Why Does Gov. Want Mary Surratt Trial Info., Research, etc.?

[DemocracyInaction]

I attended a lecture last night by a Bowdin college professor who has written a book on Mary Surratt (the woman hanged with other co-conspirators in the Lincoln assassination).

Surratt (as the others) was tried my military tribunal (and was the first woman hanged by the Federal government). These trials were not held in civilian court because the Civil War was still going. They were viewed as "war crimes". Lee had surrendered several days before the assassination; but Johnston was still being chased by Sherman (first through GA and then into the Carolinas). Sherman was given the telegram about the assassination just as he was leaving to talk surrender with Johnston in Chapel Hill area. He did not tell his troops until after he first told Johnston. That's the background...now flash forward.

In her question and answer period, she referred to the federal government coming not long ago to the Surratt House Museum (it's the tavern/boarding house she ran)near D.C. It contains (as does the achieves), the transcript of the trial BUT it also has all sorts of info and material from people who have studied, published, researched, issued "opinions", etc. about this trial from right after it happened to the present. The government wanted all the material they had there. This prof has spent tremendous amounts of time at that place and with the family doing her research.

Anyway, for some reason the government has become very interested in this case as it pertains to establishing "past precedent", etc. Interesting.....they are going all the way back that far for some reason or other???! It's also interesting that it pertains to trying people by military tribunal during "war time" as opposed to civilian courts. However, the Civil War was a legit war and Iraq and the War on Terror are god-knows-what! I could say we are going to have a war on termites; and, thus, take you to jail and try you by a military tribunal!!! Any thoughts.

[Faygo Kid]

1. The boarding house she ran is now a Wok 'n Roll in Chinatown in DC.

The very same boarding house where the conspirators met is, amazingly, a Wok 'N Roll on H Street in Chinatown in DC. I know, I work only a few blocks away. The plaque is on the building. Freaks me out every time I walk past it.

Not to shoot down your main thesis, because conspiracy was the name of the game under Bush. But the boarding house is not a museum. Perhaps there is another place, but this is where the conspiracy took place.

[DemocracyInaction]

3. Surratt had a DC Home AND a Boarding house (Clinton, MD)

Surratt had a home in D.C. and would travel to the boarding house outside D.C. The crossroads tavern and boarding house where the conspirators met is in Clinton, MD (at the time it was actually Surrratville named after the establishment). What you are showing is her HOME not the tavern/boarding house that played a part in the assassination. It is a very extensive and well done museum AND this is a very top rate professor of a very prestigious New England college talking to a packed house of history profs and reasearchers. I tend to think (since she has spent months and months there) that she wasn't "makin' it up". In fact, a number of the audience had also visited it.

[Faygo Kid]

5. Chill! No accusation intended. We're on the same page here.

I merely pointed out that the H Street location is also a spot where the conspirators also allegedly met and is recognized as such, and is now a Wok 'n Roll, which I find pretty astounding.

Where did I say she was "makin' it up?" I will go to the museum you noted (live in Maryland), and thanks for the heads up. But the significance of the H Street house is considerable, as well.

It is, after all, mere blocks from Ford's Theater.

Did anyone ask her about the H Street house at the lecture you attended? I would be interested in her thoughts on it.

[DemocracyInaction]

7. Within the lecture..

...she pointed out this home. After Mary's husband died she had this home and had servants running the boarding house. Mary would be out there and then come home for a time, etc. One of the boarders would drive her back and forth (and I can't remember his name). I do know that a lower functionary in the War Dept. lived at the boarding house; thought something was up (because one of the guys kept showing up using other names); and reported it to a superior. The superior NEVER passed it on! Actually, there was so much spying going on that in essence the Feds knew that boarding house was involved for a long time! Anyway, for some reason I think it was this hapless fellow who kept driving her back and forth. The Feds, after the assassination, went out to the boarding house to talk with her because they suspected the son (who at the time was doing spy work in Canada) and then the guy who tried to "off" Seward walked in and the scene got so idiotic that they figured these two were up to their armpits in it all!! Anyway, she had talked about this "house" in D.C. but no one brought it up in discussion. I know there were so many meetings between all different factions that I assume they passed in and out of this house, too because they were always snooping around D.C. The first coming together of Booth was with either the husband or the son and that's how it all started to take place around the boarding house. Actually, as I think back, Booth may have told her that day "it was on" in this house because she then rushed out to the boarding house to get messages to some of these others to get the items Booth wanted stashed for him (like guns and binoculars, etc.). Anyway, in a post above, I've listed the book. You might be interested in it. She was extremely well spoken and detailed. Had no idea so much of these details were known (but then there was a lot of digging for years in and around this event that revealed a lot).

[truedelphi]

2. Is her innocence or guilt established?

Due to my last name somewhat sounding like hers, I have had older people back away from me.

And others come up and tell me that my ancestor was falsely accused. (Not my ancestor though)

I have heard that she was as guilty as everyone else, and also have heard that she was not.

What is the evidence saying?

Sidenote - it is also claimed that she haunts the modern day building that was built over the spot where she was kept in confinement until her hanging.

[DemocracyInaction]

4. truedelphi---

The book is "The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln" by Dr. Kate Clifford Larson. I, too, had heard all sorts of diffent takes on her guilt. But, after hearing the woman's lecture, it really is quite evident that she was very active in it all. Her husband and then her son actively went into the south and carried messages back and forth (spies)using the Post Office which they ran at "Surrettville" (which this crossroads were then called). She was also very involved in that "business". The original plot was to kidnap Lincoln. They got bad info that he was going the "Soldier's Home" outside D.C. but was not and, thus, the plot failed. This was a couple months before. Booth learned like the day before about Ford's theater and quickly met with Surratt and told her to alert the others that were waiting with guns, transportation, etc to get certain things ready for him. However, they basically were in the dark thinking it was still a kindnapping. Surratt knew it wasn't that anymore but rather an assassination. There, of course, was also the attempt that night on Seward (Sec. of State)and really a bloody scene at his house; and the guy who was to knock of Johnson (VP) backed off. The Feds were questioning Mary when the "Seward" assassin walked in and pretty soon it all unravled. Anyway, you might enjoy reading about it. The professor said that the "family" was very happy to talk to her until they found out the info she had on what Mary was really up to and then they didn't want to talk to her anymore. In the 1920's letters were found under a board in her closet from "the son" and it was quite evident that the woman was not innocent. (By the way, none of the accused were allowed to talk at the trial)!

[truedelphi]

6. I will have to read that book.

She has become a sort of adopted relative, though that does not mean I sanction her activities.

Also I spent many summers in the fifties and sixties in Washington DC and Fredricksberg VA, so have been to many of the usual "Washington ate here" style eateries, etc. My uncle lived not to far from a farm that Washington had lived on as a child (If memory is serving me.)

My funniest ocurrence of the "You must be related to that assaissinator!" story - I am campaigning for City Council in Suasalito. Have been going door to door for several hours. It is getting to be dusk. One more house, I think, then I will quit."

I leave my husband at the curb and walk down the winding walk to the front door. The guy inside hollers: "Who is it! You'll have to come in, I don't hear too good." I get in his house, and he had to be ninety five if not older. And suffering a bit from dementia.

I tell him my name, and he starts swearing and cussing me out! Then I realize he thinks I am Mary Surratt - not that I am related to her - that I am her!

I get him calmed down, and spend the next ten minutes talking to him about problems in Sausalito. But for a while there, I thought he was gonna call in General Grant!

[DemocracyInaction]

8. Closer than we know

Just when one thinks that war was soooo long ago............I met last year the granddaughter (yup, just ONE "grand") of Gen. James Longstreet. She is the daughter of Longstreet's oldest son (his first wife died and he remarried very late in life and produced this child). She's active and does remember things her father and an uncle used to talk about going on inside the general's home. Oh, and Longstreet, himself, remarried in his 80's to a woman in her 30's. They had no children. But, she died in 1962! I opened a trunk a few years ago and found my greatgrandfather's discharge from the Civil War (grandma was born in 1872 and died in 1973)! No wonder this war is still going on in some places..............