1 case tagged “Reconstruction era”
Convicted: Mary Elizabeth Surratt (née Jenkins; baptismal name Maria Eugenia Jenkins Surratt)
On July 7, 1865, in the sweltering heat of a Washington summer that pushed nearly 100 degrees, a middle-aged Catholic widow in a black bombazine dress was escorted to a wooden scaffold at the Old Arsenal Penitentiary. Moments later, Mary Elizabeth Surratt became the first woman ever executed by the United States federal government. She died for her alleged role in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, convicted on the testimony of a self-serving tenant and a debt-ridden tavern keeper whose own freedom may have depended on what they said about her. Surratt never testified. She was not permitted to. Five of the nine military commissioners who condemned her signed a petition begging President Andrew Johnson to spare her life. He refused, later claiming he never saw it. Her son, who fled to the Vatican to escape justice, was eventually tried in a civilian court and walked free after the jury deadlocked. Her co-conspirator Lewis Powell, standing on his own gallows, said she was innocent. More than 150 years later, historians still argue about whether the United States government hanged a guilty woman, a scapegoat, or something more complicated than either.
