Lincoln Conspirators: The Attack, Military Tribunal, and Executions

The Lincoln conspirators were a group of at least ten people, organized by actor John Wilkes Booth, who plotted first to kidnap and then to kill President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865. Booth shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre on April 14 and was killed by a Union soldier twelve days later. Eight accomplices were tried by a military commission that summer. Four were hanged, three were sentenced to life in prison, and one received six years. A ninth conspirator, John Surratt Jr., fled the country, was captured abroad, and was tried in civilian court without being convicted.¹

From a Kidnapping Plot to a Night of Attacks

Booth began recruiting in the fall of 1864. His first plan was to abduct Lincoln and deliver him to Richmond, where the president could be exchanged for Confederate prisoners of war. He pulled in childhood friends Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen, Confederate spy John Surratt Jr., former Confederate soldier Lewis Powell, pharmacy clerk David Herold, and George Atzerodt, a German-born carriage maker brought on for his knowledge of Maryland’s waterways and his ability to handle a boat for a river crossing to Virginia.¹

The group considered several kidnapping scenarios, including seizing Lincoln from his box at Ford’s Theatre and lowering him to the stage. The most developed attempt came on March 17, 1865, when the conspirators gathered to intercept Lincoln’s carriage as he returned from a performance at Campbell Military Hospital. Lincoln changed his schedule and never appeared.²

After that failure the group fractured. Arnold left, calling the plans “impractical.” O’Laughlen claimed to have withdrawn. Surratt went to Canada. Then Lee surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, making a prisoner exchange pointless, and on April 11 Lincoln gave a speech endorsing limited voting rights for Black Americans. According to Ford’s Theatre historical accounts, Booth turned to Powell and said, “That is the last speech he will ever make.”³ By April 14, Booth had reassembled his remaining conspirators for murder.¹

What Happened on April 14, 1865

Booth’s final plan called for three simultaneous attacks. He would kill Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre during a performance of Our American Cousin. Powell would assassinate Secretary of State William Seward at his home. Atzerodt would kill Vice President Andrew Johnson at the Kirkwood House Hotel.⁴

Booth shot Lincoln at roughly 10:15 p.m., leaped to the stage shouting “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” and fled through the back of the theater on a rented horse.¹

Powell talked his way into Seward’s home by claiming to deliver a prescription. Seward was already bedridden from a carriage accident. Powell stabbed him repeatedly with a bowie knife, fractured the skull of Seward’s son Frederick with a revolver, and slashed a bodyguard, Sergeant George Robinson, in the forehead. Seward survived. Herold, who had guided Powell to the house, panicked and fled before Powell came back out.⁵

Atzerodt never attempted his assignment. He checked into the Kirkwood House but spent the evening at the hotel bar and wandered the streets for the rest of the night. A search of his room the next morning turned up a loaded revolver under his pillow, a bowie knife between the mattress and sheets, and a bank book belonging to Booth.⁶

Who the Conspirators Were and What Became of Them

John Wilkes Booth

Booth crossed into Maryland and met up with Herold. Over twelve days the two covered more than ninety miles through Maryland and Virginia, relying on Confederate sympathizers for shelter and river crossings. Booth may have broken his left fibula in the jump from Lincoln’s box. Early on April 15 he reached the farm of Dr. Samuel Mudd, who set his leg. The pair hid in pine thickets, crossed the Potomac on their second try in a twelve-foot fishing boat, and eventually reached the farm of Richard Garrett near Port Royal, Virginia, where Booth went by “John W. Boyd.”⁷

Soldiers of the 16th New York Cavalry tracked them to the Garrett farm on April 26. Herold surrendered. Booth refused. The soldiers set the tobacco barn on fire, and Sergeant Boston Corbett shot Booth in the neck, severing his spinal cord. He died at 7:15 a.m. His last reported words were “Useless, useless.” After an autopsy aboard the USS Montauk, he was buried at the Old Arsenal Penitentiary, then moved in 1869 to the Booth family plot in Baltimore’s Green Mount Cemetery.⁷

Mary Surratt

Mary Surratt, a widowed Maryland tavern owner, ran a Washington boarding house that served as a meeting place for Booth and the others. The case against her rested largely on two witnesses. John Lloyd, the keeper of her Maryland tavern, testified that on April 14 she told him to have “shooting-irons” ready for callers and personally delivered a field glass that Booth and Herold picked up after the assassination. Louis Weichmann, a boarder, testified about private meetings between Surratt and Booth and her trip to the tavern on the day of the murder.⁸

Her attorney, Frederick Aiken, attacked Lloyd’s credibility, calling him an alcoholic trying to save himself. Investigators also found a hidden photograph of Booth in her home, and she denied knowing Lewis Powell when he arrived at her door on April 17, despite his claim that she had hired him for work. The commission found her guilty. Five of the nine commissioners recommended that President Johnson commute her sentence to life imprisonment on account of her “sex and age.” Johnson refused, reportedly saying she had “kept the nest that hatched the egg.” Whether Johnson ever actually saw the clemency recommendation became a lasting historical dispute.⁸⁹ She was hanged on July 7, 1865, becoming the first woman executed by the United States federal government.¹

Lewis Powell

Powell, a former Confederate soldier, was the physical muscle of the operation. His attack on Seward was the most violent act of the night aside from the shooting of Lincoln. He was captured three days later when he arrived at Mary Surratt’s boarding house with a pickaxe, claiming to be a handyman, just as police were questioning her. A servant, William Bell, identified him, and investigators found blood on his clothing and boots marked “J W B.” His attorney argued he had acted out of a fanaticism bordering on insanity. Powell was largely indifferent throughout the proceedings, sitting motionless and reportedly attempting suicide, after which he was forced to wear a padded hood. He was hanged on July 7, 1865.⁵

George Atzerodt

Atzerodt’s failure to attack Johnson did not save him. He was arrested on April 20 at his cousin’s home in Germantown, Maryland. In a post-conviction confession, he claimed Booth had actually intended for Herold to carry out the Johnson killing and that his own role was merely to “back up” Herold. His attorney, Captain William Doster, argued at trial that Atzerodt was a “constitutional coward” incapable of performing the act. The commission was unpersuaded. He was hanged alongside the others on July 7. His final words were, “May we all meet in the other world. God take me now.”⁶

David Herold

Herold, described in one account as a “dull-witted pharmacy clerk,” served as a guide. He led Powell to the Seward home, then fled and joined Booth for the twelve-day escape through Maryland and Virginia. He surrendered at the Garrett farm when soldiers set the barn on fire. He was convicted by the commission, hanged on July 7, 1865, and buried at Congressional Cemetery in Washington.¹¹⁰

Dr. Samuel Mudd

Mudd was a Maryland physician and Confederate sympathizer who set Booth’s broken leg in the early hours of April 15 and sheltered him at his farm. Investigators later established that Mudd had met with Booth and other conspirators before the assassination and had lied about knowing Booth. In his post-conviction confession, Atzerodt said Booth had sent supplies to Mudd’s farm roughly two weeks before the murder and added, “I am certain Dr. Mudd knew all about it.” The commission convicted Mudd. He escaped a death sentence by a single vote and was sentenced to life in prison at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, a remote island fortress off the coast of Florida.¹¹

In August 1867, a yellow fever epidemic swept through Fort Jefferson, killing the post physician and infecting 270 of the roughly 350 soldiers and prisoners there. Mudd volunteered to lead the hospital, implementing hygiene measures that helped reduce the death toll to 38. A petition signed by 299 officers and soldiers credited him with saving lives. President Johnson pardoned him on February 8, 1869. He returned to his Maryland farm and died in 1883.¹²

His conviction has never been overturned. His grandson Richard D. Mudd spent decades lobbying to clear the family name. In 1992, the Army Board for Correction of Military Records recommended setting aside the conviction, but the Army rejected the recommendation. Richard Mudd died in 2002, and his son Thomas carried the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which that November dismissed the lawsuit on the ground that the Mudd family lacked standing because the statute they relied on applied only to members of the military. Samuel Mudd was never a soldier, and the ruling effectively ended the legal campaign.¹³

Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen

Arnold and O’Laughlen were childhood friends of Booth and among his earliest recruits. Both took part in the kidnapping plot, and O’Laughlen admitted to joining the failed March 17 abduction attempt. Arnold broke with Booth on March 15, calling the plans impractical, and was not in Washington on the night of the assassination. Neither man appears to have had any role in the murder itself. Both were convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison at Fort Jefferson.¹

O’Laughlen died of yellow fever during the 1867 epidemic at the fort.¹² Arnold was pardoned by President Johnson in March 1869 and died of tuberculosis in 1906.¹⁰

Edman “Ned” Spangler

Spangler was a stagehand and carpenter at Ford’s Theatre who had known Booth from carpentry work at the Booth family home. On the night of the assassination, Booth asked him to hold his horse in the alley behind the theater. Spangler passed the task to a theater employee known as “Peanut John” Burroughs. Several witnesses testified that Spangler tried to suppress information about Booth’s escape. Jacob Ritterspaugh, another employee, said Spangler slapped him and told him, “Don’t say which way he went.” Another witness said Spangler was in a position to block Booth’s exit but did nothing.¹⁴

Historical accounts suggest it is unlikely Spangler knew anything about the plot in advance. He was convicted of aiding Booth’s escape and sentenced to six years of hard labor at Fort Jefferson. He served about a year and a half before being pardoned in March 1869.¹

John Surratt Jr.

Surratt, Mary Surratt’s son, was a Confederate spy who introduced several key conspirators to Booth and took part in the March 17 kidnapping attempt. He was not in Washington on the night of the assassination. He fled to Canada, then England, and eventually joined the Papal Zouaves at the Vatican under a pseudonym. He was recognized in late 1866, arrested in Alexandria, Egypt, and extradited aboard the USS Swatara, arriving in Washington on February 18, 1867.¹⁵

By then the Supreme Court had decided Ex parte Milligan (1866), holding that military tribunals could not try civilians where civilian courts were open. Surratt was tried in civilian court instead. The trial ran from June 10 to August 10, 1867, with testimony from 170 witnesses, and ended in a hung jury. The government later sought a new indictment, but a judge ruled that the statute of limitations had expired and the charges were dropped. Many observers believed that had Surratt surrendered in 1865, he would have been hanged in his mother’s place.¹⁶¹

In 1870 Surratt attempted a lecture tour, admitting during a speech in Rockville, Maryland, that he had participated in the kidnapping plot while denying knowledge of the assassination. Public outrage forced him to cancel further appearances. He married in 1872, took a job with the Baltimore Steam Packet Company, and lived quietly in Baltimore until his death from pneumonia on April 21, 1916, the last surviving person directly connected to the conspiracy.¹⁶

The Military Tribunal

President Johnson authorized the military commission by executive order on May 1, 1865. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who had directed the manhunt and locked down Washington in the hours after the shooting, insisted on a military rather than civilian trial. Federal authorities argued that Washington was a war zone and the assassination an act of war, even though civilian courts were open and operating just blocks from Ford’s Theatre.¹⁷

The trial was held on the third floor of the Washington Arsenal, now Fort McNair. A panel of nine military officers presided, led by Major General David Hunter, with no judge in the traditional sense. Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt led the prosecution, assisted by Representative John Bingham and Brevet Colonel Henry Burnett. The defendants could retain attorneys and call witnesses but were not permitted to speak on their own behalf. A guilty verdict required five of nine votes, and a death sentence required six.⁹¹⁷

Proceedings began on May 9 and ran more than seven weeks, with testimony from over 300 witnesses. All eight defendants were found guilty on June 30. Holt was later accused of suppressing evidence favorable to the defense, including entries from Booth’s diary and documents that distinguished the kidnapping conspiracy from the assassination. He was also forced to address Congress about his use of witnesses who had received government reward money and were later exposed as perjurers.¹⁸

Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt were hanged on July 7, 1865, in the yard of the Old Arsenal Penitentiary. General Winfield Scott Hancock supervised. About a thousand spectators attended with exclusive tickets. In the days before the execution, Surratt’s lawyers and her daughter had pleaded for a reprieve, and widespread anticipation persisted that she might be spared at the last moment. She was not. The trap doors opened shortly after 1:30 p.m., and the bodies hung for twenty-five minutes before being cut down.¹⁹

The Constitutional Problem the Trial Left Behind

Trying civilians by military commission when civilian courts were available created a constitutional problem that outlasted everyone involved. Less than a year after the executions, the Supreme Court ruled in Ex parte Milligan (1866) that military tribunals could not try civilians in areas where civil courts were open and functioning. The majority held that the Constitution’s guarantee of trial by jury was binding “at all times and under all circumstances” and that the trial of a civilian by military commission violated the Sixth Amendment. Four concurring justices reached the same result on narrower grounds, arguing that Congress had simply not authorized such commissions.²⁰

The ruling called the legitimacy of the Lincoln commission into serious question but could not undo the executions. It did directly affect John Surratt Jr., whose 1867 civilian trial followed in part because another military tribunal was no longer tenable.²¹

For roughly 150 years, legal scholars viewed the trial as a proceeding that, in the words of one assessment, “no self-respecting military lawyer would look straight in the eye.” More recently, government lawyers and federal judges have cited it as precedent supporting the constitutionality of modern military commissions used to try nonstate enemy combatants. Whether the trial of the Lincoln conspirators should be treated as canonical constitutional authority or as a cautionary example of wartime overreach remains an open question in American law.²²

1
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2
Boundary Stones WETA. John Wilkes Booth’s Abduction Plot Gone Wrong
3
Ford’s Theatre. Investigating the Assassination
4
Ford’s Theatre. Material Evidence: Powell and Atzerodt
5
Famous Trials. Lewis Powell
6
Famous Trials. George Atzerodt
7
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8
Famous Trials. Mary Surratt
9
Columbia Law Review. The Law of the Lincoln Assassination
10
PBS. Co-Conspirators
11
National Park Service. Samuel Mudd
12
Smithsonian Magazine. How Samuel Mudd Went From Lincoln Conspirator to Medical Savior
13
New York Times. Suit to Clear Doctor Who Treated Booth Is Dismissed
14
Famous Trials. Edman Spangler
15
U.S. Naval Institute. Returning the Last Conspirator
16
Famous Trials. John Surratt
17
Ford’s Theatre. The Trial of the Conspirators
18
U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center. Major General Joseph Holt
19
Washingtonian. Lincoln Co-Conspirators Hanged, 1865
20
Justia. Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2
21
Civil War on the Western Border. Ex parte Milligan
22
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications. The Lincoln Assassination Trial