6 Plotting to kill the president

Mary Surratt’s warning that “something is going to happen” to Abraham Lincoln helped secure her an unwanted place in history

When we think of the murder of Abraham Lincoln, we tend to remember his assassin, John Wilkes Booth, who fired the deadly shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC on 14 April 1865. Booth was himself later shot dead by troops at a barn in northern Virginia – yet he wasn’t the only conspirator to die in the fallout to the murder. Four people were hanged for their role in the assassination of America’s 16th president – and one of them was a woman.

Mary Surratt was a devout Catholic convert, an enslaver and a supporter of the Confederacy who, following the death of her alcoholic husband in 1862, was thrust into the world of business. She managed the family farm and tavern in Maryland until, in the autumn of 1864, she moved to Washington with two of her children, and set up a boarding house there.

Mary’s new address soon became a hive of activity. Confederate agents were frequent lodgers and visitors, among them Booth. Mary’s son, John Surratt Jr, was a close friend of Booth, whose charisma won over both Mary and her daughter, Ann.

In March 1865, on the eve of Lincoln’s inauguration as president for a second term, Mary made a fateful comment that one of her boarders remembered: “Something is going to happen to Old Abe, which will prevent him from taking his seat.” Mary, it seems, not only knew of the plans to assassinate Lincoln but likely aided and abetted the conspirators by hiding and passing on firearms.

Assisting an assassin

Following the assassination, while Booth was still on the run, Mary was arrested along with seven male suspects. Mary was charged with the murder of Abraham Lincoln, attempting to kill the vice president and secretary of state, and assisting Booth in the assassination and his subsequent escape.

Following a trial by a military tribunal, Mary and the seven male conspirators were found guilty. Four of the men received prison sentences but, controversially, Mary was condemned “to be hanged by the neck until she be dead”. Despite desperate pleas for clemency, the sentence was carried out on 7 July 1865. Mary was the first woman to be executed by the US federal government.

Her story is a reminder that women’s political engagement could take many forms – even at a time when women were officially excluded from the political sphere. Yet Mary Surratt’s involvement in Lincoln’s assassination did untold damage to the campaign for other women – particularly black Americans – to win political rights of their own.

Rosalind Crone is professor of history at the Open University, and author of Violent Victorians (Manchester University Press, 2012) and Illiterate Inmates (Oxford University Press, 2022)

The new series of Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley, for which Rosalind Crone is the historical consultant, begins on 10 January. You can listen to previous episodes via BBC Sounds at bbc.co.uk/ programmes/m0016pq3