(Boston Globe) Ty Burr and Wesley Morris review Robert Redford’s historical drama about President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in ‘The Conspirator.’

I found this article on the internet:

The Hanging of Mary Surratt
Judicial murder and government dirty linen–Part One

by Al Benson Jr.

After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, eight people were put on trial and found guilty–four sentenced to long prison terms and the other four sentenced to hang. One of those sentenced to hang was Mary Eugenia Jenkins Surratt, the first woman ever to be hung in the United States. John Wilkes Booth had supposedly been shot and John Surratt had escaped to Canada, eventually to make it all the way to Europe. These eight were seemingly all that were left and the government wanted to make sure they talked as little as possible to anyone.

Historical opinions have been divided as to whether Mary Surratt was really guilty as one of the Lincoln assassins. Author Nathaniel Weyl has called Mary Surratt “…an innocent woman hanged for conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln.” My own opinion is that this is pretty close to the truth. That doesn’t mean that Mrs. Surratt was totally without knowledge of all that went on. She may well have been aware of the proposed attempts to abduct Mr. Lincoln, but, as far as assassination went, I don’t think she had a clue.

When it came to the conspirators’ “trial” (if such it can really be called) Mrs. Surratt had a good lawyer to start out with, Reverdy Johnson, former U.S. senator and, in 1849, U.S. Attorney General, and at the time of her trial, a Maryland senator. According to the book The Lincoln Conspiracy: “He was such a formidable opponent, it was immediately apparent to the prosecution that he must be removed. Johnson was to be assisted by Frederick Aiken and John W. Clampitt, each in practice only one year and each trying his first big case. Clampitt was 24 and Aiken even younger.” After some judicial maneuverings, the prosecution succeeded in getting Johnson to remove himself and so Mrs. Surratt was stuck with the two younger, more inexperienced lawyers. While they did the best they could they were no match for the legal scalawags the federal prosecution brought forth to handle them.

The way the federal government dealt with Mrs. Surratt was strongly reminiscent of the way it would later deal with the Plains Indians in the far West–it flat out broke its word, but then, what else have we come to expect from government? Otto Eisenschiml wrote in In the Shadow of Lincoln’s Death“When the Washington authorities put hoods over the heads of the men accused of conspiracy against Lincoln’s life, they committed a strange act. When they added stiff shackles–manacles which made writing impossible–and forbade all intercourse with the outside world, there arose a misgiving that the purpose was not punishment, but the enforcement of silence.” Eisenschiml also noted that the government changed the prison locations of those not hung from Albany, New York to the far-out Dry Tortugas, where the convicted men were confined, literally for years in solitary cells and were prevented from conversing with any outsiders. You have to wonder what the government was afraid these men would have to say, and whatever that might have been, they were going to make darn sure no one ever heard it.

One man on Edwin Stanton’s staff was Colonel William P. Wood, the man who ran Old Capitol Prison. Though he worked for the government, it appears that Colonel Wood still had some modicum of conscience left. In 1883 he wrote a series of articles for the Washington Sunday Gazette, in which he sought to tell all he knew about the conspiracy trial, most of which he said had never been revealed to the public. Again, what else is new? Even today we get sanitized versions of everything from who killed Kennedy to the war in Iraq.

Wood wrote of Mrs. Surratt that: “…there were guarantees made to her brother by the writer, upon authority of Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, that she should not be executed.”  Wood hinted that such guarantees were given “…in exchange for information by Mrs. Surratt’s brother regarding (John Wilkes) Booth’s probable course of flight. The fact that the War Minister made such a promise gives food for thought. Very likely, he had at no time intended to live up to his promise.” And Wood, calling attention to this rank betrayal, said “…these conditions were violated, and…this deplorable execution of an innocent woman (followed).”

The court announced the guilty verdict on the morning of July 6th. Mrs. Surratt was not informed of it until the middle of the day, at which time she found out she was to be hung at noon the following day. Eisenschiml observed that “Such a short space of time between a sentence and its execution is practically unheard of.” Apparently whatever Mrs. Surratt and the others knew, the government was going to make sure they had no chance to pass it on to others.

John T. Ford, owner of Ford’s Theater, followed all these events as long as he lived. You could say he had somewhat of a consuming interest, so he gathered what facts he could. In 1889, he revealed something most people had never heard. He said that: “The very man of God who shrived her soul for eternity was said to be constrained to promise that she should not communicate with the world. Mr. Clampitt, one of her lawyers, confirmed what Ford stated. Mrs. Surratt pleaded with the priest to be allowed to tell people before she died that she was innocent of the crime of which she had been convicted. The priest refused her. It seems he had been made to tell her, after absolution and the sacrament, that she should be prevented from making any declaration as to her innocence. The priest later denied this. If the government had nothing to cover up, allowing her to make a last statement would have hurt nothing.

However, Eisenschiml has noted that: “What was vital was this: the condemned woman must not be permitted to harangue the crowd from the scaffold. There she might go beyond the mere question of her guilt, and every one of her words would be broadcast by news-hungry journalists.” And the powers that be couldn’t have that now, could they? Interestingly, our so-called “history” books never reveal any of this. The winners of the War of Northern Aggression have deemed that all this is information we are better off without. That way we don’t know enough to ask embarrassing questions.

To be continued.

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About the Author

Al Benson Jr.’s, [send him email] columns are to found on many online journals such as Fireeater.Org, The Sierra Times, and The Patriotist. Additionally, Mr. Benson is editor of the Copperhead Chronicle [more information] and author of the Homeschool History Series, [more information] a study of the War of Southern Independence. The Copperhead Chronicle is a quarterly newsletter written with a Christian, pro-Southern perspective.

 (1914-1996) – This Hot Springs native who grew up in Hope was known as the “Queen of Country Western Music.” She was one of the first country singers to successfully cultivate a cowgirl image. Her 1935 recording “I Want To Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart,” which included a virtuoso yodeling piece, was the first big hit by a female country singer, making her the first female country singer to have a single sell more than one million copies. She wrote over 200 songs during her career. She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996, shortly following her death. www.patsymontana.net

I went to see the movie “The Conspirator” the other night and I really enjoyed it. Since then I have been digging up facts about the trial and the people involved in the trial.

Ray Suarez reports on a new film profiling Mary Surratt, the sole woman implicated in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and the questions raised about the use of military commission trials, both then and now. He is joined by screenwriter James Solomon and retired U.S. Army Col. Fred Borch

Mary Jenkins was born in in Waterloo, Maryland, in May, 1823. Educated at a Catholic femaleseminary in Alexandria, Virginia, she married John Harrison Surratt when she was seventeen. The couple went to live on land that he had inherited just outside of Washington at Oxon Hill. In 1851 a fire destroyed their home the couple decided to rebuild a combined home and tavern.

In 1853 Surratt purchased 287 acres of farmland in Prince George’s County. He built a tavern and post office and the community eventually became known as Surrattsville. Surratt worked as the local postmaster until his death on 25th August, 1862.

In October, 1864, Mrs. Surratt decided to rent the Surrattsville property for $500 a year to an ex-policeman, John M. Lloyd, and moved to a house she owned at 541 High Street,Washington. To make some extra money she rented out some of her rooms.

During the American Civil War, her eldest son, John Harrison Surratt, joined theConfederate Army. Her other son, John Surratt, worked as an agent for the Confederacy. He met others working as secret agents including John Wilkes Booth who stayed at the Surratt’s boardinghouse when he was in the area. It is not known if Mrs. Surratt knew if these men were working for the Confederacy.

On the 17th April, police officers arrived at Mrs. Surratt’s boardinghouse. Lewis Powell was also at the house and the two of them were arrested and charged with conspiring to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. When the police searched the house they found a hidden photograph of John Wilkes Booth, the man who had assassinated Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre on 14th April.

Louis Weichmann, one of Mrs. Surratt’s borders, and John M. Lloyd, the man who rented the tavern at Surrattsville, were also arrested and threatened with being charged with the murder of Abraham Lincoln. Kept in solitary confinement both men eventually agreed to give evidence against Mrs. Surratt in return for their freedom.

On 1st May, 1865, President Andrew Johnson ordered the formation of a nine-man military commission to try the conspirators. It was argued by Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War, that the men should be tried by a military court as Lincoln had been Commander in Chief of the army. Several members of the cabinet, including Gideon Welles(Secretary of the Navy), Edward Bates (Attorney General), Orville H. Browning (Secretary of the Interior), and Henry McCulloch (Secretary of the Treasury), disapproved, preferring a civil trial. However, James Speed, the Attorney General, agreed with Stanton and therefore the defendants did not enjoy the advantages of a jury trial.

The trial began on 10th May, 1865. The military commission included leading generals such as David Hunter, Lewis Wallace, Thomas Harris and Alvin Howe and Joseph Holt was the government’s chief prosecutor. Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael O’Laughlin, Edman Spangler and Samuel Arnold were all charged with conspiring to murder Lincoln. During the trial Holt attempted to persuade the military commission thatJefferson Davis and the Confederate government had been involved in conspiracy.

Joseph Holt attempted to obscure the fact that there were two plots: the first to kidnap and the second to assassinate. It was important for the prosecution not to reveal the existence of a diary taken from the body of John Wilkes Booth. The diary made it clear that the assassination plan dated from 14th April. The defence surprisingly did not call for Booth’s diary to be produced in court.

At the trial John M. Lloyd told the court that on the Tuesday before the assassination Mrs. Surratt and Louis Weichmann visited him. Lloyd claimed that Mrs. Surratt “told me to have those shooting-irons ready that night, there would be some parties who would call for them. She gave me something wrapped in a piece of paper, which I took up stairs, and found to be a field-glass. She told me to get two bottles of whisky ready, and that these things were to be called for that night.”

When Louis Weichmann testified he told the court that he had seen John Wilkes Booth, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodtand David Herold in Mrs. Surratt’s house together. This supported the prosecution’s claim that the boarding house was where the assassination plot had been planned.

Weichmann also testified that as far as he knew Mrs. Surratt was not disloyal to the Union cause. A large number of friends and neighbours also appeared in court and stressed that they had never head her express support for the Confederacy.

Execution of Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold and 
George Atzerodt at Washington Penitentiary on 7th July, 1865.

On 29th June, 1865, Mrs. Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael O’Laughlin,Edman Spangler and Samuel Arnold were found guilty of being involved in the conspiracy to murder Lincoln. Surratt, Powell, Atzerodt and Herold were all sentenced to be hanged at Washington Penitentiary on 7th July, 1865.

Five out of the nine members of the Military Commission, recommended that Mrs. Surratt be shown mercy “due to her sex and age”. President Andrew Johnson was later to say he was never told this and he gave the order to hang the woman who he pointed out “kept the nest that hatched the egg”.

On 7th July, 1865, Mary Surratt, still pleading her innocence, became the first woman in American history to be executed by the federal government.

 (b. 1968) – Born in Atlanta, Texas, this country music artist spent his early years in Foreman. His hits include “Alibis,” “Sticks and Stones,” “If the Good Die Young,” and “Outlaws, Rebels and Rogues” from the movie “Maverick.” In 2007 he released his first studio collection in three years featuring the hit singles “Find Out Who Your Friends Are,” and “Til I Was A Daddy Too.” He was named Billboard’s Top New Male Vocalist in 1992, the Academy of County Music’s Top New Male Vocalist in 1993, and has received many other awards over the last several years. www.tracylawrence.com

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Whatever happened to some of the main characters in the Orsini McArthur murder case? Carl Wilson’s story is below (part 2)

Trouble did seem to follow Carl, no matter where he went or whom he befriended. Many of his problems with the law were of his own making.

A few were just plain bad luck. In October 1974, while he was working as a construction foreman at a job in Saline County, Carl shot a co-worker in the thigh.

The shooting was ruled self-defense. Eight years later, Carl emerged as a pivotal witness in the investigation into the July 1982 slaying of Alice McArthur. Alice, the wife of prominent Little Rock attorney Bill McArthur, was murdered by two gunmen.

A few months before her death, someone tried to kill her by putting a bomb under her car. The explosives used to make the device were later traced to Carl Wilson. The man who bought them was Eugene “Yankee” Hall, a friend of Carl’s. Yankee and Larry McClendon would later be convicted of first-degree murder in Alice McArthur’s death.

The hitmen were hired by Mary Lee Orsini, who was convicted of capital murder. Carl testified against Orsini in her 1982 trial. He told the jury that Yankee and Orsini drove out to his home in Mayflower to pick up the explosive that was later used to build the bomb planted in Alice McArthur’s car. At that time, Tammy was living there, but the couple weren’t yet married. While Orsini and Tammy rode three-wheelers, Carl and Yankee smoked marijuana and took a walk to a hunting cabin on the property, Carl gave his buddy a shampoo bottle filled with Tovex, a plastic explosive used in construction. Carl said Yankee told him he wanted the explosive to blow up some stumps. During the lengthy investigation and grand jury proceedings involved in the McArthur case, Carl testified that he had few visitors to his out-of-the-way home. “I just try to stay off up there by myself,” Carl testified. “Even got a sign down there where you come in across the cattle guard: ‘Leave Me Alone.’ ” When asked if he had any enemies, he replied: “No. I don’t do people wrong.” Two days after testifying against Orsini, Carl found himself the subject of another shooting investigation after he killed his best friend, William E. “Sonny” Evans. Carl told detectives that Evans was showing him a .22-caliber rifle in the bedroom of Evans’ home and had taken out the clip when the telephone rang. While Evans went to answer it in the living room, Carl and Tammy examined the gun. The rifle had a unique safety lock on the trigger, and Carl told detectives he was pulling the lock back and forth when the gun fired.

Although the clip had been removed, there was a bullet in the chamber. Authorities ruled the shooting accidental. Five years later, on March 18, 1988, Carl shot Tammy at their home. In the midst of a fight about visiting Tammy’s parents, a drunken Carl pointed a .22 rifle at his wife and fired.

He missed the first time. On his second try, he didn’t. The bullet entered Tammy’s left side, hitting her liver and then ricocheting through her body. As she lay bleeding on the floor of their home, Carl was running around “like a wild man,” she says. Finally, he leaned over his injured wife. “My God, what do I do?” he asked. “Get me some help,” Tammy begged. “As far as I was concerned, he could go to hell in a handbasket,” she says, recalling the three months she spent in the hospital. “I hated him.” From his jail cell, Carl begged for a second chance.

Against the advice of many, including her father, Tammy took him back, but with strict stipulations, she says. “You take another drink, you hit me, you don’t go to church — then this is over,” she told him. Police dropped the case against Carl after Tammy refused to press charges. That same year, Carl went to work for Johnny Burnett’s pool and spa contracting business. Four years later, on July 21, 1992, Burnett was found shot to death in his Little Rock home, and Carl was again involved in a high-profile murder case. While police charged Burnett’s wife, Scharmel Burnett, in her husband’s murder, her defense attorneys pointed to Carl as a potential suspect. One of the documents they used to back up their assertion was a nine-page handwritten report by a Little Rock detective detailing a conversation with a Faulkner County law enforcement source. “According to the source, Carl Wilson was a shady character, and if he wasn’t the triggerman, he probably knew who was,” detective Ronnie Smith wrote. “Wilson is a drug user and probably involved in drug trafficking, according to the source.” Adding to the suspicion was Carl’s soured relationship with his former boss when Burnett fired him. The two men also were in a dispute over a worker’s compensation claim Carl made against Burnett’s company. Burnett was killed before the claim was resolved. Prosecutors questioned Wilson about the Burnett murder but determined that he had an alibi.

Scharmel Burnett was tried twice but was never convicted. No one else has ever been charged. Carl’s name didn’t appear in newspapers again until he was killed. “I got the impression that he was an old outlaw who had reformed,” prosecutor Melody Piazza recalled on the day of the shootout. “He had a new wife and … seemed to have changed his life.”

Once an alcoholic who sometimes lost himself in violent rages, Carl became a new man after shooting his wife, longtime friends say. That was almost 13 years ago. “Carl was so proud that he never took another drink,” says Stan Joyner, Carl’s boss at a construction company for several years. After Tammy’s shooting, Carl appeared to make good on his promise to reform, say the dozen or so friends who have known the couple in both good times and bad. Carl was eventually forced to retire after several light strokes and heart surgery. He wandered around Mayflower and Conway during they day, coffee thermos always in hand. In the evenings, he played dominoes and watched television well into the early-morning hours.

His dresser is covered with stacks of videotapes. Still known for a sharp wit and a rough-edged demeanor, Carl seemed to be slipping gratefully — if not always gracefully — into his retirement. In their many years together, Tammy says, this period was definitely the couple’s most peaceful era. “If this had happened 15 years ago, I wouldn’t have questioned it,” she says of the raid. Standing in Carl’s bedroom, which is still pockmarked with bullet holes, Tammy wonders what her husband could have been up to that would have piqued the interest of the ATF. “I’m willing to accept whatever it is. I just need to know. I hope that with all my heart there are no surprises.

But good or bad, I’ll take what they hand me.” Tammy has a few theories of her own. A family vendetta may have prompted some of Tammy’s relatives to go to the police with stories about Carl, she says. Tales of drugs, weapons and the note tacked onto his closet door may have been enough to open an investigation, she muses. She also thinks that perhaps some longtime law enforcement authorities, frustrated by their inability to do no more than link Carl to various crimes, might have been waiting for an opportunity — no matter how small — to strike. “Carl always had a past that haunted him,” Tammy says. “Society never pardoned him, but I know God did.” She describes a long-ago encounter with Buford, saying that during the McArthur trial, the ATF agent approached Carl in a courthouse hallway, telling him, “I’ll get you.” Buford says he cannot comment, adding that he would very much like to. Tammy’s life with Carl, as well as the nature of his death, have made her suspicious of law enforcement. After the shooting, she and Carl’s friends scoured the house, collecting slugs, shell casings and taking photos. All of these items have been turned over to Tammy’s attorney, she says. She also went to the funeral home before anything was done to Carl’s body and took pictures of all his wounds. “When I saw his face wasn’t distorted, God gave me the strength to take those pictures.”

As she sat in the state trooper’s car, waiting for word of her husband’s fate, Tammy occupied herself by counting vehicles. Twenty-six unmarked cars. Four state police cars. Four hours passed. The officers milling about were nice to her, she says. “None of them were mean or rude or ugly. The SWAT team was what scared the hell out of me.” Tammy finally dredged up the nerve to ask a trooper about Carl. “Is he alive or dead?” “Well, ma’am, I don’t think it’s fair to keep you in the dark,” she says the trooper told her. “He’s dead.” As Tammy’s handcuffs were removed, another trooper asked her, “Ma’am, is there anyone I can call to come comfort you?” Tammy asked for her mother, but she wasn’t home. Her grandfather, Daddy John, came instead. When he arrived, they sat there for two more hours. Finally, a white pickup with a camper shell arrived. “And that’s what they took Carl Ray Wilson out in,” Tammy says. Still barefoot and clad in her white, flower-sprigged nightgown, Tammy clutched her grandfather’s hand and turned away from her house. He drove her away in a white Cadillac, telling her that everything was going to be OK. But everything isn’t, Tammy says. It won’t be, she says, until she knows what happened and why.