On This Day: Four convicted in Lincoln assassination conspiracy hanged - July 7, 1865
(edited from Wikipedia)
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The accused were tried by a military tribunal ordered by Johnson, who had succeeded to the presidency on Lincoln's death.
The prosecution was led by U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, assisted by Congressman John A. Bingham and Major Henry Lawrence Burnett.
The use of a military tribunal provoked criticism from Edward Bates and Gideon Welles, who believed that a civil court should have presided, but Attorney General James Speed pointed to the military nature of the conspiracy and the facts that the defendants acted as enemy combatants and that martial law was in force at the time in the District of Columbia.
The seven-week trial included the testimony of 366 witnesses. All of the defendants were found guilty on June 30. Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt were sentenced to death by hanging; Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O'Laughlen were sentenced to life in prison. Edmund Spangler was sentenced to six years. After sentencing Mary Surratt to hang, five jurors signed a letter recommending clemency, but Johnson refused to stop the execution; he later claimed he never saw the letter.
Mary Surratt, Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt were hanged in the Old Arsenal Penitentiary on July 7. Mary Surratt was the first woman executed by the United States government. O'Laughlen died in prison in 1867. Mudd, Arnold, and Spangler were pardoned in February 1869 by Johnson.
John Surratt stood trial in Washington in 1867. The jury could not reach a verdict, and John Surratt was released.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Abraham_Lincoln#Conspirators'_trial_and_execution
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(edited from article)
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Over the years, critics have attacked the verdicts, sentences, and procedures of the 1865 Military Commission. These critics have called the sentences unduly harsh, and criticized the rule allowing the death penalty to be imposed with a two-thirds vote of Commission members. The hanging of Mary Surratt, the first woman ever executed by the United States, has been a particular focus of criticism. Critics also have complained about the standard of proof, the lack of opportunity for defense counsel to adequately prepare for the trial, the withholding of potentially exculpatory evidence, and the Commission's rule forbidding the prisoners from testifying on their own behalf. The critics have a point: The 1865 trial of the Lincoln conspirators did fall short of commonly accepted norms of procedure and the verdicts--by modern standards--seem harsh.
There does seem little question, however, that four of the convicted conspirators participated--in ways either large or small--in Booth's plan to assassinate key federal officials. Lewis Powell clearly attempted to stab to death Secretary Seward. David Herold, Dr. Samuel Mudd, and Edman Spangler aided Booth's escape from Washington. Herold and Mudd provided aid to Booth with full knowledge of his crime--and Spangler most likely did as well.
The four other convicted conspirators--and Jefferson Davis--undoubtedly supported at least Booth's original plan, to kidnap Lincoln and take him to Richmond. George Atzerodt, in a confession made shortly before he was hanged, admitted to have willingly agreed to play an important role in the planned abduction, but claimed not to have supported the assassination--and to have first heard of the plan to assassinate Lincoln just two hours before Booth fired his fatal shot. Arnold also admitted his initial willingmess to participate in the kidnap plot. The evidence with respect to O'Laughlen's and Mary Surratt's complicity in the scheme is only slightly less compelling. Recent scholarship has strengthened the already strong evidence that approval for the kidnapping came directly from Jefferson Davis. William Tidwell's Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln shows that large numbers of Confederate troops had massed in March of 1865 in the northern neck of Virginia along what must have been a planned route to take Lincoln to Richmond. Apart from a planned abduction of Lincoln, there was no plausible strategic reason for their placement in that area.
The prosecution fairly can be faulted for intentionally obscuring the fact that there were two conspiracies involving Lincoln in 1865: the original abduction plan, developed in the fall of 1864 and supported by all eight conspirators and top Confederate leadership, and Booth's assassination plan, conceived only after the original plan fell through when Lincoln cancelled plans to attend a play at the Campbell Hosptial on the outskirts of Washington on March 17. (The plan had been to intercept the President's carriage as it returned from the matinee performance.)
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https://famous-trials.com/lincoln/2163-home
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