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Questioning the degree of infamous-crime complicity
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Published: October 5, 2008
THE ASSASSIN'S ACCOMPLICE: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln. By Kate Clifford Larson. Basic Books. 263 pages. $26.
The name of John Wilkes Booth is infamous to most Americans as the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. But he did not work alone, and among those caught up in his conspiracy was Mary Surratt, a 43-year-old boarding house owner and Confederate sympathizer who became the first woman executed by the United States.
Contemporaries and historians have debated Surratt's guilt since her hanging on July 7, 1865. Was she an innocent, deeply religious widow trapped by circumstances and convicted by an illegitimate, vengeful military court? Or was she a manipulative rebel fully involved in Booth's scheme, who -- as Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, declared -- "kept the nest that hatched the egg"?
In the book's introduction, Kate Larson says she began her research believing that Surratt was more innocent of the charges than the trial determined -- but ended up believing that she was actually very much guilty.
Roughly half of the book chronicles the events of the months leading up to the assassination; the other half details the trial of the suspects and the poor job done by Mary's defense.
Mary's son John worked as a Confederate spy, and in December 1864 he was introduced to Booth, a well-known actor with a daring plan: to kidnap Lincoln and exchange him for Confederate prisoners of war. The two became fast friends, and over the next few months, Booth spent a great deal of time at the boardinghouse that Mary ran in Washington. Spies and co-conspirators came and went, sometimes staying at the boarding house, sometimes merely visiting. Booth often met with John, but if he were not available, he would meet with Mary.
The Surratt family owned a tavern in Surrattsville, Md., 12 miles south of Washington, which became key in Booth's plan to smuggle Lincoln across the Potomac to Virginia. John and other conspirators hid guns in the tavern and made arrangements to have a boat at the ready to facilitate the escape.
For all Booth's planning, a good opportunity to carry out the kidnapping never arose, and when Richmond fell to the Union army in early April 1865, Booth became desperate. He changed his plot from kidnapping to assassination -- he would kill Lincoln and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant when they attended a play at Ford's Theatre, while other conspirators killed Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward, leaving the Union leaderless and in disarray. Booth hoped this would give the South a chance to regroup.
Whether John Surratt -- or Mary -- knew about the change in plans is unclear. John was out of town on a spy mission for the Confederacy at the time, leaving Richmond hours before its capture on a courier trip to rebel supporters in Canada. The day of the assassination, Mary traveled to Surrattsville, ostensibly to deal with a local man who owed her money. However, she never met with him, only sent him a letter, and told the tavern-keeper to have the hidden guns ready, as they would be needed that night. She also delivered a package for Booth that contained field glasses.
Immediately after the assassination, suspicion fell on the Surratt boarding house, as John Surratt was known to be friends with Booth, who had escaped in the turmoil surrounding his shooting of Lincoln. Mary and her boarders were questioned. As police were there to search the house a few days later, conspirator Lewis Payne -- who had been hiding in a local cemetery since attacking and nearly killing Seward in his home -- showed up looking for help from Mary. This bit of poor timing "would be the beginning of the unraveling of Booth's plot and Mary's fatal path to the gallows."
Booth was shot to death during his attempted capture in northern Virginia 12 days after the assassination, leaving eight alleged co-conspirators to be tried by a military tribunal. John Surratt was not one of them -- he remained in hiding, and Larson's disgust at his failure to surrender himself to help his mother is evident.
All the defendants were found guilty, with Mary and three others sentenced to be hanged. Mary was publicly reviled during the trial, with onlookers hissing insults at her in court and negative descriptions of her printed in newspapers. And yet, a public seemingly convinced of her guilt was then surprised by her subsequent execution. Because she was a woman, most expected her to be imprisoned, not killed. Despite ordering Mary's death, five of the jurors signed a letter recommending clemency for her. Even the man responsible for tying her noose left it unfinished the night before, expecting her sentence to be reduced. The shock over her execution caused a swing of public opinion from condemnation of her guilt to outrage over her death and belief in her innocence.
For those unfamiliar with the broader aspects of Booth's plot, The Assassin's Accomplice provides an interesting, detailed and well-researched examination of its scope and the involvement of Mary Surratt. However, the sheer number of people heavily or tangentially involved in the scheme creates a large cast of characters, which can sometimes be confusing if one is not paying careful attention. A glossary of people would have been helpful in keeping them all straight.
Also, Larson is prone to dropping in rhetorical questions, hinting at suppositions that can be neither proved nor disproved -- such as wondering if one peripheral character is simply a random lodger or perhaps a Confederate spy, but offering no evidence to support her ponderings. This muddies the account and creates a sense of unnecessary sensationalism.
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