Last Requests

[Laurie Verge]

Amazingly, I remembered to find the "final note" from Mary Surratt. Here's a little background since I previously used the word "spurious" in mentioning it above:

About forty years ago, James O. Hall found a copy of the supposed original of this note in the Library of Congress and presented a copy to Surratt House Museum. The original note disappeared years ago, but the story behind it is that an alcoholic customer walked into a bar in Baltimore sometime about the turn of the 20th century, and traded the original for his daily sustenance. Somehow the original made its way to the LOC only to disappear years later.

What you read here is a translation of the original which is written in a very shaky hand with large blobs of ink in the script as well as on the paper - what one would expect from a woman about to be hanged (if she was even lucid enough to write).

Washington July 7 1865

Dear E___a (This could be Emma or Eliza)

Please stay with Annie today. God knows I am innocent but for some cause I must suffer today.
Good bye.

God Bless you
Mary E. Surratt

There is a notation showing that the letter had to pass through Gen. Hartranft before it could leave the penitentiary. It also has the LOC reference number of Ac2670 in the upper corner.

Over the years, Mr. Hall, Mr. Brennan, and others debated the authenticity of the original; and it has pretty much slipped into oblivion as far as history is concerned.