Katya Jestin, The Execution of Mary Surratt: A Dialogue on Gender in the Nineteenth Century (1996)

Born in Washington, D.C., Mary Jenkins married John Surratt, a Confederate sympathizer, and the couple bought a farm and opened an adjoining tavern in Maryland. Mary ran the farm and tavern, taking up the slack for John's heavy dranking. He died, leaving Mary in debt. During the Civil War, the tavern became a stop on the underground mail route from Richmond and a safe house for Confederates. Mary's son Johnny, the local postmaster, ran contraband to Richmond, while her son Isaac joined the Confederate army. In 1864, poverty forced Mary to lease the farm and tavern to John Lloyd and move to a house in Washington, DC. To make a living, she let rooms in the house to boarders, a respectable occupation for a woman.

John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin, originally planned to abduct Lincoln, take him to Richmond and demand political concessions and the release of Confederate prisoners as ransom. He planned a route and enlisted the help of Michael O'Laughlin and Samuel Arnold. Dr. Samuel Mudd joined the conspiracy and led booth to Johnny Surratt, who joined the plot and convinced George Atzerodt and Lewis Payne to join the conspiracy as well. The plotters often met at the Surratt boarding house, sometimes speaking with Mary in private. They originally planned to abduct Lincoln on his way back from a play outside D.C., but their plans were foiled when he did not attend the play. On April 14, 1865, Booth leanred that Lincoln would be attending a performance at Ford's Theater. He shot Lincoln and fled to the Surrattsville Tavern with David Herold. There, they retrieved evidence and rode to Dr. Mudd's farm. After Mudd treated Booth's leg, which he had broken in his flight from Ford's Theater, Booth and Herold traveled to a barn at the Garrett farm, on the northern shore of the Rappahannock River. Union soldiers found them there, setting the barn on fire when Booth refused to surrender. A gunshot was heard, Booth was dragged out of the barn, and he died there on the ground.

On April 17 th , Mary and her boarders were arrested. Although its jurisdiction was disputed, a military tribunal presided over the trial of the conspirators, including Mary. She was found guilty of harboring, concealing, aiding and abetting the conspirators. Lewis Weichman, one of Mary's boarders, testified that the defendants spent time at her boarding house and often met with her, that she carried supplies between Surrattsville and Washington and told Lloyd to be prepared to harbor Booth and his accomplices. His credibility is doubtful. He may have been under duress, testifying against Mary to save himself. Lloyd also testified against her, but he was drunk at the time. Evidence about Payne, however, damaged her cause. When he arrived at the boarding house during Mary's arrest, she said she'd never seen him before even though he had stayed at the boarding house before. The prosecution argued that she was a traitor and staunch Confederate, who did her womanly duties in service of the Confederacy.

The defense was grounded in nineteenth century notions of womanhood, according to which women exemplified domesticity and piety. Mary's defenders argued that as a wife, mother, and lady, she could not have been involved in politics. She may have hosted the conspirators, but that activity merely fulfilled her duties as a lady. She was unaware, the defense claimed, of either the content of the meetings the conspirators held at her boarding house or the significance of the goods she delivered. Although the defense convinced five justices to petition Andrew Johnson to sentence her to life in prison, he nevertheless ordered her death. She was hung on July 7, 1865.

 

Revised July 23, 2003 (MD)