HRRJOHN WILKES BOOTH EVADED CAPTURE FOR TWELVE days. On April 26 pursuing Union cavalrymen surrounded him and co-conspirator David Herold in a barn near Port Royal, Virginia. Herold surrendered, but Booth refused to come out. Shot through the neck, he died that evening.
In addition to Booth, Herold, and the elusive John Surratt, seven others were accused of plotting against President Lincoln, Vice President Johnson, and Secretary of State Seward. Those suspects were Lewis Powell, also known as Lewis Payne (left), who attacked Seward; George Atzerodt, who was assigned to kill the vice president but backed down; Mary Surratt, the mother of John Surratt and proprietor of a Washington boardinghouse where the conspirators met; Dr. Samuel Mudd, who treated Booth’s broken leg and allowed Booth and Herold to spend the night at his Maryland home; Michael O’Laughlin, who was linked to an earlier plot to kidnap Lincoln; Samuel Arnold, who was implicated in that same plot; and Edman Spangler, who worked at Ford’s Theatre and arranged for another employee there to wait with the horse on which Booth escaped.
A military commission under the close direction of Secretary of War Stanton presided over the trial, which lasted two months. The outpouring of grief expressed during the national mourning for Lincoln fueled the demand for vengeance and hatred of the prisoners, whose treatment was torturous. Many people agreed with Stanton, who wrote: “The stain of innocent blood must be removed from the land.”
Several of the men accused of conspiring with Booth were confined to their cells in shackles (opposite), and Stanton had eight canvas hoods made that covered the prisoners’ eyes (overleaf) and were to be worn at all times except in court. Only Mary Surratt was spared wearing a hood as Stanton sought to avoid the possibility of public sympathy being directed toward the one female conspirator.
On June 20 the military commission found all eight suspects guilty. Lewis Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt were sentenced to death and hanged on July 7, 1865. The remaining four defendants were imprisoned at Fort Jefferson in Florida. HRR
SEWARD’S ASSAILANT Pictured with his hands shackled, Lewis Powell is identified here by his alias, Payne. He entered Seward’s home on the night of April 14, slashing at anyone standing in his way, and stabbed the secretary of state in the chest and face. Powell then fled on a horse held by David Herold and was later arrested at Mary Surratt’s house.
LOCKED AWAY Among the relics of the imprisonment of the eight accused conspirators, held at Washington’s Old Penitentiary, are the cell key, shackles and hoods. The hoods were designed to be cinched around the prisoner’s neck with a rope. In 1903 the War Department transferred these and other materials related to the conspiracy to the Smithsonian.
