Your personal choice of "most tragic" character in the assassination story

[Laurie Verge]

I second the motion that Mary Lincoln is the most tragic figure. I know that I've said before that I have a soft spot for the First Lady; but I think that her post-White House/Civil War years might have been better had her husband lived, had they traveled like he reportedly wanted to, had they settled into a quieter routine.

I would also like to nominate Anna Surratt as a tragic figure. She faced the absolute humiliation of her mother's arrest, incarceration, and execution pretty much alone. She had to fear what would happen if her brother was caught - and probably was cursing him at the same time for getting the family in the mess. After the execution, she had to seek shelter first with a grandmother that we have no idea what she thought about the situation and then with school friends.

Anna also inherited the chore of settling the estate until her brother, Isaac, returned in the fall of 1865. Four days after her marriage in 1869, her husband lost his government job by special order of the War Department. Her health was reportedly poor for the rest of her life, and she lost several children as infants. Brother John did not even stand by the family when Mary Surratt was reinterred at Mt. Olivet. He was "vacationing" in South America.