Hanging Mary

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Hanging Mary Page 36

by Susan Higginbotham


  In 1870, a financially strapped John Surratt began a speaking tour in which he acknowledged plotting to kidnap President Lincoln but denied knowing of any plan to assassinate him; he also denied the involvement of the Confederate government in the kidnapping scheme. As for his mother, John claimed that he had made contact with her lawyers and was told to stay away; not until the day his mother was hanged did he realize that her life had been at stake. Victorian audiences, however, found his lectures both unseemly and insufficiently revealing. When a furor erupted over his plan to speak in Washington, John canceled his lecture and retired from the public eye. After a few unhappy years working as a teacher, he moved to Baltimore and found work at the Old Bay Line steamship company, where he spent the rest of his career, rising eventually to the position of auditor. In 1872, he married Mary Victorine Hunter, with whom he had seven children. He died in 1916, reportedly having burned a memoir, and was buried in Baltimore.

  Isaac Surratt never married. He also worked at the Old Bay Line. Following his death in 1907, he was laid to rest in Mount Olivet by his mother and his sister, in accordance with his dying request.

  After the conspiracy trial, Louis Weichmann abandoned his plans to become a priest. Instead, he worked for the government in Philadelphia. His brief marriage to Annie Johnson, a temperance activist, ended in a separation. In 1886, after a change in administration cost him his government job, he moved to Anderson, Indiana, where some of his family lived, and opened a business college. Weichmann died in 1902, swearing on his deathbed that he had told the truth at the conspiracy trial. Unlike his erstwhile friend John Surratt, he did leave behind a memoir, which was finally published in 1975.

  Olivia Jenkins testified on behalf of her cousin John Surratt at his trial in 1867. The following year, she married Robert Thorn, by whom she had a daughter and a son. In 1879, the widowed Olivia married James Donohoe, whose two brothers were married to two of her sisters. She died in 1898 of influenza at her home in Capitol Hill. Her son served as a pallbearer for both Isaac and Anna Surratt and for Anna’s husband.

  Mary Apollonia Dean married Napoleon Bonaparte Grant, a railroad engineer who died in a train wreck in 1894, a few months before Mary’s own death. John T. Holohan died in 1877; his wife, Eliza, who had been working as a “sewer of books,” followed in 1899.

  Catherine Virginia Baxley returned to Baltimore after being released from prison. While at Old Capitol Prison, she kept a diary in the pages of Tennyson’s Enoch Arden, in which she recounted the death of her son. The diary eventually passed into the hands of her niece, who gave it to the New York Public Library. I have not found out when she died; the last trace I have found of her is in 1867, when she wrote to Robert E. Lee about some funds he had donated to benefit Southern orphans.

  John Brophy continued to proclaim Mary Surratt’s innocence after her execution. He married the blue-blooded Elizabeth Warren Tyler, a relative of President Tyler, in 1866 and eventually moved to New York City, where he was the president of St. Louis College, a small Catholic school in Manhattan, and later a clerk of court. The father of a large family, he died in 1914. His diverse interests included the Fenian movement and his wife’s genealogy, on which he and his sons published an endearingly snobbish little book.

  Mr. Howell was released from prison shortly after the executions of Mary Surratt and her codefendants. He died in 1869 of typhoid fever and was buried in Washington’s Congressional Cemetery under the name of Gustavus Howell.

  Mary Surratt’s tenant John Lloyd gave up his ill-fated career as a tavern keeper and returned to Washington, where he worked as a bricklayer and a contractor. He was fatally injured on the job after falling from a scaffold in 1892. Writing of his role in the Surratt trial, the Washington Post claimed that despite the importance of his testimony in sending Mary to the gallows, he believed her to have been an innocent victim of circumstance.

  Although Mrs. Slater was brought up frequently during both the conspiracy trial of 1865 and John Surratt’s trial in 1867, she was never linked to the assassination plot and never seems to have been arrested or even questioned. One paper, the Hartford Courant, identified her during the conspiracy trial as the former Sarah Gilbert, an erstwhile resident of Connecticut. But no one followed up on this scoop for over a hundred years, until in the 1980s, famed assassination researcher James O. Hall painstakingly traced her history from birth through April 1865, after which she disappeared into obscurity. Further research by John Stanton shows that she surfaced briefly in Manhattan in 1866 as Nettie Slater to divorce her husband, Rowan Slater. She remarried twice and died in Poughkeepsie, New York, as Sarah A. Spencer in 1920. Eschewing the lecture circuit and leaving no memoir behind, Sarah took her secrets to the grave, the marker of which shaves some ten years off her age. (Ironically, her third husband was a Union veteran.)

  Those who study the Lincoln assassination in depth will have noticed the absence of some of the minor players in the events of that terrible Good Friday of 1865. Indispensable as they may have been in life, they proved dispensable in fiction! In the same vein, although Mary Surratt had two female servants toward the end of her stay in Washington, for simplicity’s sake, I have combined them into one person: Susan. Otherwise, in telling Mary’s story, I have stayed as closely to known facts as possible. For the trial testimony I used Ben Perley Poore’s transcript and adhered closely to the original, although it has been heavily condensed and in some cases altered slightly for the sake of readability. The letter Johnny gives to his mother prior to the failed kidnapping attempt is my own invention.

  While Adele Douglas did come to the White House to beg President Johnson for clemency for Mary Surratt, there is nothing to suggest that she did so at Nora’s request, although there was indeed a connection between Adele and Nora in that both were alumnae of Georgetown Visitation. Likewise, although press accounts record that an unidentified lady accompanied Anna to the White House and the Old Arsenal Prison on the day of Mary Surratt’s death, there is no evidence that this lady was Nora or that she watched the execution. Nora, however, seemed to me to be the likeliest candidate to have been Anna’s companion, especially since Nora was one of the select company present at Mrs. Surratt’s reburial in 1869, by one account riding in the first carriage with Anna. As for whether Anna herself saw her mother’s execution, recollections given years after the fact vary. Lewis Powell’s lawyer claimed in 1915 that Anna watched until fainting at the sight of the noose around Mary’s neck; John Brophy, on the other hand, recalled in 1880 being told by General Hancock that he should on no account permit Anna to witness the hanging. Given Anna’s near-breakdown at her mother’s trial, I found Brophy’s account more likely.

  In 1881, George A. Townsend, a prominent reporter of the day, noted rumors that Father Joseph Finotti “got into such a flirtation with Mrs. Surratt that it raised a commotion, and he had to be sent to Boston to get him out of the scandal.” While it seems unlikely that either party misbehaved, it is a fact that Father Finotti was transferred from Maryland to Massachusetts, and Mary’s surviving letters to Father Finotti suggest that she was aware that the two had been the subject of gossip. Her letters also make it clear that she sorely missed the company of the priest, to whom she confided her worries about her children’s futures and her dismay and disgust at her husband’s alcoholism.

  Nora’s romance with Private Flanagan is fictional, as are Private Flanagan himself, the Misses Donovan, and Nora’s friend Camilla, although a young lady by that first name is mentioned in passing in a surviving letter to Nora. Her kiss by Booth is fictional as well. Nora was indeed arrested twice in April 1865 and was ordered to be held apart from the rest of the ladies following her second arrest. She gave testimony for both sides at the conspiracy trial and at John Surratt’s trial.

  Within a few years after Mary Surratt’s execution, both her boardinghouse and her tavern were lost to creditors. Both buildings survive, but their fates have been quite different. Renumbered as 604 H Street NW and missing
the front staircase that led to Mary’s parlor story, the boardinghouse now houses a Chinese restaurant: if you eat there, you will be sitting in the dining room where Mary and her boarders took their meals. As for the tavern in Prince George’s County, the house gradually fell into disrepair and seemed destined for the wrecking ball until it was saved by historical preservationists in the 1970s. Restored and filled with period furnishings, it now is known as the Surratt House Museum and can be toured by the public. A modern building behind the house hosts the James O. Hall Research Center, an indispensable resource for those researching the Lincoln assassination. Surrattsville itself was renamed Clinton some years after Mary’s death.

  Although most of the Old Arsenal Prison, where Mary and her codefendants were imprisoned and executed, has been destroyed, the building in which the trial was held has survived. Located in Grant Hall on what is now the Fort McNair Army Base, the courtroom has been reconstructed and is periodically open for tours. As Nora noted in her narrative, the Library of Congress now occupies the site of the Carroll Annex, while the United States Supreme Court perches on the site of the main Old Capitol Prison. The National Hotel, where John Wilkes Booth resided, was destroyed in 1942; the Newseum stands in its place. The post office where Nora got her mail (not to be confused with the Old Post Office from a later decade) still stands and has been converted into the Hotel Monaco.

  In the 150 years since Mary Surratt’s execution, the question of her guilt has continuously been debated by passionate advocates on both sides. Equally debatable is when John Wilkes Booth changed his plan from kidnapping to murder and whether his mission had the approval of Confederate leaders. Rather than give you my thoughts, I suggest you read some of the books and publications I list below, which represent only a tiny fraction of those that have been written, and continue to be written, about the tragic events of April 14, 1865, and the people caught up in them. One caveat: the subject is addictive, and having delved into it, you may never have an empty space on your bookshelf again.

  Alford, Terry. Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth.

  Kauffmann, Michael W. American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies.

  Larson, Kate Clifford. The Assassin’s Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln.

  Loux, Arthur F. John Wilkes Booth: Day by Day.

  Ownsbey, Betty J. Alias “Paine”: Lewis Thornton Powell, the Mystery Man of the Lincoln Conspiracy.

  Pitch, Anthony S. “They Have Killed Papa Dead!”: The Road to Ford’s Theatre, Abraham Lincoln’s Murder, and the Rage for Vengeance.

  Steers, Edward, Jr., ed. The Trial: The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators.

  Surratt Courier. Monthly newsletter by the Surratt Society, based at the Surratt House Museum.

  Swanson, James L. Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer.

  Tidewell, William A., James O. Hall, and David Winfred Gaddy. Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln.

  Trindal, Elizabeth Steger. Mary Surratt: An American Tragedy.

  Weichmann, Louis J. A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and of the Conspiracy of 1865.

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  1. Even though Mary’s role in the conspiracy puts Nora in jail twice and ruins her prospects of getting a government job, and despite Nora’s high regard for President Lincoln, Nora remains loyal to Mary. Would you have been?

  2. In a lecture given in 1870, John Surratt claimed that while hiding out in Canada, he sent an agent to confer with his mother’s attorneys and was advised that Mary was in no danger and that any action on his part would only make matters worse. Many have speculated that if he had come to Washington, Mary would have been spared and John would have been hanged. Would you have returned in his position? Whose death do you believe Mary could have borne better, John’s or her own?

  3. As John Surratt reminds Mary, following Ulric Dahlgren’s failed raid on Richmond, papers were found on his body detailing a plan to kill Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. Assuming the papers were genuine, do you think such a plan, if carried out, would be regarded as an atrocity or as an act of war?

  4. Mary Surratt maintained until the very last that she was innocent of the charges against her. Do you believe that she was innocent of conspiring to kill the president? Of conspiring to kidnap him?

  5. In prison, Mary tells Anna that she is stronger than she realizes. Is she right? How do Anna and Nora change over the course of the novel?

  6. Defending his kidnapping plot in his lecture, John Surratt said that his motives were honorable and that any young man in the North would have gladly entered into a plan to kidnap Jefferson Davis. Do you agree? What if John and his accomplices had succeeded in kidnapping President Lincoln in March 1865?

  7. President Johnson believed that if he pardoned Mary Surratt, it would only encourage women to commit treason. Do you agree with him? Would you have pardoned Mary? What about Powell, who failed to kill Secretary Seward? Atzerodt, who lost his nerve and never tried to kill Vice President Johnson? Herold, who assisted Booth’s escape but shed no blood? What of the fact that each of the four, had he or she alerted the authorities, could have saved President Lincoln’s life?

  8. Bearing in mind that under the law of the time, Mary would have not been allowed to testify, but a jury would have had to reach a unanimous verdict, do you believe she would have met the same fate had she been tried in a civilian criminal court?

  9. While on the run, John Wilkes Booth wrote in his pocket calendar that his assassination of the president “was not a wrong, unless God deems it so.” Few would agree with him in President Lincoln’s case, but can assassination ever be justified? What if one of the numerous plots to assassinate Hitler had succeeded? What about the assassination of a terrorist leader?

  10. The two leading witnesses against Mary Surratt were her boarder, Louis Weichmann, and her tenant, John Lloyd. If Weichmann had refused to cooperate with the government, do you believe Mary could have been convicted on Lloyd’s testimony alone? What if only Weichmann had testified?

  11. In his lecture, John Surratt emphatically denied plotting to assassinate President Lincoln. Do you believe him?

  12. At trial, Louis Weichmann claimed that he had confided his suspicions about John Surratt and his companions to a colleague at the War Department. If your close friend was involved in criminal activity, would you notify the authorities? What if the offense was a relatively minor one? What if your friend’s activities were treasonous? Do you believe that Weichmann knew more about John Surratt’s activities than he admitted?

  A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR

  What drew you to Mary Surratt’s story?

  I’ve always been interested in the Lincoln assassination, but I’d never read about it in depth. A few years ago, I read James Swanson’s Manhunt, and it rekindled my interest. I picked up Kate Clifford Larson’s book about Mary Surratt’s role in the conspiracy, The Assassin’s Accomplice, and it occurred to me that Mary would make an excellent subject for a novel. The fact that I lived just a few hours away from the setting of the novel made the idea even more appealing.

  How did you research Hanging Mary?

  There’s a wealth of material related to the Lincoln assassination, including witness statements and transcripts of the conspiracy trial, so that part of the book wasn’t at all difficult to research—it was more a matter of accumulating all of the sources and sifting through them. What was a bit more challenging was researching the character of Nora Fitzpatrick. I knew nothing about her life after 1869 when I began researching the novel, so to get started, I put a query into the Lincoln Discussion Symposium, a discussion board where there’s almost no question relating to Abraham Lincoln or the assassination that someone can’t answer. Sure enough, someone was able to provide me with some basic genealogical information about Nora—as well as the shocking fact that she had died in an insane asylum. F
ortunately, St. Elizabeths’s records from the nineteenth century are available to the public, so I was able to obtain her file. Even better, her brother had written a long letter to the superintendent detailing her history. From that, I learned where Nora had gone to school, and I also got some insight into her character.

  I also made use of both the National Archives and the District of Columbia Archives, where I looked through prison records, wills, guardianship reports—everything I could that was connected with Nora or her family. Much of what I learned never made it into the book, but it was great fun finding it out. My dream now is to be locked in the vaults of the National Archives for a weekend.

  One source I found tremendously helpful was newspapers from the period. Not only did they publish detailed accounts of major events such as the president’s assassination, the conspiracy trial, and the executions, but they published what we would consider the most minor of human interest stories—such as an article about the retirement of Nora’s father from his bank, which gave me not only a little history of him, but some keys to his personality.

  Did you change your mind about any of your characters?

  I started the novel thinking of Anna Surratt as a high-strung bigot—I really didn’t like her much. But as the novel progressed, I began to like her more, and I developed a great deal of respect for her. It took a strong character, much more than she’s usually given credit for, to get through those horrible weeks culminating in her mother’s execution with her sanity intact.

  John Surratt is another character I warmed to. He didn’t exactly play a heroic role in history—staying away from his mother in her hour of need—but I found it hard to dislike him. His letters to his cousin, including the one Nora sneaks a peek at, are lively and winning, and he speaks of his mother with warmth. A letter from his granddaughter in the files of the James O. Hall Research Center speaks of him as a loving husband and father who was haunted by his mistakes in 1865.

 

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