Lincoln Conspirators Hanged: First U.S. Woman Executed

Four people were hanged in the yard of the Old Arsenal Penitentiary in Washington on July 7, 1865, convicted of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. Among them was Mary Surratt, the first woman executed by the United States federal government, whose death sentence sparked immediate controversy that has never fully resolved. The conspiracy had originally planned to kidnap Lincoln and trade him for Confederate prisoners of war. When the Confederacy collapsed in April 1865, Booth transformed the plot into a coordinated assassination targeting Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward. On the night of April 14, Booth shot Lincoln at Ford s Theatre. Lewis Powell forced his way into Seward s home and slashed the Secretary of State with a knife, nearly killing him. George Atzerodt, assigned to kill Johnson, lost his nerve and spent the evening drinking at a hotel bar. The military tribunal that tried the conspirators was controversial from the start. Civilian courts were functioning in Washington, and critics argued that civilians should not face military justice. The eight defendants were tried together over seven weeks. David Herold, who had accompanied Booth during his escape, was convicted for aiding the assassin. Powell was convicted for the attack on Seward. Atzerodt was convicted for his role in the conspiracy despite his failure to act. Mary Surratt was convicted for providing her boarding house as a meeting place for the conspirators. Surratt s conviction remains the most contested. Five of the nine military commissioners signed a petition recommending clemency for her on the grounds that the evidence was circumstantial. President Andrew Johnson later claimed he never saw the clemency petition, though Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt insisted he had presented it. Surratt maintained her innocence to the end. The executions were photographed by Alexander Gardner, producing some of the most haunting images in American history. The hooded figures on the scaffold, the trap doors falling open, and the bodies hanging in the July heat created a visual record of government vengeance that Americans debated for generations.