Five of Mary Surratt's Judges Asked the President to Spare Her. He Said He Never Saw It.

Five of Mary Surratt's Judges Asked the President to Spare Her. He Said He Never Saw It. On 7 July 1865 Mary Surratt became the first woman executed by the United States government, hanged at the Washington Arsenal for her part in the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln. Attached to the record of her trial was a petition signed by five of the nine army officers who had convicted her, asking President Andrew Johnson to commute her sentence to life imprisonment. Johnson later said he had never seen it. Joseph Holt, the Judge Advocate General who brought him the record, said he had. The official version is short: she kept the boarding house where the conspirators met, she knew, and she was hanged for it. This film follows the documents: the tavern at Surrattsville, the house on H Street, the testimony of John Lloyd and Louis Weichmann and what the defence said about them, the military commission that tried civilians, the prosecution witness later jailed for perjury, the petition, the last-minute writ of habeas corpus, and the argument between Johnson and Holt that was never settled. A note on accuracy: whether Mary Surratt knew of the plan to murder Lincoln is still argued by historians, and the film gives the evidence on both sides rather than a verdict. Whether Johnson saw the clemency petition is unresolved; both men's accounts are given. No photograph of the execution is shown. CHAPTERS 0:00 The seventh of July 1:16 Maryland 2:13 The debts 2:51 Weichmann 3:10 Booth 4:36 March 5:00 The shooting irons 6:03 Ford's Theatre 7:01 The pickaxe 8:37 The barn 9:16 Johnson 9:47 No jury 11:15 The defence 11:53 The witnesses 12:59 Bingham 13:46 The petition 14:37 The last day 15:56 John Surratt 16:38 Holt and Johnson 17:59 Afterwards 18:38 Close Thirtieth film in a series on Gilded Age America. Same method as the rest: the official version, then the documents. SOURCES Benn Pitman, The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators (1865). The petition for clemency, 1865, National Archives. Joseph Holt, Vindication of Judge Advocate General Holt from the Foul Slanders of Traitors, Confessed Perjurers and Suborned Felons (1873). John W. Clampitt, "The Trial of Mrs. Surratt", North American Review, September 1880. Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866). Louis J. Weichmann, A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (1975). Kate Clifford Larson, The Assassin's Accomplice (2008). IMAGE CREDITS Library of Congress; National Archives; Harper's Weekly; Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper; Harvard Theatre Collection; The Photographic History of the Civil War. All public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. #MarySurratt #Lincoln #TrueCrime #History #CivilWar