder. Military tribunals had less strict rules of evidence than civilian trials and it was highly irregular for a civilian to be tried by one. Moreover, the government suppressed Booth's diary during the trial, which would have been essential to Surratt's defense since it contained evidence that Booth had planned kidnapping, not murder, but changed his mind on the last day. Surratt may not have known of this and so might not have been guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, one of the crimes of which she was found guilty.

Despite these evidentiary problems and the desperate pleas of her daughter, President Andrew Johnson signed her death warrant, saying that she had "kept the nest that hatched the egg" and was second only to Booth in the designing of the plot. There is some dispute over whether he ever saw the military judges' recommendation that her sentence be commuted to life of permanent solitary confinement in a penitentiary.

Because she and several other of the conspirators were Roman Catholics, there was speculation that the assassination was somehow connected to a papal plot. There was still fairly rampant anti-Catholic sentiment in the country at that time.

[edit] Execution

At noon on July 6, Surratt was informed she would hang to death the next day. She wept profusely. She was joined shortly by a Catholic priest, her daughter Anna, and a few friends. She was allowed to wear looser handcuffs and leg irons during this period, but was kept hooded. She spent the night praying and refused breakfast. Her friends were ordered to leave her at 10:00 on the morning of July 7th, and her heavy manacles were replaced. She spent the final hours of her life with her priest.

On July 7, 1865, around 1:15 P.M., a procession, led by the nearly fainting Mary Surratt and consisting of the four condemned prisoners and many guards, were led through the courtyard, with their hands manacled and legs chained with heavy irons and 75-pound iron balls, past their own graves, and up the thirteen steps to the gallows to be hanged. Mrs. Surratt had to be supported by two soldiers. The actual gallows was on a ten foot high platform. The hangman had made Surratt's noose with five turns instead of the required eight because he had thought that the government would never hang a woman.

The condemned were seated in chairs while their chains and shoes were removed and their wrists were tied together behind them, their arms were bound to their sides, and their ankles and thighs were tied together. Instead of rope, white cloth was used. Mrs. Surratt wore a long black dress and black veil. The doomed men and woman were attended by several priests. Over one thousand men, women, and children came to watch them die. The condemned men and woman were then moved up to the break, the nooses were placed around their necks, and thin white cotton hoods were placed over their heads. The hoods were not a mercy for the condemned, as they could easily see through them, but to prevent the spectators from seeing the lolling tongues and blue faces of the condemned as they died. The soldier who was preparing Surratt placed the knot behind her left ear to quicken her death but it would slip back behind her neck as the drop fell. General Winfield Scott Hancock read out the death sentences in alphabetical order. He then clapped his hands three times, and four members of Company F of the Fourteenth Veteran Reserves knocked out the supporting post releasing the platform. The conspirators dropped about five to six feet, which proved insufficient to break their necks. Mrs. Surratt bounced up as the rope went taut and then writhed and gagged for a few seconds, trying to free her hands. She quickly became still except for a twitching of her hands and intermittent gagging noises that continued for several minutes.

She and the other convicts were allowed to hang for 25 minutes. She was 42 years old. Her last words, spoken to a guard as he put the noose around her neck, were "please don't let me fall." She was executed along with Powell (also known as Payne), Herold (who stayed with Booth until his death in a Virginia tobacco barn), and George Atzerodt (a German immigrant from Port Tobacco, Maryland, who was tasked with killing Vice President Johnson, a mission he failed to complete).

[edit] Burial

All of the bodies were placed on the coffins by the gallows (which were actually gun boxes), declared dead by doctors, and unceremoniously buried with the hoods still on and a glass vial containing their names to help identify the bodies. Several pieces of the rope that had ended Surratt's life and locks of her hair were sold as souvenirs.

Four years later Anna Surratt made a successful plea to the government for her mother's remains. Today, Mary Surratt is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C., 1300 Bladensburg Road, NE. Her headstone reads simply "MRS. SURRATT." Anna Surratt and Isaac Surratt were buried on each side of their mother. John Surratt was buried in Baltimore. John Lloyd, whose testimony possibly sealed Mary's fate, is buried less than 100 yards (91 m) south of her in the same cemetery. (His simple tombstone is marked John M. Lloyd).

[edit] Surviving family and home

Mary's son John was ultimately captured after several years as a fugitive, hiding in various Catholic religious establishments, including the Vatican. In September 1865, he traveled from St. Liboire to Montreal, to Quebec, then to Liverpool. He served for a brief time in the Papal Zouaves under the name John Watson. Arrested in 1866, he escaped and traveled to the Kingdom of Italy posing as a Canadian citizen. He booked passage to Alexandria, Egypt, and was arrested there by American officials on November 23, 1866, and extradited to the United States. He was sent home on a U.S. naval warship and put on trial. He was ultimately released after a mistrial and the statutes of limitations had run out on lesser charges. The government attempted to retry him and was unsuccessful. He died in 1916.

Mary Surratt's boarding house is still standing in the Chinatown area of Washington D.C.; it is now a Chinese restaurant called Wok and Roll. The Surrattsville tavern and her house are historical sites run today by the Surratt Society located in Clinton, Maryland.

[edit] Bibliography

• The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth; George Alfred Townsend; Classic CD Books; ISBN 978-0976480532
• Manhunt: The Twelve Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer; Swanson, James L.; William Morrow; ISBN-0-06-051849-9

[edit] External links

• Mary Surratt
• Read through the Lincoln Assassination Papers about evidence against Mary Surratt
• Surratt Society
• Mary Surratt at Find A Gravefi:Mary Surratt