Each of the culprits received the announcement unmoved and with apparent indifference. Their hands being pinioned behind them they turned back to back and took each other by the hand. They stood thus a moment in perfect silence when Evans was untied and conducted from the scaffold to the wagon in which he came which was near by. Robinson said a few words to the crowd but I was not near enough to understand what he said. The noose was then adjusted about his neck, the black cap pulled over his face[,] the word given, the prop pulled from under him and he dangled in the air.16
Unfortunately, the rope was poorly adjusted, and the fall did not break Robinson’s neck. Horribly, the crowd watched for over an hour as the struggling victim slowly strangled to death.17
In no state was the purge more savage and bloody than Missouri. Four years of nonstop guerrilla warfare in which scalpings, decapitations, and mutilations had become commonplace created wounds too deep and raw to be healed by someone somewhere signing a piece of paper. Returning rebel soldiers, many of whom had fought far beyond Missouri’s borders, were as often as not the innocent victims, as were their helpless families. Judge Lewis Wright and his four sons were rounded up one day by militiamen near Rolla. The men were accused of being rebels, then simply slaughtered by the roadside.18 Other Missouri victims were dragged from their beds at midnight by vigilantes and hanged from tree limbs.
“I . . . fought for things I thought was right,” protested one former guerrilla. “When the war was over and I wanted to settle down they would not let me, but pursued me with a malignant hatred.”19
Though the bloodshed and death was greatest in the ravaged border states, no Southern state escaped the savage sweep following Lincoln’s death. Remembered one embattled Texan:
I suffered more hardships and trials and experienced more dangers after the war had ended and peace had been declared than I had ever encountered during the four years in the field. . . . I have slept on high eminences in order that I might watch for scouring search parties who were shooting down in cold blood every man that wore the Southern uniform, and for no other reason. I have seen the horizon at night lit up with the burning houses of my friends whose only offense was that they had been soldiers in the Confederate army.20
And even in the Northern states, the spirit of violence that had erupted following Lincoln’s death was still very much alive throughout the summer. “The rage for blood, now that the war is over, increases,” admitted a federal judge in Indiana five weeks after Lee’s surrender.21 Near Glenwood, Iowa, a mob reportedly lynched a man believed to be a Copperhead. In neighboring Illinois, a Democrat was assassinated at his front door near Madison. At Quincy in the same state, soldiers and civilians broke into the jail, dragged out a man accused of being a bushwhacker, and promptly hanged him.22
When an earthquake struck the St. Louis region on the morning of June 2, the homes and shops in neighboring Alton, Illinois were rocked to their foundations. “In these startling, earthquaky, shaky times,” said an Alton editor tongue-in-cheek, “timorous, trembling traitors tread quietly on free soil.”23 Indeed, in such a volatile climate, not only traitors, but Democrats and any others who had not toed the party line in the past now stepped softly on what was once free soil. Unfortunately, if not actively engaged, most Northerners quietly acquiesced in the bloody purge sweeping the continent.
“Alas,” confided a horrified French immigrant to his journal, “I fear that in this country more callousness, cruelty and vindictiveness exist than in any other Christian country in the world.”24
On July 4th, cannons thundered throughout the day in the nation’s capital, not so much to commemorate the eighty-ninth birthday of the United States but to celebrate its rebirth. While many denizens held picnics and others tippled, little boys lit firecrackers. Adding to the noise and smoke of the day, the city dog killers, shotguns in hand, chose this opportune time to comb the streets and shoot all canines found without muzzles.25 That evening, south of the White House, fireworks shot into the dark and made the night lurid with red, white, and blue stars.
Though the day was spent much as it always had been, the celebration was noticeably low-key and unenthusiastic. Had those in Washington known that on that very day, two thousand miles away, the last remnant of the rebel army had crossed the Rio Grande into exile, effectively ending all organized opposition to the reunited nation, perhaps the news would have created more enthusiasm—but perhaps not. After four years of bloody civil war, and after three of the most momentous months in American history, there simply was little energy left to devote to mere tradition.
On the following day, at the Old Arsenal Prison, the great conspiracy trial was scheduled to enter its ninth week. But it was not to be. After listening to over three hundred witnesses and recording forty-three hundred pages of testimony—a stack of paper more than two feet high—the military panel had finally heard enough. At noon on July 6, Major General John Hartranft entered the prison and read the verdicts to each defendant. For their role in the original kidnapping plot, Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen both received life sentences at hard labor. For his familiarity with Booth and for aiding his escape by setting the broken leg, Dr. Samuel Mudd also received life at hard labor. For innocently holding the reins to Booth’s horse outside Ford’s Theater, the unwitting stagehand Edman Spangler earned six years at hard labor.
As for the four main defendants, the four most deeply implicated in the April 14 plot, all were sentenced to death. Perhaps as startling to the condemned as the sentence itself was the knowledge that their execution would take place the following day, between 10 A.M. and 2 P.M.26 Despite the gravity of the situation, none of the four at first manifested any outward concern.27 That changed when they heard the unmistakable sounds of hammering and sawing just beyond their cell walls.
David Herold’s feigned indifference quickly dissolved as reality set in. “For once,” said an observer, “he seemed wholly unmanned.”28 Trusting that he would be acquitted or given a minimal sentence, George Atzerodt was initially stunned. When the shock passed, an ashy paleness spread over the stricken man’s face, his limbs began trembling violently, and one who looked into his cell described him as “paralyzed with fear.” The impact on Mary Surratt was greatest of all. Throughout the terrible ordeal, the woman had exhibited extreme bravery. Now alone, Anna having left shortly before the sentence was read, Mary crumbled completely.29 Like George Atzerodt, the woman had felt that innocence would set her free. With a horrible fate now clearly before her, Mary wept uncontrollably and begged for a reprieve.30
“What will become of her,” she cried over and over. “What will be Anna’s fate?”31
Of the four prisoners, only Lewis Powell seemed completely unmoved. For his murderous role at the Seward home, Powell expected nothing less than death, and the shackles on his limbs and the hammering outside did nothing to rattle his nerves or hamper his appetite.32
Almost as the verdicts were read to the condemned, the news swept through the hot, dusty streets of Washington. Both the sentences and the scheduled executions were the main topics of conversation throughout the day. “Scarcely anything else was talked of,” revealed one man.33 At the same time, many were stunned that a woman would scale the scaffold. Even those who earlier had hotly argued for Mary’s death now had a change of heart once the widow was condemned. Should she be executed, as some were quick to point out, it would be the first time in its history that the federal government had put a woman to death. “[M]any,” one correspondent acknowledged, “who had been most strenuous in asking for severe punishment upon the conspirators were willing to unite in an effort to have the sentence in Mrs. Surratt’s case changed to imprisonment.”34
Not everyone felt this way, of course. The editor of the Washington Chronicle perhaps spoke for a majority when he gleefully announced to his readers that the “hardened and remorseless fiends”—Mary Surratt included—would now suffer “that most dreadful of all penalties allowed by the civilized world—death by hanging.”35
Whatever the sentiment, excitement rose as the news spread. Washington hotels and saloons were thronged with buzzing crowds. “The streets were filled with restless, impatient people,” wrote a New York reporter. “All day long the trains came in loaded with people from the North; all night long the country roads were lined with pedestrians, with parties hurrying on to the city.”36
Throughout the evening, hundreds of idle curiosity-seekers strolled to the Surratt house. Many paused opposite the attractive three-story home to question neighbors, most of whom were themselves lolling about their doors or watching from windows.37 Except for a single dim light, the residence was dark and still. Then, at 8 P.M., a carriage stopped outside the house. As the crowd looked on, Anna Surratt and a male companion stepped down. Soon after the verdict had been read to her mother that day, the daughter had visited the cell again and was devastated by the news. Along with a Catholic priest, Anna sped away to the White House to plead with Andrew Johnson. The president was unavailable and the distraught young woman returned to her home in tears.38
“She appeared to be perfectly crushed with grief,” noted one of those in the crowd. “[Her] every look and action betrayed her anguish.”39
Ladies standing nearby were so overcome with emotion that they, too, began sobbing. After the grief-stricken young woman was helped inside, those beyond the window could plainly see that Anna soon fainted away to the floor.40
Sometime during the night, the chained prisoners at the Old Arsenal were removed from the upper cells they had occupied for the past two months and placed under a death watch on the ground floor.41 Clergymen of various denominations were allowed to enter and minister to the condemned. An Episcopal priest sat with David Herold as the young man “whined and simpered.” Adding to Herold’s distress were several of his sisters, who crowded the tiny cell and wept uncontrollably. Now overcome himself, the boy burst into tears.42
Although a Lutheran minister tried to soothe him, George Atzerodt was as inconsolable as Herold. The shaken man groaned without letup, insisting again and again that he never had any intention of killing Andrew Johnson. In the same breath, Atzerodt pleaded for more time to prepare for his end. A guard who looked into the condemned man’s cell described him as “pitiable in the extreme.”43
The two Catholic priests attending Mary Surratt were also having no impact. So shattered was the woman, so wracked with cramps and pains was she by her fate, that the prison physician administered wine and “other stimulants.” Over and over Mary insisted that she had had no hand in the assassination.44
Lying in his cell stolid and silent, “doubly ironed, doubly guarded,” Lewis Powell was hardly aware of the two Baptist preachers nearby. “Declining to participate in any religious mummery,” wrote a journalist, “with the clergymen he had but little to say.”45 Although he may not have heard the words of salvation being chanted in his cell, Powell did hear all too clearly the moans and sobs of Mary Surratt echoing off the walls. With a sense of desperation, Powell asked to see the only man in the prison he considered a friend, even though in a matter of hours that man’s job would be to kill him. Christian Rath:
He talked to me about Mrs. Surratt. He wanted to know if he could not suffer punishment for her. He really seemed to feel badly. He said that he was largely to blame for her incarceration. The fact that he was captured in . . . her house led to her arrest. He said he would willingly suffer two deaths if that would save Mrs. Surratt from the noose. He denied that she was implicated in the foul plot to murder.46
“She knew nothing about the conspiracy at all, and is an innocent woman,” insisted Powell with uncharacteristic emotion.47
Promising to help, Rath sent word to the War Department about Powell’s obviously sincere statement.48 Already impressed by the condemned man’s courage and honesty, Christian Rath had now discovered his selfless nature as well.
In his cell above, Burton Harrison had also heard the hammering and sawing throughout the night. When the guards failed to come for his customary walk that evening, he rightly guessed the reason. The prisoner was elated when later that night his “companion,” as always, began whistling in his melancholy way. But then suddenly, after only a few notes, the whistling stopped and was not resumed. It was, thought Harrison, as if it was beyond the power of the man to continue.49
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
BEADS ON A STRING
DAWN BROKE BRIGHT AND CLEAR, but exceedingly hot, in Washington on July 7, 1865. In contrast to typical Fridays in the throes of summer, the dusty streets of the capital were already astir with activity at an early hour. At the railroad station, noisy trains continued to unload hundreds of excited passengers, as they had throughout the night. Along the Potomac, ferries from Alexandria and points below brought hundreds more. Unbeknownst to these tourists and to thousands of others flocking to the city along the highways, only a relative handful of tickets to the hangings—one hundred or so—were to be had.
As commander of the military district, Winfield Scott Hancock was determined to limit the number of individuals at the execution site to the military, members of the press, and those directly involved in the trial. None would be admitted simply because they were curious.1 All the same, the general’s hotel was “besieged” by hordes of clamorous people, many willing to pay hundreds of dollars for the coveted tickets.2 The fact that a woman was about to die did not drive down the price in the least. Indeed, resentment in the North against the women of the South, who, by their words and deeds had encouraged and prolonged the war, was so great that many now found in Mary Surratt the perfect symbol of their hatred.
Not only was Hancock hounded by those hoping to view the executions, but anyone who in any way was connected with the government was “tortured and annoyed” as well. Such badgering mattered naught. “They might as well have come to see George Washington, the one as easy as the other,” laughed a New York Times reporter.3
Frustrated, though determined, the visitors swarmed toward the Arsenal grounds in the hope that somehow they might at least gain a glimpse of death. From Pennsylvania Avenue to the prison, a distance of two miles, the surging crowds were framed by double guards of soldiers along the entire route. Once the Arsenal grounds were reached, all individuals were stopped at a checkpoint, and the fortunate few with tickets were allowed to walk the remaining distance.4
At the penitentiary itself, those who had already arrived were not permitted to enter the courtyard until final preparations were complete. Nevertheless, ticket-holding newspaper reporters and artists were already busily at work in the prison offices, asking questions, writing dispatches, and sketching scenes.5 Gazing through the grated windows, the journalists got their first glimpse of the scaffold. It was a frail-looking structure and had a “very primitive appearance,” thought one reporter; and yet, to any who had scaled its thirteen steps, it was quickly apparent that a good many more people than four might be hanged on its sturdy platform.6 Two hinged drops would each accommodate two of the condemned. On the beam high above, workmen were seen adjusting the four hemp nooses and finishing last-minute details. Just several paces beyond the gallows, the startled reporters could also see four wooden boxes, and next to these, four graves already dug.7
Among all journalists present, indeed, among all the thousands waiting outside, was the great question of the fourth grave. Many felt, many hoped, it would never be filled. It was known that Mary Surratt’s attorney, Frederick Aiken, had petitioned the civil courts to issue a writ of habeas corpus in a last-ditch effort to save the woman’s life.8 The result was as yet unknown. Inside the prison, down the dark hallway and inside an even darker cell, those around Mary Surratt were also praying for a miracle. While priests sought to comfort and console her, Mary lay groaning on a mattress in a semiconscious state. Despite a mix of alcohol and opiates, the woman had passed a sleepless night weeping and moaning. Unlike others, Mary entertained no hope of a reprieve, and thus did she tearfully advise Anna on the disposal of her property
.9 Now crazed with grief, shortly after 8 A.M. Anna stepped from the cell and ran sobbing down the hallway. With what little time she had left, the frantic girl was determined to make a last desperate bid to save her mother’s life.
Although he had made several attempts at sleep, George Atzerodt’s last night on earth was also spent in wakeful terror.10 During most of the dark hours, Atzerodt prayed and wept by turns. With dawn, the condemned man found a sliver of inner strength, and for a brief time he became surprisingly composed.11 In addition to the two clergymen in his cell, Atzerodt’s brother had joined him, as had his aged mother, dressed in deep mourning.12
“The meeting of the condemned man and his mother was very affecting, and moved some of the officers of the prison . . . to tears,” one witness revealed.13
Sobbing, Atzerodt begged his mother to forgive him for the shame and sorrow he had caused. Again the son insisted that he never had any intention of killing Andrew Johnson.14 While the words of the ministers in his cell seemed to have little effect, as Atzerodt sat on his cot he would from time to time scan the Bible before him. Occasionally, when a particular noise from the gathering crowd beyond caught his attention, the condemned man would stare at the window with a “wild look.” At moments such as these, when the terrible reality of his situation struck home, Atzerodt seemed riven to the core. Tossing restlessly on his cot one moment, wringing his hands in despair the next, the pathetic prisoner again and again sobbed out his innocence.15
After managing several hours of sleep, David Herold awoke to find that his preacher had joined him in the cell. “With the clergyman he was ever respectful,” a viewer noted, “but beyond a routine repetition of words and phrases seemed to know and care little more about the coming than the present world. Impressible to a remarkable degree, but equally elastic, he talked and wept with the ministers, but was as ready for a quib or a joke immediately after as ever.” The light-hearted, frivolous youth, concluded the witness, was “more like a butterfly than a man.”16 Now Herold’s cell was crowded with a handful of wailing sisters dressed in black. Another sister and his mother were too prostrated with grief to visit the prison.17
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