The Lincoln Assassination and John Wilkes Booth: Was Booth a Double Agent?

There you go again. The burden is not on her to show her innocence, it's on prosecutors to show her guilt, beyond a reasonable doubt.

Didn't happen.
And actually, no, you're wrong. While we can debate whether or not a tribunal was the correct method (IMO it wasn't) to try the conspirators, that was the system used. In a military tribunal, there is no presumption of innocence for those being tried. That was one of the reasons a tribunal was used.
 
And actually, no, you're wrong. While we can debate whether or not a tribunal was the correct method (IMO it wasn't) to try the conspirators, that was the system used. In a military tribunal, there is no presumption of innocence for those being tried. That was one of the reasons a tribunal was used.

Again, Kangaroo Court.
 
And as I said, I agree and I read your post correctly. However, as I stated earlier, judging the evidence even today as back then...she was guilty.

That's interesting, insofar as the military tribunal itself was doubtful enough to recommend leniency for Mary. Their written recommendation was lost.

Edwin Stanton said he presented it to Andrew Johnson and the latter said he never saw it. One of them was lying.

Flip a coin.
 
That's interesting, insofar as the military tribunal itself was doubtful enough to recommend leniency for Mary. Their written recommendation was lost.

Edwin Stanton said he presented it to Andrew Johnson and the latter said he never saw it. One of them was lying.

Flip a coin.
Would it have mattered? Johnson would have denied it anyway. We just have to look at his rejection to the writ of habeas corpus he canceled and the denial of a last-minute stay by her daughter. It doesn't matter whether there was one or not.
 
That's interesting, insofar as the military tribunal itself was doubtful enough to recommend leniency for Mary. Their written recommendation was lost.

Edwin Stanton said he presented it to Andrew Johnson and the latter said he never saw it. One of them was lying.

Flip a coin.

i'd take that tribunal any time over a lynching
 
There is no way she was railroaded.
According to the article @Zella shared, seems like some members of the military commission may have disagreed

'In any case, while they found her guilty, five members of the military commission, partly because of her age and sex, signed a clemency plea to be attached to the court's findings. Judge-Advocate Holt then carried the proceedings to President Johnson for his approval. A dispute later developed as to whether Johnson had ever seen the clemency plea or whether Holt had suppressed it. It is still difficult to unravel the evidence and determine which man is telling the truth. But the fault for her execution rests with either Holt, Johnson, or both, and not the members of the military commission, a majority of whom wished to spare her life.'
 
I wonder if the desire to spare her was in part driven by her being a woman? These were the same men who found her guilty, so it was the death penalty for her that they were specifically objecting to, not her guilt.
Still got railroaded in the end!

**Reply to deleted post edited**
 
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I honestly had long assumed she was innocent. Then when I started reading more about the case, I thought she came off as more guilty than quite a few of the other conspirators! Now whether or not she deserved the death penalty, I don't know. Have mixed feelings on that. But I suspect that she likely had a clearer handle on Booth's plans than some of his other associates. (Booth could be slippery.)
 
This whole debate is a complete eye opener for me and at once questions my contemporary assumptions and evaluations of the past.

I often think that modern society tends to dismiss the conduct and motivations of our ancestors as little more than the unknowing and adolescent blunderings of an immature and unsophisticated society. Wrong! They knew exactly what they were about and if anything, it is we today sitting in far removed and lofty judgement of their actions who perhaps are the truly naïve and credulous.
 
Rush to railroad Mary Surratt? There were a number of issues in regards to how the trial was conducted and errors in the defense strategy, but there is nothing that shows she did not know about either the conspiracy to kidnap Lincoln or to kill him. There is no way she was railroaded.

And there is nothing that shows that she *did* know about the kidnap plot, and there is especially not a shred of credible evidence that she knew about the assassination plot. The handful of "witnesses" against her were all exposed as abject liars. If the case against here was credible, why did Stanton insist on an illegal military tribunal and why wasn't she even allowed to testify in her own defense? If that's not "railroaded," I'd like to know what would qualify as "railroaded."

For starters, you might watch the 2010 movie The Conspirator produced by Robert Redford. Although the movie get a few details wrong, it is substantially accurate and gives you a good idea of just how utterly kangaroo her "trial" was.

Then, read Elizabeth Trindal's book Mary Surratt: An American Tragedy (Pelican Publishing, 1996).

Finally, when I say that Booth was a double agent, I mean he was double agent who was working for Stanton. I'm saying that Stanton and other Radicals used Booth to kill Lincoln and to try to kill Seward (who, like Lincoln, favored a lenient reconstruction).
 
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According to the article @Zella shared, seems like some members of the military commission may have disagreed

'In any case, while they found her guilty, five members of the military commission, partly because of her age and sex, signed a clemency plea to be attached to the court's findings. Judge-Advocate Holt then carried the proceedings to President Johnson for his approval. A dispute later developed as to whether Johnson had ever seen the clemency plea or whether Holt had suppressed it. It is still difficult to unravel the evidence and determine which man is telling the truth. But the fault for her execution rests with either Holt, Johnson, or both, and not the members of the military commission, a majority of whom wished to spare her life.'

I wonder if the desire to spare her was in part driven by her being a woman? These were the same men who found her guilty, so it was the death penalty for her that they were specifically objecting to, not her guilt.
Zella already answered, but I don't see it as being railroaded. The clemency was because of her gender, not because of her innocence.
 
And there is nothing that shows that she *did* know about the kidnap plot, and there is especially not a shred of credible evidence that she knew about the assassination plot. The handful of "witnesses" against her were all exposed as abject liars. If the case against here was credible, why did Stanton insist on an illegal military tribunal and why wasn't she even allowed to testify in her own defense? If that's not "railroaded," I'd like to know what would qualify as "railroaded."

For starters, you might watch the 2010 movie The Conspirator produced by Robert Redford. Although the movie get a few details wrong, it is substantially accurate and gives you a good idea of just how utterly kangaroo her "trial" was.

Then, read Elizabeth Trindal's book Mary Surratt: An American Tragedy (Pelican Publishing, 1996).

Finally, when I say that Booth was a double agent, I mean he was double agent who was working for Stanton. I'm saying that Stanton and other Radicals used Booth to kill Lincoln and to try to kill Seward (who, like Lincoln, favored a lenient reconstruction).
I've seen the movie a few times. It's good entertainment. There was plenty of reason that suggests her guilt. The fact she kept the company of criminals doesn't totally dismiss their testimony. That's what the tribunal had to decide on. The fact Powell kept saying she was innocent could have been Anna's pleas with him the two days before the execution. There were a number of reasons Stanton wanted a tribunal and not a civil trial, some I already mentioned. Remember a civil trial would have been a jury of peers from a Southern City...Washington.

And I don't buy Booth working for Stanton. None of it makes sense.

Unfortunately I'm getting ready to leave for the weekend but I'll gladly pick this back up when we return.
 
The clemency was because of her gender, not because of her innocence.
'Partly because of her age and sex' is what the quote says. So age is a factor, too. And why partly?

Either way she didn't receive it when it was recommended, and that still counts as 'railroading' in my book.
She could have been sent to prison, but instead was hanged. I'm not arguing her innocence or guilt.
 
And as I said, I agree and I read your post correctly. However, as I stated earlier, judging the evidence even today as back then...she was guilty.

The "evidence"? What "evidence"? The conflicting, dubious "testimony" given by two guys--David Lloyd and Louis Weichmann--who were suspects and then agreed to finger Surratt and the others in exchange for clemency? Adzerodt's unbelievable, nonsensical confession? That "evidence"?

Both Lloyd and Weichmann were threatened with death if they did not provide "more information." Lloyd's testimony may have been obtained by torture. A friend of Weichmann's, Lewis Carland, said that Weichmann provided his incriminating evidence under threat of death, and that he regretted it. From David DeWitt's book The Judicial Murder of Mary Surratt:

The next is from the testimony of Lewis J. Carland, to whom Weichman confessed his remorse after the execution of Mrs. Surratt:​

“He [Weichman] said it would have been very different with Mrs. Surratt if he had been let alone; that a statement had been prepared for him, that it was written out for him, and that he was threatened with prosecution as one of the conspirators if he did not swear to it. He said that a detective had been put into Carroll prison with him, and that this man had written out a statement which he said he had made in his sleep, and that he had to swear to that statement.”​

Let us add another; it is so short and yet so suggestive. It is from the testimony of James J. Gifford, who was a witness for the prosecution on both trials.​

“Q.—Do you know Mr. Weichman?

“A.—I have seen him.

“Q.—Were you in Carroll prison with him?​

“A.—Yes, sir.

“Q.—Did he say in your presence that an officer of the government had told him that unless he testified to more than he had already stated they would hang him too?​

“A.—I heard the officer tell him so.” (pp. 19-20)​

If the military tribunal had such a strong case, why wouldn't they let Surratt testify in her own defense? They could have done so if they had wanted. With all the other norms and laws that the tribunal ignored, they could have easily allowed her to testify. It should be noted that by 1865 there was a strong movement in the country to change state laws so that defendants could testify in their own defense. Maine had already changed its law to this effect the year before, and many other states soon followed--in fact, several states changed their laws accordingly within five years of Surratt's trial.

Why didn't Mary Surratt flee or make any effort to hide? She certainly didn't act like someone who had just participated in the Crime of the Century.

And if Mary Surratt--as Kate Larson claims--somehow just "had" to know what Booth, her son, and the others were planning when they conversed in her boarding house, then Anna, her adult daughter who also lived in the house, surely "had" to know as well. Why wasn't Anna charged?

And I ask again: Why in the world would any genuine Confederate conspiracy target Lincoln, Johnson, and Seward? With Lincoln and Johnson dead, that would have elevated the President Pro Tempore of the Senate to the presidency by the constitutional order of succession that existed at the time time. The Senate President Pro Tempore when Lincoln was shot was the weak, pliable Lafayette Foster, a Republican who had given apocalyptic speeches against "the Slave Power" and who later voted for Andrew Johnson's removal. It boggles the mind to think that a Confederate conspiracy would have wanted to elevate Foster to the presidency, especially given the fact that this would have put the South-loathing, South-hating, South-bashing Benjamin Wade one step closer to the White House.

It is entirely possible that with Johnson dead, Foster could have been persuaded to retire or take a plumb appointment and be replaced as President Pro Tempore by Wade, which in turn would have made Wade Acting President of the United States. In fact, conveniently enough, in 1867, just as the groundwork was being established to begin the push for the House's impeachment of Andrew Johnson, Wade replaced Foster as President Pro Tempore of the Senate. If the Senate had voted to remove Johnson from office, Wade would have become Acting President. The fact that Wade would become Acting President with Johnson's removal was a major topic of discussion during Johnson's Senate trial.
 
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It's an eye popping theory you can't really get your head around unless reading extensively- even then it's tough. Lincoln was fairly careless of his safety. There were no measures around him which would have resulted in Booth not escaping, if that makes sense- or not enough. I've never seen his escape as anything but being able to flee, for reasons of laxness not at all unusual, like a coward would who just shot a man in the back. They did arrest the poor kid who held his horse, demonstrably just another kid earning a coin for holding a horse.

If it was a conspiracy within a conspiracy, he'd been throwing dust in our eyes for some time. Frank Leslie's published this, 1865.
booth broke window.JPG


Honest, not quite arguing because it never pays to shoot down theories based on a knee jerk reaction. Have a feeling quite a bit of history gets away from us. Not all the arguments pan out, or seem to, is the thing. Mary Surratt did not deserve to be hung but that's only opinion based on who she was as a woman inside that time period.

Mary Surratt was an older female living amongst men in 1860. In a time when women of her social status were one misfortune from the poor house, you got along by getting along. Did she know? Guessing she knew something but not for her was the privilege of running like a heroine to the police. These young men who were up to no good in her home would have been a terrifying bunch. Descriptions of Powell for instance? Powerful, not all his wits about him and inclined to follow. Her own son involved, too- would have been an extraordinary thing for a mother to have that resolve.

DC was also still full of Southern sympathizers. A lot never left- pre war, Washington was really a ' Southern' city. It was a tense city those awful years, would not have been unusual for men hostile to the Union to gather- she could have felt it a lot of ugly talk ( of which there had to have been a copious amount ) until things became sinister. IMO, she was stuck. That isn't excusatory but goodness- her world can't be viewed from our window, you know?

Blame remains with Booth and Powell, attacking like cowards men who had no defense. I don't know. Stanton could be a big toolbag but clever enough for this level of plot? And you'd think enough of an egoist/politician not to risk his own neck ( and reputation ) entrusting it to a lot of thuggish brutes.
 
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