Blood on the Moon

by Edward , Jr. Steers

  At 11:00 A.M. the carpenters had finished their grisly work and the large scaffolding stood ready for its grim assignment. Just to the right of the scaffold a squad of soldiers had stacked four wooden gun boxes to hold the bodies of the condemned prisoners. The oppressive heat drove several of the wool-clad soldiers against the brick walls of the buildings in an effort to find some relief in the little bit of shade the wall provided. The burial detail had no such relief. Four narrow slots were dug in the dry earth, four feet deep, seven feet long and three feet wide. What little moisture existed in the freshly turned soil quickly evaporated in the blazing heat.

  Shortly after noon the preparations were finished. The graves had been dug, the gun boxes carefully stacked, and the scaffold securely buttressed. The scaffold flooring consisted of two large trap doors, six feet long by four feet wide, held in place by two upright beams. Each beam was attended by a soldier whose sole duty was to keep it secure on its large wooden block. No one except the assigned soldier was to touch the support beams.60 At the prescribed signal each brace would be struck a sharp blow using a long four-by-four post, knocking it from beneath the traps. With their supporting beams knocked free, the platforms would suddenly drop, swinging on their hinges. The four bodies would fall six feet, only to be snapped short of the ground by the rope fastened about each neck. Properly done, the condemned would have their necks broken and would die instantly as a result of massive spinal cord injury. Improperly done, they would slowly strangle to death dangling at the end of their ropes.

  The spectators began to grow restless waiting for the appointed hour. The warrant called for the executions to be completed by two o’clock, and it was now a few minutes past one. Standing in the doorway of the deputy warden’s quarters, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock removed a white linen handkerchief from his coat and wiped the perspiration from his face. Hancock had the onerous duty of carrying out the executions. An heroic soldier of considerable capability, this was a duty he loathed carrying out. He had delayed the official proceedings as long as he could in the event President Johnson stayed Mary Surratt’s execution. It was now clear to Hancock that such word would not come.

  Three hours earlier Hancock had appeared before Judge Andrew Wylie, one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, to deliver Johnson’s executive order refusing a writ of habeas corpus for Mary Surratt. Mary’s lawyers had drafted a writ in hopes of getting Wylie to order her release to civil authorities. Wylie had earlier endorsed the draft and United States Marshal David Gooding had served the papers on Hancock. Hancock appeared in Wylie’s chambers at 11:30 A.M. and presented the judge with an executive order from President Johnson suspending the writ of habeas corpus in Mary’s case.61 Wylie was powerless to act. He had no recourse but to acquiesce, allowing the last obstacle to the government’s plan to execute Mary Surratt to pass. Hancock returned to the Arsenal grounds where everything was in readiness for the scheduled executions.

  Davy Herold was lying on a cot in his cell. He was pale and nervous as he and his seven sisters listened to the ministering words of Reverend Dr. Olds. Lewis Powell sat stoically in his cell, resigned to his fate. George Atzerodt was visited by his mother and common law wife, disbelieving what was about to happen.62 Fathers Wiget and Walter sat praying with Mary Surratt as she held her daughter Anna in her arms. At half past twelve, all except the religious counselors were escorted from the cellblock.

  As the rising sun passed its midday peak, Hancock could delay no longer. Time was slipping toward the inevitable end. There would be a certain cruelty to continue the delay any longer. Hancock emerged from the building indicating to those in the courtyard that the moment had come. Four chairs were carried up the steps and placed on the scaffolding. At two minutes past one o’clock the four condemned prisoners were led from the penitentiary building into the courtyard. Mary Surratt came first supported by Fathers Wiget and Walter. Atzerodt came next followed by Herold. Last to emerge was Lewis Powell accompanied by Reverend Gillette. Leading the procession was General Hartranft and members of his immediate staff. After each of the condemned had been seated in the chairs provided for them, Hartranft read the order of execution. As soon as Hartranft finished, Dr. Gillette made a statement on behalf of Powell thanking Hartranft and his men for the kind manner in which he was treated during his imprisonment.

  The prisoners were bound around their arms and legs with strips of white linen. The nooses were adjusted so that the several knots lay snug against the side of the head in order to insure a quick and clean break of the neck. Atzerodt was the only one who spoke aloud: “Good-bye, gentlemen who is before me. May we all meet in the other world.”63 It was twenty-one minutes after one o’clock. Captain Christian Rath, a precise soldier who was officially charged with carrying out the execution, had seen that every detail was ready for the hanging. Making sure everyone save the four condemned had stepped free of the trapdoors, Rath clapped his hands three times. Four soldiers swung the pair of bludgeons forward, striking the upright braces near their base. The crack from their rams resonated throughout the courtyard as the pillars fell away. The eyes of every spectator were transfixed on the wooden trapdoors as they remained suspended in midair. Time seemed frozen. Then with a loud screeching sound the platforms fell from beneath the bodies. The four wretched souls dropped in unison with a snapping thud.64 Justice had been served.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Aftermath Rewriting History

  History is not history unless it is the truth.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Some felt that Mary Surratt’s trial was a ruse to force her son to give himself up and save his mother. John Surratt was the one the government really wanted, not his “pious mother.”1 At the time of the trial, John Surratt’s whereabouts were not known for sure. Witnesses placed him in Washington in front of Ford’s Theatre on the night of April 14, but Surratt claimed he was in Elmira, New York, on his way to Canada at the moment of Lincoln’s murder.2 Learning of Lincoln’s assassination on Saturday, April 15, in Elmira, Surratt made his way to Canandaigua, New York, and then to Montreal where he hid out in the home of Confederate agent John Porterfield. From Montreal Surratt was taken across the St. Lawrence River to the small town of St. Liboire where he was hidden in the rectory of the local Catholic priest, Father Charles Boucher.3

  Surratt stayed in St. Liboire through the entire conspiracy trial and subsequent hanging of his mother on July 7. In August he was taken to Montreal where another priest, Father LaPierre, hid him while making arrangements to take him to Quebec. From Quebec arrangements were made to secure passage aboard the steamer Peruvian, which carried Surratt to Liverpool, England. From Liverpool, Surratt eventually made his way to the Vatican in Rome, where he enlisted as a papal Zouave under the alias John Watson.

  Surratt was discovered through an ironic twist of fate. Serving as a Zouave at the same time was an old acquaintance of Surratt’s, Henri Beaumont de Ste. Marie. Ste. Marie tipped off the United States consul that John Surratt could be found in the Vatican among the Pope’s guard. Ste. Marie turned “Watson-Surratt” in to the Vatican authorities in hope of receiving the reward money that had been offered for Surratt’s capture. Although the reward had been withdrawn a year earlier, Ste. Marie eventually was awarded fifteen thousand dollars for his tip,4 which Congress later reduced to ten thousand dollars.5 Although no extradition treaty existed between the two countries, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, agreed to have Surratt taken into custody and extradited back to the United States.6

  Before Surratt could be delivered to the U.S. authorities, he freed himself by breaking loose from his guards and jumping over a cliff, disappearing into a dark ravine below. Having escaped his captors, Surratt made his way to Naples where he boarded a freighter destined for Alexandria, Egypt. Once again the U.S. authorities were tipped off. On arriving in Alexandria, Surratt was met by the American Consul and local police, who arrested him and returned him to the
United States, arriving February 19, 1867. Six months later, on June 10, 1867, Surratt was placed on trial in civil court in the District of Columbia charged as an accomplice in the murder of Abraham Lincoln. As in the trial of Mary Surratt, Louis Wiechmann became a principal witness for the prosecution. But unlike Mary’s trial, John’s ended differently. The jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision and the trial ended with a “hung jury.” The government decided to retry Surratt, only this time on a charge of treason rather than murder. On July 17, 1862, Congress had enacted a treason statute that covered certain acts committed during the Civil War. There was no doubt that Surratt had been a Confederate agent and that his alleged role in Lincoln’s death fell under this statute. The United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Edward C. Carrington, actually secured two indictments against Surratt under the treason statute and presented the first indictment to Judge George P. Fisher. Once again the government lost out—Fisher ruled that the government had waited too long to file charges and dismissed the case. The District of Columbia had a two-year limitation on such crimes. Fisher’s dismissal was based on the fact that the government listed April 15, 1865, as the date of the alleged offence while its indictment was dated June 18, 1868, three years later. Carrington appealed but the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia upheld Fisher’s ruling.7

  The second indictment under the treason statute was made moot when the grand jury, upon learning of the Court’s ruling, decided to officially “ignore” the second treason indictment.8 Thus, the government had lost out on all three attempts to bring John Surratt to justice. The war was over and animosities had mostly died way. The great majority of people wanted to put the tragedy of the war behind them and get on with life. So too did John Surratt.

  A free man, Surratt left Washington behind and made his way to the small town of Rockville, Maryland, located a few miles to the northwest. Here he secured a position teaching at the Rockville Female Academy. In 1870 Surratt decided to capitalize on his Civil War exploits and give a series of public lectures, charging admission of course. Surratt spoke at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Rockville about his role in Booth’s attempt to capture Lincoln. The lecture, which Surratt said he was forced to give out of “pecuniary necessity,” was carefully crafted, revealing little in the way of names or actions that were not already known. He told of being introduced to John Wilkes Booth, but failed to mention by whom or under what circumstances. He did make one statement that he left hanging. In describing his meeting with Booth, Surratt told his audience that after listening to Booth for several minutes, he interrupted him by saying, “I know who you are and what are your intentions.”9 The question is who told Surratt about Booth and his plans? Having been introduced to Booth by Dr. Samuel Mudd earlier in the day and knowing none of the other conspirators who agreed to join Booth (Arnold and O’Laughlen), it seems logical that it was Samuel Mudd who informed Surratt about Booth’s plot to capture Lincoln.

  Following his brief stay in Rockville, Surratt made his way to the city of Baltimore. In 1872 he married a local woman by the name of Mary Victorine Hunter, a second cousin of Francis Scott Key.10 Surratt had found employment with the Old Bay Line, a steamship company that operated on the Chesapeake Bay. By the end of his career in 1915, he had risen to the office of freight auditor and treasurer of the company, an important position.

  After his Rockville lecture on December 6, 1870, Surratt spoke in New York at Cooper Union on December 9.11 After that speech he never spoke publicly again about his role in Booth’s conspiracy, nor did any of his children offer any revelations they had heard from their father. To the very end, Surratt remained a good Confederate agent, keeping silent about the people and events associated with his clandestine activities during the war. His arrest and trial in 1867 proved fortunate, for had he been tried in 1865 along with his cohorts he surely would have gone to the gallows. Subsequent writers have felt that the failure to convict Surratt in 1867 was due to his trial before a civil court instead of a military tribunal. His eventual release, however, was more a function of the times than the jurisdiction of trial. By 1867 the country had moved on and the war and Lincoln’s murder were in the past. Neither the passion nor the interest continued past the 1865 conspiracy trial. When the grand jury chose to officially “ignore”12 the final effort to indict John Surratt, it reflected the general feeling throughout the country. Surratt died of pneumonia in 1916 at the age of seventy-two and lies buried in New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore.13

  Not all of the conspirators were as unlucky as Mary Surratt and her three cohorts who were hanged on July 7. Sitting in his prison cell, Samuel Mudd little realized how close he had come to joining Mary and the three men with her on the scaffold. Mudd had been tipped off by one of his jailers on July 6 that he would be spared the gallows. Had he known that a majority of the commission had voted for the death penalty, he would have spent a much more fitful night. Five of the nine commissioners believed Mudd was guilty enough that he should hang along with Mary and her friends. Mudd had escaped the gallows by a single vote. His next stop would be Fort Jefferson in the Florida Keys.

  Located seventy miles off of the southern tip of Florida is a group of small islands known as the Dry Tortugas. Situated at one end of the group is Fort Jefferson, the largest masonry fortification built by the United States military. Fort Jefferson was said to be “the safest fort in the world, and the most useless.”14 Useless perhaps, but for the next three years and eleven months it would be home for Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, and Edman Spangler.15

  Fort Jefferson was an engineering marvel in many ways. Construction of the fort was begun in the winter of 1846 under the direction of Lieutenant Horatio G. Wright, who would eventually command the Sixth Army Corps in the final two years of the Civil War. Construction on the fort continued for nearly three decades until 1875 when the work was stopped, although the fort was not yet finished. The outer walls were forty-five feet high and sat on an underwater foundation fourteen feet in width. Originally designed to accommodate one thousand soldiers, the fort held two thousand military prisoners at the time of Mudd’s imprisonment.16

  Following his conviction Mudd and his fellow prisoners were originally scheduled to be incarcerated in the federal penitentiary in Albany, New York. But Stanton decided that they should remain under military control and ordered their imprisonment shifted to Fort Jefferson. It was during the trip from Washington to Fort Jefferson that Captain George W. Dutton, the officer in charge of the military escort guarding the four conspirators, claimed that Mudd made a surprising admission. According to Dutton, Mudd admitted knowing his guest was John Wilkes Booth and that, on returning from his trip to Bryantown on Saturday, April 15, Mudd admonished Booth for putting his family in jeopardy. He told Booth that he had to leave his house immediately.

  Dutton’s statement has received only marginal attention from historians. In most accounts written about Samuel Mudd, Dutton’s claim is simply reported without any explanation17 or not mentioned at all.18 But Dutton’s claim had corroboration. In fact, four other individuals made claims that Mudd had admitted that he knew his injured patient was John Wilkes Booth. Most significant among these was Dr. Mudd’s own wife, Frances.

  In 1901 the famous Lincoln collector and historian Osborn H. Oldroyd set out on a walk to retrace Booth’s escape through southern Maryland. Osborn stopped at each of the sites visited by Booth in 1865. One of the stops was the home of Dr. and Mrs. Mudd. Mudd had been dead for eighteen years when Oldroyd visited the farm. According to Oldroyd’s biographer, William Burton Benham, Mrs. Mudd made a startling revelation at the time of Oldroyd’s visit: “Mrs. Mudd received [Oldroyd] cordially upon learning who he was and the nature of his errand. She told Captain Oldroyd that Dr. Mudd [on his return from Bryantown] upbraided Booth for his rashness and told him that he had inflicted an irreparable injury to the South.”19 This statement by Benham came many years after the incident occurred, which subjects it to the vagaries of mem
ory. But there are two other statements that confirm Mudd’s admission that he knew his injured patient was John Wilkes Booth.

  Among the military officers on board the USS Florida were Brigadier General Levi Axtell Dodd, a member of Major General John Hartranft’s staff in charge of the prisoners, and Assistant Paymaster William F. Keeler, who had served aboard the Monitor before transferring to the Florida in 1864. Both Dodd and Keeler made statements that they too had heard Mudd’s admission that he knew Booth at the time of his April visit and knew that he had murdered Lincoln. Dodd’s statement, like Dutton’s, appeared in articles in the Washington Star and the New York Times.20 According to the Star article, Dodd had also filed a report with Holt on his return to Washington in which he claimed that Mudd had admitted to knowing it was Booth at his house in April.21

  While Dodd and Dutton served together at the Arsenal Prison, and may have discussed their claims prior to returning home, a letter written by William Keeler four years later adds further credibility to the story. While living in Chicago in early 1869, Keeler read an article in the local newspaper suggesting that President Johnson was considering granting a pardon to Mudd. Concerned that Johnson was unaware of Mudd’s lying about his relationship with Booth, Keeler wrote a letter to his congressman, B.C. Cook, on January 21, 1869, stating, “In conversation with myself, & I think with others on our passage down he [Mudd] admitted what I believe the prosecution failed to prove at his trial—viz—that he knew who Booth was when he set his leg & what crime he was guilty [of].”22