Should Mary Surratt have been hanged?

[Frank]

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve read American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies and Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer

Between the two, and my previous knowledge of the assassination conspiracy, I’m convinced that the Mary Surratt verdict was not justice.

She had only the same knowledge of the conspiracy that Arnold and McLaghlen did: an intended kidnapping of Lincoln. (Mudd was an accessory after the fact (as were many others never tried; Cox and Jones, for instance) and probably a kidnapping conspirator, and Spangler was completely innocent.)

I do not believe that Mrs. Surratt had any more knowledge or support of Booth’s last-minute decision to assassinate Lincoln than any one else did except for Powell, Azerodt, and Herold.

Her hanging was a miscarriage of justice.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

Hysterical grief-spurred rage demands its pound of flesh, and whether the victim deserves to be butchered is irrelevant.

[Frank]

@EddyTeddyFreddy

Hysterical grief-spurred rage demands its pound of flesh, and whether the victim deserves to be butchered is irrelevant.

Yes, but even given the hysteria, and the fact that the trials and executions took place less than three months after the assassination, Surratt was no more guilty than Arnold or Mudd, and her sentence should have been in line with theirs.

[gonzomax]

I went to the Dry Tortugas and saw the prison where Mudd did his hard time. It was a horrible place with no water and 6 foot stone walls. They had the floor rings in the cells where they chained the prisoners. It was a cruel and nasty place. It is 60 miles out in the ocean west of Key West.

[dropzone]

No, she should not have been executed. Done some time, yeah.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

Yes she did deserve to be hung, a person who has knowledge of a conspiracy to kill or kidnap the President yet doesn’t report it to authorities is guilty of treason.

[ElvisL1ves]

Dr. Mudd was a whole lot guiltier than Surratt, or several others who swung for it, and should have been there too. How’s that?

[BobLibDem]

Not believing in capital punishment, I say none of them should have hung. But based on the laws of the time, yes she was guilty. She certainly knew of the kidnap plot. She denied knowing Lewis Powell (aka Paine), yet he was a frequent visitor to her boarding house. If Lloyd’s and Weichmann’s testimonies are to be believed, she was in it up to her eyeballs. Then you have Atzerodt’s lost testimony, which if true, makes the case. http://home.att.net/~rjnorton/Lincoln82.html

Booth told me that Mrs. Surratt went to Surrattsville to get out the guns (Two Carbines) which had been taken to that place by Herold. This was Friday.

Mudd was in it as well and he probably should have hung too. The only one that seemed to get screwed was Spangler.

[gonzomax]

I have heard some impassioned historians claim Mudd was only guilty of fixing Booth’s leg. Involved deeply enough to deserve hanging, I doubt it.

[BobLibDem]

That’s a popular belief but I don’t buy it. http://webpages.charter.net/lincolnbooks/Mudd.html

Disclaimer: I have not actually read the book nor do I yet own it.

The evidence Steers’ presents to answer the first claim, that Mudd was the innocuous country doctor who did not recognize Booth, is nothing short of overwhelming. Steers even goes so far as to state that had the military commission had all the evidence that historians have today, Mudd would not have received a sentence of life imprisonment. Instead, Steers states, “the tribunal would certainly have voted the death sentence for Mudd.” (70).

Steers demonstrates quite clearly that Mudd had strong connections to the Confederate underground. He served as a courier for mail being sent north from Richmond. The author deftly uses Mudd’s own statements, as well the statements made by others, to establish that Mudd had indeed met John Wilkes Booth on three separate occasions prior to his appearing at Mudd’s house in the early hours of April 15, 1865. On one of those three occasions Booth was an overnight house guest at Mudd’s home.

Further, the evidence strongly suggests that Mudd was an instrumental operative in the plan to kidnap President Lincoln and sprint him off to Richmond. It was this conspiracy which, in time spawned into the murder plot. It was Mudd who introduced John Wilkes Booth to John Surratt, another participant in the kidnapping scheme. Mudd also introduced Booth to Thomas Harbin, who would prove useful in getting Booth and Herold across the Potomac River during their flight from the authorities. Thus, the author shows that Mudd was more than someone who aided Booth during his flight from justice, but that he was in fact instrumental in the planning of the scheme to kidnap Lincoln, which developed into the assassination plot. Steers also ably demonstrates that Mudd did in fact cooperate in helping Booth and Herold on their flight from the authorities, and was thus an accessory after the fact to the murder.