The Assassin’s Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln

164 Pages·2008·1.33 MB·English

by  Kate Clifford Larson

Table of Contents

Title Page
Dedication
Introduction

CHAPTER ONE - “DEVOTED BODY AND SOUL TO THE CAUSE”
CHAPTER TWO - CREATING A LIFE, BUILDING THE NEST
CHAPTER THREE - REBELS, SPIES, AND COURIERS
CHAPTER FOUR - KEEPER OF THE NEST
CHAPTER FIVE - THE ASSASSIN’S ACCOMPLICE
CHAPTER SIX - A SHREWD WITNESS
CHAPTER SEVEN - THE “MATERFAMILIAS” OF THE CRIMINALS
CHAPTER EIGHT - THE CASE FOR THE DEFENSE
CHAPTER NINE - THE VERDICT: SWIFT AND DEADLY
CHAPTER TEN - SCENES AT THE SCAFFOLD

EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
NOTES
INDEX
Copyright Page

For Spencer, Rebecca, and Trevor.
With all my love.
Southern Maryland.
Washington, D.C.
INTRODUCTION
At 1:22 P.M. on July 7, 1865, forty-two-year-old Mary Elizabeth Jenkins Surratt
was hanged for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to murder President
Abraham Lincoln. She would be the first woman ever executed by the United
States government.
By the summer of 1865, practically every American knew who Mary Surratt
was. To them she was either a hard-hearted, manipulative co-conspirator who
aided in the plan to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, or an innocent
woman trapped in Booth’s murderous web and subjected to a vengeful and
bloodthirsty military tribunal. Hanged with three male co-conspirators beside
her, Mary’s fatal punishment sent shock waves around the nation. Today, nearly
150 years later, few Americans know her story and still fewer recognize her
name.
Mother, widow, businesswoman, and a deeply pious Catholic, Mary Surratt
seemed an unlikely assassin’s accomplice. Until now, the reasons behind her
choice to participate in such a deadly scheme have gone relatively unexplored.
Looking back into Mary’s past, however, one might find the seeds of
rebelliousness and disloyalty nurtured in a fertile rebel community.
From her birth and upbringing in a modest slaveholding family in a small
Maryland town, to her conversion to Catholicism (made much of during and
after her trial) and her early marriage to an alcoholic ten years her senior, Mary’s
life story seems unremarkable in its detail. But clues to her fateful decision to
befriend and support Lincoln’s murderer may be found in the deep disruptions
brought on by the Civil War and her husband’s sudden death in 1862. Left with
his massive debts to pay off, Mary may have discovered a strategy for survival:
providing a safe haven for Confederate couriers, spies, and ultimately, assassins.

On the day of her hanging, Mary Surratt was the most reviled woman in
America. But public opinion shifted again and again from the time of her arrest
through the century and a half since her execution.