August 25, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the weeks after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, authorities hunted not only John Wilkes Booth but also anyone suspected of aiding him. Among the accused was Mary Surratt, a widowed boardinghouse owner in Washington. Investigators claimed her home was the meeting place where the plan to kill the president took shape. The evidence was thin, the public mood was unforgiving, and her trial became a national spectacle. By July 1865, Mary Surratt stood on the gallows, becoming the first woman the U.S. government ever executed. Kate Clifford Larson, author of The Assassin’s Accomplice, shares the story. We'd like to thank the U.S. National Archives for allowing us access to this audio.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love to tell stories about history. One of
our favorite subjects Abraham Lincoln. We've told many great stories
about Lincoln. Go to our Americanstories dot com and hit
that search bar and type in the words Abraham Lincoln
(00:33):
and enjoy. John Wilkes Booth did not act alone. Eight
people were eventually indicted as co conspirators in Lincoln's murder.
One of them was a woman, Mary Surat. Here to
tell the story is Kate Clifford Larson, author of The
Assassin's Accomplice Mary Surat and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln.
(00:57):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
After I finished my Harriet Tubman book, which came out
in late two thousand and three, I started, you know,
looking around for another project. And every day I google
Harriet Tubman's name. I've done that since two thousand and
I still do it today.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
And one day when I googled, this event popped up
and it was from the.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Sarat Museum in Clinton, Maryland, and they were hosting a tour,
a bus tour to the eastern shore of Maryland. To
see sites related to Harriet Tubman, and I'm like, the
Sarat Museum, What is that? So I went to their
website and it was the Sarat Museum is Mary Serat's
(01:44):
former home in Clinton, Maryland, used to be called Surattsville,
and it's a house museum and it has a research center.
And I started reading this story about Mary Sarat, and
I was shocked because I had gotten my PhD in
American history and I virtually knew nothing about Mary Sarat
and her involvement in the assassination plot that resulted in
(02:08):
the death of President Abraham Lincoln. So I was really
intrigued by this woman who was accused of plotting with
John Wilkes Booth and who was tried and convicted and
hanged for her role in the assassination. And her story
had sort of been lost to me and to other people.
(02:30):
And I was reading information on the website, and then
I went out on the internet and I read some
more and it seemed to me that Mary Surrat had
been wrongly accused, convicted, and wrongly hanged.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
And I thought, well, I'm a woman's historian.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I'm going to go and I'm going to research her
life and I'm going to defend her and tell the
real story and resurrect her from the ashes of her life.
So I wrote up a proposal and it was optioned
by Basic Books, and I started researching, and within a
matter of a few short months, I realized, Oops, she's guilty.
(03:12):
And it didn't take long to figure out that she
was very, very complicit in the assassination. But I knew
as a historian, I had to have some objectivity and
I needed to show how did she become involved in
this a woman of her stature at the time and
place to become involved in such a world changing event.
(03:35):
So she was born in eighteen twenty two in Prince
George's County, Maryland, that's in southern Maryland on the western Shore,
and her parents they were modest plantation owners and they
had several enslaved people, and you know, they had a
comfortable life. Mary had a couple of brothers, but her
(03:56):
father died when she was a small child, leaving her mother.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Elizabeth Jenkins was their family name.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
She sent Mary away to boarding school outside of Washington,
d c.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
And Alexandria.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
She returned home in about eighteen thirty nine. She was
about seventeen years old, and she met a man by
the name of John Harrison Sarat, a local man who
was being raised by foster parents who were related in
some way.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
But it's kind of murky.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
He was several years older than her, and he was
having an affair with another woman in the community.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
And she bore his child.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
But Mary fell madly in love with him, and he
married her in eighteen forty and she was seventeen going
on eighteen years old. I don't know what happened to
the other woman's child. That sort of becomes murky too.
In the historical record.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Mary had three children pretty quickly, Isaac and.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Then followed by a daughter Anna, and then a son,
John Sarat Junior, in eighteen forty four. John Sarat was
a very heavy drinker and gambler, and in eighteen fifty
two he purchased land at a crossroads about twelve miles.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
South of Washington, d C. And it was a.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Becoming a very busy place because d C was growing,
of course in the first half of the nineteenth century
there was lots of commerce. So he built a tavern
and an inn and had a two or three hundred
acre farm there. He had a blacksmith there, and he
also purchased a boarding house in Washington, d C. On
(05:42):
H Street that he leased out.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
To other people who ran it as boarding house.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
As one historian noted, John Sarat became.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
The tavern's best customer.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
He drank heavily, he gambled heavily. These were things that
went on and averans, particularly in the South. Mary, in
the meantime, educated coming from a woman who was a
powerfully strong woman who knew how to manage property.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Mary sort of emulated.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Her mother, and she managed the tavern and the farm
because her husband was drunk and gambling all the time.
She did it such a good job that she could
send her children to boarding schools in and around Washington,
d C. And that allowed her to pay full time
attention to the tavern and the business.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
It became the local post office, which was a big
deal for a.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Tavern to be appointed a local post office by the
United States government, because that meant local people had to
go to that building to get their mail, and if
they went there, they would have food, they would have liquor.
You know. It just became an important, much more important
tavern site.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So Mary was doing.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Very very well and you've been listening to author Kate
Clifford Larson tell the story of Maya Surat. When we
come back, more of the remarkable story of the woman
who became the first ever to be hanged by the
US government Here on our American Stories. Here at our
(07:31):
American Stories, we bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business,
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(07:53):
give a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with
our American Stories and author Kate Clifford Larson, author of
(08:15):
The Assassin's Accomplice, Mary Surat and the Plot to Kill
Abraham Lincoln. It's available on Amazon and all the usual suspects.
Let's pick up where we last left off. Here is Kate.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
As the nation is heading towards this sectional crisis over
the issue of slavery, abolition is really spreading anti slavery
movement is gaining speed, particularly in the north. Mary and
her neighbors are doubling down and more and more committed
to slave society, and she enslaved about twelve people. And
(08:56):
of course, in the election of Lincoln in eighteen sixty
he begins the powerful drum beat towards Civil War. And
in eighteen sixty one, thirteen Confederate states in the South
separate from the Union. Maryland stays in the Union, part
of it by strong arming on the part of the
(09:18):
Lincoln administration. But there was an appetite in Maryland to
not be part of this sectional crisis. But Mary and
her neighbors were all in with the Confederacy, but they
could not be part of the secession because Maryland was
staying in the Union. And then that set the stage
(09:38):
for a lot of spying, a lot of contrabrand networking,
running of munitions and information back and forth across the
Potomac River they are to southern Maryland and over to Virginia,
which was one of the Confederate states. And Mary and
her family became involved in that sort of spy network,
(10:01):
the trader network, I like to call it, against the
United States. And as the Post Office, they could do
a lot when it came to spying and helping rebel
couriers get through the countryside, because it seems so inocuous.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
It's the post office.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
So messages could be brought back and forth and pretend
or stuffed in regular mail, and it's actually rebel information
and intelligence. So but John Sarat died suddenly of a
heart attack in eighteen sixty two, kind of throwing the
whole operation in trouble because now Mary has to fend
off debtors and keep control of the property for her
(10:44):
children who are still in boarding schools, so she calls
them back. All of them have to come back from
boarding school. Isaac immediately, instead of helping his mother, goes
off and joins the Confederacy. He joins a regiment in
Virginia and is gone the entire Civil War. Anna comes
home to help her mother, and John does too, and
(11:05):
he's appointed, at eighteen years old, the new postmaster in
the tavern, and young John Sarrat becomes heavily involved in
this rebel network, this courier system. But the United States
Army has posted soldiers throughout southern Maryland because they knew
(11:26):
that so many of those southern Marylanders were communicating with
and aiding and abetting the Confederacy across the Potomac.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
So the army soldiers were there.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
They were watching the tavern, and they recognized that there
were spies going through there, and there were secret messages
being passed through the tavern.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
So they threw young John in prison.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
So he signed an allegiance to the United States, promised
to behave, and they let him go, and of course
he didn't behave. He continue his operations, but they knew
that it was too risky to manage it through the
surat tavern. So he became a personal courier himself and
got involved in some very sophisticated networks of spies that
(12:14):
traveled through Maryland into Pennsylvania, New York, all the northern states.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
And Mary, worried that.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Her son's activities might put the property at risk again,
decided to lease the property to a neighbor, John.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Lloyd, and she moved her.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Daughter and a couple of the enslaved people that hadn't
run away by that time to Washington, d c. To
the boarding house and she became a boarding house keeper.
It could support her. The tavern was leased. That was good,
so they moved to h.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Street in Washington, d C. To this boarding house.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
But of course, because it was the seat of the
United States governments, there were lots of Confederate spies that
were trying to get there and get information and pass
information back and forth. So it sort of made sense
that Mary might find this advantageous for her son as well.
So the war is raging on. John Wilkes Booth appears
(13:14):
on the scene. Now. John Wilkes Booth was one of
the most famous actors in America at the time. He
was born into an acting family. His father was a
famous actor. He grew up in Maryland. He had strong
Southern sympathies. So he hatched this idea, and I don't
(13:36):
know where it came from, that he would kidnap and
ransom President Lincoln. The Confederacy was losing a lot of
Confederate soldiers, not only by death but by capture, and
they were imprisoned in northern prisons, and by eighteen sixty
four the Confederacy was struggling with recruits. Confederate soldiers were
(14:03):
running away a wall, they were abandoning their posts. They
could see that it was a desperate cause, and it
wasn't working out for them so well. So Booth thought
if he could capture Lincoln and hold him hostage for
the release of Confederate soldiers, that would reinfuse the Confederacy
with soldiers again and they would triumph over the United States.
(14:28):
So it's just amazing this guy thought this plan would work.
But he approached some Confederate sympathizers in southern Maryland, including
a man by the name of doctor Mud, Samuel Mudd,
who was a physician there in southern Maryland, and he
(14:48):
worked with other Confederate sympathizers in southern Maryland, and Booth
wanted to acquire supporters, money and.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Supplies he needed.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
He needed a wagon, He needed someone with a boat
to transport the kidnap president across the Potomac into Virginia
where he would be held hostage. So Samuel Mudd made
these connections in southern Maryland, and some people stepped forward
and offered a boat, and other people got involved and said,
(15:24):
I'll row the boat, I will secure a carriage. Well,
at Christmas time in Washington, d c. Samuel Mudd, Doctor Mud,
traveled to the city with John Wilkes Booth with the
intention of introducing him to John Sarat and with the
idea that John was very well connected with these Confederate
(15:47):
spy networks and that he could help Booth. Mary Sarat
had leased one of her rooms to a young man
by the name of Lewis Weickman, and so just before Christmas,
John Sarat is walking down the street with Lewis Weyckman
and they unquote run into doctor Mudd and John Wilkes Booth,
(16:11):
and Doctor Mudd introduces them and they decide to go
have drinks privately in a hotel room. So they go
up to this hotel room, and this is all based
on testimony by Lewis Wyckman later.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
On during the trial of the conspirators.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
And they asked Lewis to sit on the other side
of the room, that he wasn't going to be part
of this whatever they were talking about, but it wasn't
like he couldn't hear what was going on. And Mud
and Booth explained their plan to John Sarat about getting
people and resources to capture the president, kidnap him, take
(16:51):
him down through southern Maryland where all those friendly sympathizers were,
and get him rowed across the Potomac River and into
Virginia to ransom him for the freedom of Confederate soldiers.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And you're listening to author Kate Clifford Larson tell one
heck of a story about Mary Sarat and about America
during the Civil War, and how complicated it was Mary
and her peers in Maryland. Well, they many of them
doubled down on slavery. That Mary also had a post
(17:24):
office inside her tavern. And then came her kids, and
some of them joined the cause too. One actually went
off to fight. Another actually was sent to jail for
aiding and abetting the Confederacy as a spy. When we
come back more of the remarkable story of Mary Sarat
and the American Civil War and Lincoln's assassination. Here on
(17:46):
our American stories, and we continue with our American stories,
(18:11):
and the story of Mary Sarat is told by Kate
Clifford Larson, whose book The Assassin's Accomplice, Mary Sarat and
the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln is available on Amazon
and all the usual suspects. Samuel Alexander Mudd worked as
a doctor and tobacco farmer in southern Maryland. The Civil
(18:33):
War seriously damaged his business, especially when Maryland abolished slavery
in eighteen sixty four. Shortly thereafter, doctor Mud met with
the would be Lincoln assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Let's return
to Kate Clifford Larson with more of the story.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Well, John Saratt thought this was a great idea.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
They had maps and plans and it was all, you know,
this was really exciting, and so John agreed and he
set to work bringing in.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
People that would help with this plan. But they don't
bring in lou Wyckman.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Even though lou Wyckman hears all the stuff that's going on,
he sees what's happening, they don't include him. I think
they thought he was a bit of a wimp. So
throughout the first couple of months of eighteen sixty five,
it's clear the end is coming and the Confederacy is
losing and they're desperate, and John Wilkes Booth is becoming
(19:30):
more and more enraged and more and.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
More determined that he's going to do something.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
He starts spending more time at the Sarat's boarding house,
and the other borders in the house notice him coming frequently,
and of course they're all thrilled because he's like the
most famous act in America. And he's handsome and dashing.
I remember there was the director of the Serat House
Museum once said to me, it's like having Tom Cruise
(19:58):
come to your house all the time. And this was
years ago when he was, you know, this big hot actor.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
He still is. Okay, I'll give you.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
That, but anyway, so you know, he's just he's amazing,
and everybody's like, wow, he goes to this house.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
But he's planning with the co conspirators. They tried to
kidnap the president in March.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Now he's been reelected, Booth is furious and she's determined
that they're going to prevent the inauguration and that's going
to happen on the fourth.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
But he can't.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
He can't, he can't prevent the inauguration. He reportedly is
there at.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
The inauguration in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
On March fourth, eighteen sixty five, and there are photographs
of the inauguration, and some historians have identified Booth down
there and he had a pistol with him, and he
later said he was almost close enough to shoot the.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
President right there at the inauguration, but he did not.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
And so on March sixteenth. They're out on the road.
They're set there waiting for the president's carriage to come.
And the President did not travel with protection, which just
blows my mind that he did not, but he didn't.
And lo and behold, they had not heard that the
President had canceled his trip for that day.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
So they're out on the road. Their plan is foiled.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
The boarding house folks see them return to the boarding house.
Everyone's furious, yelling. They go up to room. They're upset, screaming.
They're just angry that this has failed. And Booth takes
off and so does John Sarat and it seems like
the plan is over and done with, but it's not.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Booth is so angry that his plan has.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Failed that now he's decided he's going to kill the president,
and he reactivates in early April this plan that he
is going to shoot president when he's out in public.
Mary becomes privy to these plans, and so do the
other co conspirators. So Mary gets heavily involved, and she
(22:12):
goes to her tavern and she informs John Lloyd what
She doesn't tell him all the details, apparently, but says
you be ready and things are going.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
To be happening, and I want you to be ready.
Lewis Weikman is privy.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
To all of this because he takes her in rented
carriages down to her tavern three times before April fourteenth,
when Lincoln is finally assassinated. On the final trip down
to the tavern on the day of the assassination, he
(22:51):
takes Mary Sarat down there and she delivers a message
to John Lloyd that he is to have some guns
ready and other supplies because her son John will be
there and others will be there that night to help.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
You know, they're going to do something, and he has
to be ready. So they go back to Washington, d C.
And Washington d C. On the fourteenth is in jubilation.
There are fireworks going off.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
It is beautiful and exciting because that is the day
that the Confederate flag came down in Charleston Harbor the
end of the Civil War. A few days prior to that,
Lee had surrendered to grant an appomatic courthouse in Virginia,
and the final, you know, raising of the American United
(23:45):
States flag in South Carolina on the fourteenth was truly
a day to celebrate, and as lou Weickman and Mary
Surat are approaching the city and they see it all
lit up. Mary makes a cryptic comment something to the
effect of you know, they're all going to be sorry,
and Lou Whiteman's like, you know, what does that mean?
Speaker 3 (24:07):
So they get back to Washington.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
D C. They have dinner and then Mary decides to
go to church because it's Good Friday. She's a devout Catholic,
and there's an evening service. So she heads out the
door with another woman who's boarding in the house and
they start walking, but it's raining and they decide not
(24:30):
to go, and they turn back and they go back
into the house.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
But as they're entering.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
The house, a man approaches Mary Surrut and his name
is Richard Smoot, and he is the person that the
boat was being held for for the first the kidnapping
and now apparently for Booth's escape. But he hadn't been
paid and he wanted to be paid, and he'd been
asking for two months to get paid. So he came
(24:55):
to Mary and he said I want to get paid,
And in the doorway of the she turns to him
and says, go away. You can't be seen here. You
will be paid tonight. It's happening tonight.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Go away, Go away.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
So he freaks out and he races away, and he
crosses the bridge into Alexandria because he's afraid they're going
to close the bridges and he won't be able to
escape Washington, DC. Because he knows something is going to happen.
They're sitting in the boarding house and Mary is acting strangely,
(25:28):
and she gets irritated with everybody because after dinner, someone's
playing the piano, they're singing songs, whatever. They're unaware of
what Mary knows is going to happen, and she sends
them all to bed. She says, everybody, just go just
go to bed.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
On go away.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
That evening, Abraham Lincoln had plans to go with his
wife and his son and other people to Ford's Theater
to watch the play. Our American cousin and Booth knew
this because he's so connected to the theater world. He
knew that the president was going to show up at
the theater that night, and he made plans to go
(26:05):
there and assassinate the president.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
And you've been listening to Kate Clifford Larsen tell one
heck of his story about Mary Sarat and in the end,
the story of the foiled kidnapping plan of Abraham Lincoln
and ultimately the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. And we learned
in this particular segment about how that kidnapping plan had
(26:29):
been foiled, and it infuriated Booth, and he had one
option left, kill Lincoln, and he went and lobbied some
of his co conspirators who he had gotten together to
kidnap Lincoln. And then comes those final days April fourteenth,
the day the Confederate flag came down in Charleston and
(26:51):
led to a jubilant celebration in DC. The Illumination, it
was called because the sky was so lit up. When
it comes to April fifteenth, Good Friday, and that's the
day that Lincoln is assassinated. When we come back more
of the remarkable story of Mary Sarat, the first woman
ever hanged by the United States government here on our
(27:16):
American stories. And we continue with our American stories. On
(27:41):
the day of Abraham Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theater in Washington,
d C. John Wilkes Booth made sure his second attempt
to decapitate the Union would be successful. Let's return to
Kate Clifford Larson, author of the assassin's accomplice Mary Sarat
and the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln. Here again is Kate.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Earlier in the day, he had jury rigged the door
to the balcony where the president would sit, so that
he could get in there and hide, and then he
could shoot the president and then escape without being caught.
And so he was lurking around, not at the Saratouse,
but he's doing that. He had given orders to George
(28:26):
Atsat to assassinate the vice president at the time. George
Astraat sat at a bar and got drunk and did
not assassinate the Vice president. Booth did not know that
at the time, and Louis Payne had been given the
job of assassinating William Henry Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State.
(28:48):
Booth had hoped to decapitate the chain of command in
the US government. He had hoped also to assassinate General Grant,
who was supposed to attend.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
The theater that night. He and his wife went to
visit their children instead.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
So Lewis Pain goes to the Seward house, pretends he's
there with medication. Because Secretary of State Seward had been
terribly injured in a carriage accident and had broken his
jaw a few days beforehand.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
And he's recuperating in his Washington, d c.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Home, and so there was a guard at the door,
but he convinced the guard to let him in and
delivered the medication.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
He goes upstairs Sewards two sons are there.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Payne pulls out a knife and starts stabbing the suns,
and then he goes and he starts stabbing Seward, who
falls off the bed and is protected because the bed
between the bed and the wall. Payne flees the house,
having injured a bunch of people, and he races away.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
And he goes to Mary.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Sarat's house and it's eleven o'clock at night and he's
racing there, but in the meantime, Lincoln has been assassinated
by John Wilkes booth. He kills him, jumps off onto
the stage. The crowd is crazed. He runs off. He
jumps on a horse that's waiting for him in the
(30:17):
back alley of the theater, and he races away. David Arnold,
the other co conspirator, is waiting for him outside a
bridge to get out of Washington, DC, and they escape
together into southern Maryland. I don't know how or who
told the police very quickly that Booth had been seen
(30:38):
at Mary Serat's house frequently. But they go there looking
for Booth. And it's about midnight or so and they
knock on the door of the police and they come in.
They wake everybody up, and they search the house looking
for John Wilkes Booth. They don't look for evidence, they
just look for Booth himself, and of course he's not
(30:59):
in the house.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
While they're they're searching.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
The house, who comes knocking on the door but Louis
Payne and he looks suspicious. They're asking him, what are
you doing here, and he says, I'm here to dig
a ditch tomorrow morning for Missus Sarrat. And they turn
to Mary Surat and they say do you know this man?
(31:23):
And she raises her hand and says, I swear to God,
I do not know this man.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
And they're thinking, really, you have to be that dramatic. Well,
eventually they arrest her and everybody else in the house.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Over the next couple of days, it becomes crazy and
Louis Weikman gets nervous and he goes to the police
and tells them he's been watching crazy things go on
in the house and he thinks.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
That this whole plot has been going on.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
So they take his testimony and he travels around to
different places trying to find the co conspirators with them.
He tells them who these people are that have meeting
in the house. So over the next couple of weeks
they arrest all of the co conspirators except for John
Surat Junior, who just happened to be outside of the
state at the time. He's in Pennsylvania and New York.
(32:14):
He hears what happened, so he flees to Canada so
they can't find him, and Mary gets arrested and the
rest is history. Because she ends up being tried with
all the other conspirators. She's the only woman that's part
of this conspiracy trial. There are eight of them, seven
of the co conspirators and Mary Surat making eight of them.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
And the trial is the trial of the modern era.
It really is.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
It's made even more dramatic because the Pittman brothers, you
know shorthand Pittman shorthand it's just been created and so
there and there and people are in there taking testimony
in shorthand and then transcribing it and sending it over
the wires that night. So the next morning the newspapers
(33:06):
across the country have word for word testimony during the trial,
and it is sensational. She was found guilty and four
of them, including Mary, were sentenced to hang, and four
were sent to prison in the dry Totegas in Key West, Florida.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
There's a famous prison there. It's a National park site. Now.
People pleaded for clemency for her.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
They went to the president, the new president, Andrew Johnson,
and he said that he would not commute her sentence,
that she kept the nest that hatched the egg of
the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
She was forty two years old, and it shocked the nation.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Once she was hanged, the nation turned against the government's
decision to hang her, and the press the decision, even
though they had vilified her throughout the trial and made
her to become this monster. And John you know what
a horrific son he was. He runs away, he knows
(34:12):
his mother's been arrested. He's watching from afar. He's protected
in Canada by Jesuit priests, and he watched from Afar
his mother going through that trial and being vilified, and
then she's convicted and then she's hanged. She died because
of him. She died protecting her son, and I think
(34:34):
we need to acknowledge that she did do that for him.
She did not become a witness for the prosecution. She
died for him. He escapes to England, where he is spotted,
and then he races through Europe. He ends up in
Rome and he joins the Vatican, the Papal Guard, and
(34:55):
then he's it's crazy, and then he's recognized by someone
who knew him and they were in Rome.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
And they recognize him.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
So he escapes from the Vatican and it's this mad
cap thing and they, you know, he's followed to Alexandria
in Egypt, where he is finally captured and brought back
to the United States in.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Eighteen sixty seven.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
He's put on trial and it ends in a mistrial,
a hung jury, and then the government decides not to
try him again, something about.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
The Statute of limitations.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
It was some crazy thing, and they thought, you know,
we're trying to move on here, we're trying to rebuild
the nation. We don't need this trial again. So he's
set free. He goes on on the lecture circuit, ridiculing
the Lincoln administration and how stupid they were and that
they didn't know this was coming. And so he made
a little bit of money, but not much because audience
(35:52):
are like, oh, you know, go away. And his brother Isaac,
who survived the war, came back after the war was over,
after his mother was hanged, and he set up a
He worked for a steamship company in Baltimore. So John
started working with him, and they lived their lives in
obscurity there in Baltimore.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
And Anna ended up.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Marrying a young man who was a who fell in
love with her during the trial, and they got married
and moved to Baltimore as well. But you know, the
legacy just lived on what a terrible thing that Mary
had participated in, and some people spent the rest of
their lives decades, decades trying to prove that she was
(36:36):
innocent and to restore her good name, and it worked
right through most of the twentieth century. So that's part
and parcel of women's history, retelling the stories of women
can do bad things, they can be criminals too, and
so I just found it interesting the context of.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Rewriting her history. So it's just such a curious thing
to me. So anyway, there you have it. Very Sarat guilty.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
And there you have it. Indeed, a terrific job on
the production, storytelling and editing by our own Greg Hengler.
A special thanks as always to Kate Clifford Larson, who's
done several stories for us. Terrific stories. This one the
assassin's accomplice Mary Sarat and the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln.
Go out and buy it. It's a terrific read. Go
(37:33):
to Amazon or the usual Suspects and what a story
this is. Talk about the trial of the century. Forget
the oj trial or the leopoldon Loeb trial. Can you
imagine what this one was like with the telegraph and
all these newspapers hitting the line every day with court transcripts.
Four were sentenced to hang, and one of them was Mary,
(37:55):
because she refused to give up her son and turned
state's evidence and become a witness for the prosecution. The
story of Mary Surrat, the story of the Lincoln assassination,
a piece of American history. Here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love to tell stories about history. One of
our favorite subjects Abraham Lincoln. We've told many great stories
about Lincoln. Go to our Americanstories dot com and hit
that search bar and type in the words Abraham Lincoln
(00:33):
and enjoy. John Wilkes Booth did not act alone. Eight
people were eventually indicted as co conspirators in Lincoln's murder.
One of them was a woman, Mary Surat. Here to
tell the story is Kate Clifford Larson, author of The
Assassin's Accomplice Mary Surat and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln.
(00:57):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
After I finished my Harriet Tubman book, which came out
in late two thousand and three, I started, you know,
looking around for another project. And every day I google
Harriet Tubman's name. I've done that since two thousand and
I still do it today.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
And one day when I googled, this event popped up
and it was from the.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Sarat Museum in Clinton, Maryland, and they were hosting a tour,
a bus tour to the eastern shore of Maryland. To
see sites related to Harriet Tubman, and I'm like, the
Sarat Museum, What is that? So I went to their
website and it was the Sarat Museum is Mary Serat's
(01:44):
former home in Clinton, Maryland, used to be called Surattsville,
and it's a house museum and it has a research center.
And I started reading this story about Mary Sarat, and
I was shocked because I had gotten my PhD in
American history and I virtually knew nothing about Mary Sarat
and her involvement in the assassination plot that resulted in
(02:08):
the death of President Abraham Lincoln. So I was really
intrigued by this woman who was accused of plotting with
John Wilkes Booth and who was tried and convicted and
hanged for her role in the assassination. And her story
had sort of been lost to me and to other people.
(02:30):
And I was reading information on the website, and then
I went out on the internet and I read some
more and it seemed to me that Mary Surrat had
been wrongly accused, convicted, and wrongly hanged.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
And I thought, well, I'm a woman's historian.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I'm going to go and I'm going to research her
life and I'm going to defend her and tell the
real story and resurrect her from the ashes of her life.
So I wrote up a proposal and it was optioned
by Basic Books, and I started researching, and within a
matter of a few short months, I realized, Oops, she's guilty.
(03:12):
And it didn't take long to figure out that she
was very, very complicit in the assassination. But I knew
as a historian, I had to have some objectivity and
I needed to show how did she become involved in
this a woman of her stature at the time and
place to become involved in such a world changing event.
(03:35):
So she was born in eighteen twenty two in Prince
George's County, Maryland, that's in southern Maryland on the western Shore,
and her parents they were modest plantation owners and they
had several enslaved people, and you know, they had a
comfortable life. Mary had a couple of brothers, but her
(03:56):
father died when she was a small child, leaving her mother.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Elizabeth Jenkins was their family name.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
She sent Mary away to boarding school outside of Washington,
d c.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
And Alexandria.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
She returned home in about eighteen thirty nine. She was
about seventeen years old, and she met a man by
the name of John Harrison Sarat, a local man who
was being raised by foster parents who were related in
some way.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
But it's kind of murky.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
He was several years older than her, and he was
having an affair with another woman in the community.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
And she bore his child.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
But Mary fell madly in love with him, and he
married her in eighteen forty and she was seventeen going
on eighteen years old. I don't know what happened to
the other woman's child. That sort of becomes murky too.
In the historical record.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Mary had three children pretty quickly, Isaac and.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Then followed by a daughter Anna, and then a son,
John Sarat Junior, in eighteen forty four. John Sarat was
a very heavy drinker and gambler, and in eighteen fifty
two he purchased land at a crossroads about twelve miles.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
South of Washington, d C. And it was a.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Becoming a very busy place because d C was growing,
of course in the first half of the nineteenth century
there was lots of commerce. So he built a tavern
and an inn and had a two or three hundred
acre farm there. He had a blacksmith there, and he
also purchased a boarding house in Washington, d C. On
(05:42):
H Street that he leased out.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
To other people who ran it as boarding house.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
As one historian noted, John Sarat became.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
The tavern's best customer.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
He drank heavily, he gambled heavily. These were things that
went on and averans, particularly in the South. Mary, in
the meantime, educated coming from a woman who was a
powerfully strong woman who knew how to manage property.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Mary sort of emulated.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Her mother, and she managed the tavern and the farm
because her husband was drunk and gambling all the time.
She did it such a good job that she could
send her children to boarding schools in and around Washington,
d C. And that allowed her to pay full time
attention to the tavern and the business.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
It became the local post office, which was a big
deal for a.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Tavern to be appointed a local post office by the
United States government, because that meant local people had to
go to that building to get their mail, and if
they went there, they would have food, they would have liquor.
You know. It just became an important, much more important
tavern site.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So Mary was doing.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Very very well and you've been listening to author Kate
Clifford Larson tell the story of Maya Surat. When we
come back, more of the remarkable story of the woman
who became the first ever to be hanged by the
US government Here on our American Stories. Here at our
(07:31):
American Stories, we bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business,
faith and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country
that need to be told. But we can't do it
without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but
they're not free to make. If you love our stories
in America like we do, please go to our American
Stories dot com and click the donate button. Give a little,
(07:53):
give a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with
our American Stories and author Kate Clifford Larson, author of
(08:15):
The Assassin's Accomplice, Mary Surat and the Plot to Kill
Abraham Lincoln. It's available on Amazon and all the usual suspects.
Let's pick up where we last left off. Here is Kate.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
As the nation is heading towards this sectional crisis over
the issue of slavery, abolition is really spreading anti slavery
movement is gaining speed, particularly in the north. Mary and
her neighbors are doubling down and more and more committed
to slave society, and she enslaved about twelve people. And
(08:56):
of course, in the election of Lincoln in eighteen sixty
he begins the powerful drum beat towards Civil War. And
in eighteen sixty one, thirteen Confederate states in the South
separate from the Union. Maryland stays in the Union, part
of it by strong arming on the part of the
(09:18):
Lincoln administration. But there was an appetite in Maryland to
not be part of this sectional crisis. But Mary and
her neighbors were all in with the Confederacy, but they
could not be part of the secession because Maryland was
staying in the Union. And then that set the stage
(09:38):
for a lot of spying, a lot of contrabrand networking,
running of munitions and information back and forth across the
Potomac River they are to southern Maryland and over to Virginia,
which was one of the Confederate states. And Mary and
her family became involved in that sort of spy network,
(10:01):
the trader network, I like to call it, against the
United States. And as the Post Office, they could do
a lot when it came to spying and helping rebel
couriers get through the countryside, because it seems so inocuous.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
It's the post office.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
So messages could be brought back and forth and pretend
or stuffed in regular mail, and it's actually rebel information
and intelligence. So but John Sarat died suddenly of a
heart attack in eighteen sixty two, kind of throwing the
whole operation in trouble because now Mary has to fend
off debtors and keep control of the property for her
(10:44):
children who are still in boarding schools, so she calls
them back. All of them have to come back from
boarding school. Isaac immediately, instead of helping his mother, goes
off and joins the Confederacy. He joins a regiment in
Virginia and is gone the entire Civil War. Anna comes
home to help her mother, and John does too, and
(11:05):
he's appointed, at eighteen years old, the new postmaster in
the tavern, and young John Sarrat becomes heavily involved in
this rebel network, this courier system. But the United States
Army has posted soldiers throughout southern Maryland because they knew
(11:26):
that so many of those southern Marylanders were communicating with
and aiding and abetting the Confederacy across the Potomac.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
So the army soldiers were there.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
They were watching the tavern, and they recognized that there
were spies going through there, and there were secret messages
being passed through the tavern.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
So they threw young John in prison.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
So he signed an allegiance to the United States, promised
to behave, and they let him go, and of course
he didn't behave. He continue his operations, but they knew
that it was too risky to manage it through the
surat tavern. So he became a personal courier himself and
got involved in some very sophisticated networks of spies that
(12:14):
traveled through Maryland into Pennsylvania, New York, all the northern states.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
And Mary, worried that.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Her son's activities might put the property at risk again,
decided to lease the property to a neighbor, John.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Lloyd, and she moved her.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Daughter and a couple of the enslaved people that hadn't
run away by that time to Washington, d c. To
the boarding house and she became a boarding house keeper.
It could support her. The tavern was leased. That was good,
so they moved to h.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Street in Washington, d C. To this boarding house.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
But of course, because it was the seat of the
United States governments, there were lots of Confederate spies that
were trying to get there and get information and pass
information back and forth. So it sort of made sense
that Mary might find this advantageous for her son as well.
So the war is raging on. John Wilkes Booth appears
(13:14):
on the scene. Now. John Wilkes Booth was one of
the most famous actors in America at the time. He
was born into an acting family. His father was a
famous actor. He grew up in Maryland. He had strong
Southern sympathies. So he hatched this idea, and I don't
(13:36):
know where it came from, that he would kidnap and
ransom President Lincoln. The Confederacy was losing a lot of
Confederate soldiers, not only by death but by capture, and
they were imprisoned in northern prisons, and by eighteen sixty
four the Confederacy was struggling with recruits. Confederate soldiers were
(14:03):
running away a wall, they were abandoning their posts. They
could see that it was a desperate cause, and it
wasn't working out for them so well. So Booth thought
if he could capture Lincoln and hold him hostage for
the release of Confederate soldiers, that would reinfuse the Confederacy
with soldiers again and they would triumph over the United States.
(14:28):
So it's just amazing this guy thought this plan would work.
But he approached some Confederate sympathizers in southern Maryland, including
a man by the name of doctor Mud, Samuel Mudd,
who was a physician there in southern Maryland, and he
(14:48):
worked with other Confederate sympathizers in southern Maryland, and Booth
wanted to acquire supporters, money and.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Supplies he needed.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
He needed a wagon, He needed someone with a boat
to transport the kidnap president across the Potomac into Virginia
where he would be held hostage. So Samuel Mudd made
these connections in southern Maryland, and some people stepped forward
and offered a boat, and other people got involved and said,
(15:24):
I'll row the boat, I will secure a carriage. Well,
at Christmas time in Washington, d c. Samuel Mudd, Doctor Mud,
traveled to the city with John Wilkes Booth with the
intention of introducing him to John Sarat and with the
idea that John was very well connected with these Confederate
(15:47):
spy networks and that he could help Booth. Mary Sarat
had leased one of her rooms to a young man
by the name of Lewis Weickman, and so just before Christmas,
John Sarat is walking down the street with Lewis Weyckman
and they unquote run into doctor Mudd and John Wilkes Booth,
(16:11):
and Doctor Mudd introduces them and they decide to go
have drinks privately in a hotel room. So they go
up to this hotel room, and this is all based
on testimony by Lewis Wyckman later.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
On during the trial of the conspirators.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
And they asked Lewis to sit on the other side
of the room, that he wasn't going to be part
of this whatever they were talking about, but it wasn't
like he couldn't hear what was going on. And Mud
and Booth explained their plan to John Sarat about getting
people and resources to capture the president, kidnap him, take
(16:51):
him down through southern Maryland where all those friendly sympathizers were,
and get him rowed across the Potomac River and into
Virginia to ransom him for the freedom of Confederate soldiers.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And you're listening to author Kate Clifford Larson tell one
heck of a story about Mary Sarat and about America
during the Civil War, and how complicated it was Mary
and her peers in Maryland. Well, they many of them
doubled down on slavery. That Mary also had a post
(17:24):
office inside her tavern. And then came her kids, and
some of them joined the cause too. One actually went
off to fight. Another actually was sent to jail for
aiding and abetting the Confederacy as a spy. When we
come back more of the remarkable story of Mary Sarat
and the American Civil War and Lincoln's assassination. Here on
(17:46):
our American stories, and we continue with our American stories,
(18:11):
and the story of Mary Sarat is told by Kate
Clifford Larson, whose book The Assassin's Accomplice, Mary Sarat and
the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln is available on Amazon
and all the usual suspects. Samuel Alexander Mudd worked as
a doctor and tobacco farmer in southern Maryland. The Civil
(18:33):
War seriously damaged his business, especially when Maryland abolished slavery
in eighteen sixty four. Shortly thereafter, doctor Mud met with
the would be Lincoln assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Let's return
to Kate Clifford Larson with more of the story.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Well, John Saratt thought this was a great idea.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
They had maps and plans and it was all, you know,
this was really exciting, and so John agreed and he
set to work bringing in.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
People that would help with this plan. But they don't
bring in lou Wyckman.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Even though lou Wyckman hears all the stuff that's going on,
he sees what's happening, they don't include him. I think
they thought he was a bit of a wimp. So
throughout the first couple of months of eighteen sixty five,
it's clear the end is coming and the Confederacy is
losing and they're desperate, and John Wilkes Booth is becoming
(19:30):
more and more enraged and more and.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
More determined that he's going to do something.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
He starts spending more time at the Sarat's boarding house,
and the other borders in the house notice him coming frequently,
and of course they're all thrilled because he's like the
most famous act in America. And he's handsome and dashing.
I remember there was the director of the Serat House
Museum once said to me, it's like having Tom Cruise
(19:58):
come to your house all the time. And this was
years ago when he was, you know, this big hot actor.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
He still is. Okay, I'll give you.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
That, but anyway, so you know, he's just he's amazing,
and everybody's like, wow, he goes to this house.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
But he's planning with the co conspirators. They tried to
kidnap the president in March.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Now he's been reelected, Booth is furious and she's determined
that they're going to prevent the inauguration and that's going
to happen on the fourth.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
But he can't.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
He can't, he can't prevent the inauguration. He reportedly is
there at.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
The inauguration in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
On March fourth, eighteen sixty five, and there are photographs
of the inauguration, and some historians have identified Booth down
there and he had a pistol with him, and he
later said he was almost close enough to shoot the.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
President right there at the inauguration, but he did not.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
And so on March sixteenth. They're out on the road.
They're set there waiting for the president's carriage to come.
And the President did not travel with protection, which just
blows my mind that he did not, but he didn't.
And lo and behold, they had not heard that the
President had canceled his trip for that day.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
So they're out on the road. Their plan is foiled.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
The boarding house folks see them return to the boarding house.
Everyone's furious, yelling. They go up to room. They're upset, screaming.
They're just angry that this has failed. And Booth takes
off and so does John Sarat and it seems like
the plan is over and done with, but it's not.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Booth is so angry that his plan has.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Failed that now he's decided he's going to kill the president,
and he reactivates in early April this plan that he
is going to shoot president when he's out in public.
Mary becomes privy to these plans, and so do the
other co conspirators. So Mary gets heavily involved, and she
(22:12):
goes to her tavern and she informs John Lloyd what
She doesn't tell him all the details, apparently, but says
you be ready and things are going.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
To be happening, and I want you to be ready.
Lewis Weikman is privy.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
To all of this because he takes her in rented
carriages down to her tavern three times before April fourteenth,
when Lincoln is finally assassinated. On the final trip down
to the tavern on the day of the assassination, he
(22:51):
takes Mary Sarat down there and she delivers a message
to John Lloyd that he is to have some guns
ready and other supplies because her son John will be
there and others will be there that night to help.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
You know, they're going to do something, and he has
to be ready. So they go back to Washington, d C.
And Washington d C. On the fourteenth is in jubilation.
There are fireworks going off.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
It is beautiful and exciting because that is the day
that the Confederate flag came down in Charleston Harbor the
end of the Civil War. A few days prior to that,
Lee had surrendered to grant an appomatic courthouse in Virginia,
and the final, you know, raising of the American United
(23:45):
States flag in South Carolina on the fourteenth was truly
a day to celebrate, and as lou Weickman and Mary
Surat are approaching the city and they see it all
lit up. Mary makes a cryptic comment something to the
effect of you know, they're all going to be sorry,
and Lou Whiteman's like, you know, what does that mean?
Speaker 3 (24:07):
So they get back to Washington.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
D C. They have dinner and then Mary decides to
go to church because it's Good Friday. She's a devout Catholic,
and there's an evening service. So she heads out the
door with another woman who's boarding in the house and
they start walking, but it's raining and they decide not
(24:30):
to go, and they turn back and they go back
into the house.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
But as they're entering.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
The house, a man approaches Mary Surrut and his name
is Richard Smoot, and he is the person that the
boat was being held for for the first the kidnapping
and now apparently for Booth's escape. But he hadn't been
paid and he wanted to be paid, and he'd been
asking for two months to get paid. So he came
(24:55):
to Mary and he said I want to get paid,
And in the doorway of the she turns to him
and says, go away. You can't be seen here. You
will be paid tonight. It's happening tonight.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Go away, Go away.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
So he freaks out and he races away, and he
crosses the bridge into Alexandria because he's afraid they're going
to close the bridges and he won't be able to
escape Washington, DC. Because he knows something is going to happen.
They're sitting in the boarding house and Mary is acting strangely,
(25:28):
and she gets irritated with everybody because after dinner, someone's
playing the piano, they're singing songs, whatever. They're unaware of
what Mary knows is going to happen, and she sends
them all to bed. She says, everybody, just go just
go to bed.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
On go away.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
That evening, Abraham Lincoln had plans to go with his
wife and his son and other people to Ford's Theater
to watch the play. Our American cousin and Booth knew
this because he's so connected to the theater world. He
knew that the president was going to show up at
the theater that night, and he made plans to go
(26:05):
there and assassinate the president.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
And you've been listening to Kate Clifford Larsen tell one
heck of his story about Mary Sarat and in the end,
the story of the foiled kidnapping plan of Abraham Lincoln
and ultimately the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. And we learned
in this particular segment about how that kidnapping plan had
(26:29):
been foiled, and it infuriated Booth, and he had one
option left, kill Lincoln, and he went and lobbied some
of his co conspirators who he had gotten together to
kidnap Lincoln. And then comes those final days April fourteenth,
the day the Confederate flag came down in Charleston and
(26:51):
led to a jubilant celebration in DC. The Illumination, it
was called because the sky was so lit up. When
it comes to April fifteenth, Good Friday, and that's the
day that Lincoln is assassinated. When we come back more
of the remarkable story of Mary Sarat, the first woman
ever hanged by the United States government here on our
(27:16):
American stories. And we continue with our American stories. On
(27:41):
the day of Abraham Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theater in Washington,
d C. John Wilkes Booth made sure his second attempt
to decapitate the Union would be successful. Let's return to
Kate Clifford Larson, author of the assassin's accomplice Mary Sarat
and the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln. Here again is Kate.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Earlier in the day, he had jury rigged the door
to the balcony where the president would sit, so that
he could get in there and hide, and then he
could shoot the president and then escape without being caught.
And so he was lurking around, not at the Saratouse,
but he's doing that. He had given orders to George
(28:26):
Atsat to assassinate the vice president at the time. George
Astraat sat at a bar and got drunk and did
not assassinate the Vice president. Booth did not know that
at the time, and Louis Payne had been given the
job of assassinating William Henry Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State.
(28:48):
Booth had hoped to decapitate the chain of command in
the US government. He had hoped also to assassinate General Grant,
who was supposed to attend.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
The theater that night. He and his wife went to
visit their children instead.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
So Lewis Pain goes to the Seward house, pretends he's
there with medication. Because Secretary of State Seward had been
terribly injured in a carriage accident and had broken his
jaw a few days beforehand.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
And he's recuperating in his Washington, d c.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Home, and so there was a guard at the door,
but he convinced the guard to let him in and
delivered the medication.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
He goes upstairs Sewards two sons are there.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Payne pulls out a knife and starts stabbing the suns,
and then he goes and he starts stabbing Seward, who
falls off the bed and is protected because the bed
between the bed and the wall. Payne flees the house,
having injured a bunch of people, and he races away.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
And he goes to Mary.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Sarat's house and it's eleven o'clock at night and he's
racing there, but in the meantime, Lincoln has been assassinated
by John Wilkes booth. He kills him, jumps off onto
the stage. The crowd is crazed. He runs off. He
jumps on a horse that's waiting for him in the
(30:17):
back alley of the theater, and he races away. David Arnold,
the other co conspirator, is waiting for him outside a
bridge to get out of Washington, DC, and they escape
together into southern Maryland. I don't know how or who
told the police very quickly that Booth had been seen
(30:38):
at Mary Serat's house frequently. But they go there looking
for Booth. And it's about midnight or so and they
knock on the door of the police and they come in.
They wake everybody up, and they search the house looking
for John Wilkes Booth. They don't look for evidence, they
just look for Booth himself, and of course he's not
(30:59):
in the house.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
While they're they're searching.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
The house, who comes knocking on the door but Louis
Payne and he looks suspicious. They're asking him, what are
you doing here, and he says, I'm here to dig
a ditch tomorrow morning for Missus Sarrat. And they turn
to Mary Surat and they say do you know this man?
(31:23):
And she raises her hand and says, I swear to God,
I do not know this man.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
And they're thinking, really, you have to be that dramatic. Well,
eventually they arrest her and everybody else in the house.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Over the next couple of days, it becomes crazy and
Louis Weikman gets nervous and he goes to the police
and tells them he's been watching crazy things go on
in the house and he thinks.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
That this whole plot has been going on.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
So they take his testimony and he travels around to
different places trying to find the co conspirators with them.
He tells them who these people are that have meeting
in the house. So over the next couple of weeks
they arrest all of the co conspirators except for John
Surat Junior, who just happened to be outside of the
state at the time. He's in Pennsylvania and New York.
(32:14):
He hears what happened, so he flees to Canada so
they can't find him, and Mary gets arrested and the
rest is history. Because she ends up being tried with
all the other conspirators. She's the only woman that's part
of this conspiracy trial. There are eight of them, seven
of the co conspirators and Mary Surat making eight of them.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
And the trial is the trial of the modern era.
It really is.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
It's made even more dramatic because the Pittman brothers, you
know shorthand Pittman shorthand it's just been created and so
there and there and people are in there taking testimony
in shorthand and then transcribing it and sending it over
the wires that night. So the next morning the newspapers
(33:06):
across the country have word for word testimony during the trial,
and it is sensational. She was found guilty and four
of them, including Mary, were sentenced to hang, and four
were sent to prison in the dry Totegas in Key West, Florida.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
There's a famous prison there. It's a National park site. Now.
People pleaded for clemency for her.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
They went to the president, the new president, Andrew Johnson,
and he said that he would not commute her sentence,
that she kept the nest that hatched the egg of
the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
She was forty two years old, and it shocked the nation.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Once she was hanged, the nation turned against the government's
decision to hang her, and the press the decision, even
though they had vilified her throughout the trial and made
her to become this monster. And John you know what
a horrific son he was. He runs away, he knows
(34:12):
his mother's been arrested. He's watching from afar. He's protected
in Canada by Jesuit priests, and he watched from Afar
his mother going through that trial and being vilified, and
then she's convicted and then she's hanged. She died because
of him. She died protecting her son, and I think
(34:34):
we need to acknowledge that she did do that for him.
She did not become a witness for the prosecution. She
died for him. He escapes to England, where he is spotted,
and then he races through Europe. He ends up in
Rome and he joins the Vatican, the Papal Guard, and
(34:55):
then he's it's crazy, and then he's recognized by someone
who knew him and they were in Rome.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
And they recognize him.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
So he escapes from the Vatican and it's this mad
cap thing and they, you know, he's followed to Alexandria
in Egypt, where he is finally captured and brought back
to the United States in.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Eighteen sixty seven.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
He's put on trial and it ends in a mistrial,
a hung jury, and then the government decides not to
try him again, something about.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
The Statute of limitations.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
It was some crazy thing, and they thought, you know,
we're trying to move on here, we're trying to rebuild
the nation. We don't need this trial again. So he's
set free. He goes on on the lecture circuit, ridiculing
the Lincoln administration and how stupid they were and that
they didn't know this was coming. And so he made
a little bit of money, but not much because audience
(35:52):
are like, oh, you know, go away. And his brother Isaac,
who survived the war, came back after the war was over,
after his mother was hanged, and he set up a
He worked for a steamship company in Baltimore. So John
started working with him, and they lived their lives in
obscurity there in Baltimore.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
And Anna ended up.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Marrying a young man who was a who fell in
love with her during the trial, and they got married
and moved to Baltimore as well. But you know, the
legacy just lived on what a terrible thing that Mary
had participated in, and some people spent the rest of
their lives decades, decades trying to prove that she was
(36:36):
innocent and to restore her good name, and it worked
right through most of the twentieth century. So that's part
and parcel of women's history, retelling the stories of women
can do bad things, they can be criminals too, and
so I just found it interesting the context of.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Rewriting her history. So it's just such a curious thing
to me. So anyway, there you have it. Very Sarat guilty.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
And there you have it. Indeed, a terrific job on
the production, storytelling and editing by our own Greg Hengler.
A special thanks as always to Kate Clifford Larson, who's
done several stories for us. Terrific stories. This one the
assassin's accomplice Mary Sarat and the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln.
Go out and buy it. It's a terrific read. Go
(37:33):
to Amazon or the usual Suspects and what a story
this is. Talk about the trial of the century. Forget
the oj trial or the leopoldon Loeb trial. Can you
imagine what this one was like with the telegraph and
all these newspapers hitting the line every day with court transcripts.
Four were sentenced to hang, and one of them was Mary,
(37:55):
because she refused to give up her son and turned
state's evidence and become a witness for the prosecution. The
story of Mary Surrat, the story of the Lincoln assassination,
a piece of American history. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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