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Abraham Lincoln Conspirator Hood |
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Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor Recipients
Abraham Lincoln Conspirator Hood
This is one of the canvas hoods Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton ordered to be made and placed over the heads of the eight Abraham Lincoln conspirators during their confinement in the Old Penitentiary. The hood covered the entire head, except for a small opening at the mouth to allow for eating. It was tied securely around the neck and was all the more stifling given the sultriness of Washingtons early summer weather. Mrs. Surratt was not made to wear a hood for fear of public indignation.
In addition to being confined in separate cells, each prisoner was placed in wrist irons and anklets connected to a seventy-five-pound ball. These medieval-like measures were all taken on the orders of Secretary Stanton, who believed at the time that Lincolns assassination was the result of a Confederate plot.
Edward Spangler, A manacled Lincoln conspirator.
Library of Congress
Division of Social History, Political History
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Behring Center - Transfer from the U.S. War Department
Following the murder of Abraham Lincoln, a search was started for Booth and his accomplice, David E. Herold, as well as others suspected of having been involved in any way with the assassination. On the night of April 17, 1865, Mary Surratt was arrested at her Washington boardinghouse and then taken before dawn of the next day to the Carroll Annex of the Old Capitol Prison. She remained there until April 30th, when she was transported by Colonel Baker in a buggy to the Washington Arsenal Penitentiary. It was in one of the administrative buildings at the Penitentiary that the assassination conspiracy trial was held.
The trial proceedings began on May 9, 1865, and continued until the end of June. On the 28th and 29th of June, the Military Commission which heard the case conferred and decided on the death penalty for Mrs. Surratt and her convicted co-conspirators Lewis Powell (alias Paine), George Atzerodt, and David Herold. The tribunal handed down life imprisonment to other conspirators, including Dr. Samuel A. Mudd. On July 7, 1865, Mary Surratt was hanged, along with Powell, Atzerodt, and Herold, thus marking the first time the U.S. government had executed a woman. Her fate had been sealed by her Surrattsville tenant, John M. Lloyd, who became a state's witness just prior to the trial. He testified that she had requested that he have field glasses and carbines ready for Booth and Herold when they arrived at the Surratt House late on the night of the assassination. Mrs. Surratt is further alleged to have delivered the field glasses to Lloyd for safekeeping earlier on the same day. Despite defense witnesses that attested to Mrs. Surratt's reputation as a gentle and deeply religious woman, Lloyd's testimony placed the rope around her neck.
Mrs. Surratt was tried along with 7 men. In jail Lewis Paine maintained Mrs. Surratt was 100% innocent. However, she was convicted mostly due to the testimony of John Lloyd and Louis Wiechmann. (These men drew great criticism for their testimony. However, nearing age 60 and dying, on June 2, 1902, Wiechmann allegedly called to his sisters, asked them to get pen and paper, and told them to write "This is to certify that every word I gave in evidence at the assassination trial was absolutely true; and now I am about to die and with love I recommend myself to all truth-loving people." However, this statement has never been produced and must presumed to be lost. Also, John Lloyd stuck to his damaging testimony at the 1867 trial of John Surratt). In court Mrs. Surratt was dressed in black, with her head covered in a black bonnet. Her face was mostly hidden behind a veil. The jury voted the death penalty for her but added a recommendation for mercy due to her "sex and age." The recommendation was that the penalty be changed to life in prison.
Ironically, at the time of her death, a case was pending before the Supreme Court, questioning the jurisdiction of military courts in cases involving civilians. In 1866, less than a year after Mary Surratt was hanged, the Supreme Court ruled that a military court had no jurisdiction in civilian cases, if the civil courts were open. When the assassination conspiracy trial was conducted by a military court in 1865, the civil courts in the District of Columbia were open! Had the Supreme Court ruling come a year earlier, Mary Surratt might never have been executed. It is significant that, with virtually the same witnesses and for essentially the same crime, a civil court of the District of Columbia was unable to convict Mary's son, John, when he was returned for trial in 1867.
Trial of the Assassination Conspirators
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