The Flimsy Case Against Mary Surratt

[mikegriffith1]

I haven't been posting much over the last week or so because I was busy working on a new article: "The Flimsy Case Against Mary Surratt," available at:

http://miketgriffith.com/files/flimsycase.pdf

The article looks at and answers the military commission's major claims against Mrs. Surratt, including her failure to recognize Payne, supposedly telling Lloyd to have the shooting irons ready on the night of April 14, supposedly giving Lloyd field glasses from Booth, and supposedly meeting with Booth at 9:00 PM on April 14. It also includes a section on common myths about the Mary Surratt case.

Here's a short excerpt from the article:

Even Weichmann admitted that prior to the assassination, he believed Mrs. Surratt was a devout Christian woman and a person of outstanding character. He said she cared for him deeply and treated him like a son. At the conspiracy trial, the defense produced numerous witnesses who testified that Mary was an honest and charitable Christian lady. Two of her former slaves testified that she had always treated them kindly (Moore 54 n 73). One witness noted that Mary fed and aided Union soldiers during the war (Winkler 230-231). Reverdy Johnson, Mary’s lead defense attorney, appealed to the evidence of her good character in his part of the defense’s closing argument:

That a woman, well educated, and, as far as we can judge from all her past life, as we have it in evidence, a devout Christian, ever kind, affectionate, and charitable, with no motive disclosed to us that could have caused a total change in her very nature, could have participated in the crimes in question is almost impossible to believe. Such a belief can only be forced upon a reasonable, unsuspecting, unprejudiced mind by direct and uncontradicted evidence, coming from pure and perfectly unsuspected sources. Have we these? Is the evidence uncontradicted? Are the two witnesses, Weichmann and Lloyd, pure and unsuspected? (Pitman 262)

Johnson went on to point out the same thing that many scholars have noted, namely, that there was much more evidence against Weichmann and Lloyd than there was against Mrs. Surratt:

But this conclusion in regard to these witnesses must be, in the minds of the court, and is certainly strongly impressed upon mine, that, if the facts which they themselves state as to their connection and intimacy with Booth and Payne are true, their knowledge of the purpose to commit the crimes, and their participation in them, is much more satisfactorily established than the alleged knowledge and participation of Mrs. Surratt. (Pitman 262)