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LincolnToddFan · (This post was last modified: 03-02-2015 08:59 PM by LincolnToddFan.)

(03-01-2015 05:01 PM)L Verge Wrote:
(03-01-2015 03:59 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:
(03-01-2015 08:58 AM)L Verge Wrote:
(03-01-2015 05:55 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote: I think Laurie mentioned two important "legal" aspects - "her son would fall in the category of Arnold, O'Laughlen, and Mudd who had no dealings with Booth (supposedly) once the kidnap was aborted" (I think Mary Surratt did not fall in this category) and "the clemency plea had nothing to do with the question of guilt or innocence - just age and gender", so I think her son wouldn't have been hanged and she wouldn't (necessarily) have been spared her fate. (This is doesn't represent my personal decision but what I think the commission might have decided on the basis of the applicable law and the prevailing "mood" at the time.)

James O. Hall once said (off the record) that he felt that Mrs. Surratt knew exactly what was going on, but that the government failed to adequately prove it - which should have resulted in imprisonment for her.

This is probably a very silly question - and please take in mind that I know very little about Andrew Johnson other than his fights with the Radicals. However, I always hear him accused of being a racist (a 20th-century term) who fought against enfranchisement for the blacks, etc. I have also read that Johnson's "legacy" did not become much Why wouldn't those feelings have made him more inclined to grant clemency to Mrs. Surratt, a woman whose life was being threatened for exactly the same views?

maligned until the 20th century. True or false?

Hi Laurie. Mrs. Surratt was not tried and executed for her views on race. It's true that President Johnson shared those views and most other (White) Americans did as well. She lost her life -ostensibly-for being guilty of conspiracy to murder the duly elected President of the U.S., but what Johnson found more odious and unforgivable was that she was a hated "Rebel". In his eyes she and the conspirators and in fact the entire Confederacy supported the cause(disunion) of the wealthy, pseudo aristocratic class of people that AJ hated with a passion that was truly intense. That's why she had to die in his eyes.

My belief is that she felt right up to the hour of the shooting that the kidnap plot against AL had been revived and was on for that night. I don't think she knew that at that point she was assisting the men in a murder conspiracy. Booth involved her and duped and manipulated her because she was useful to him and she was willing to help. I don't think she was ever told that the plan had switched to murder. And when she did realize what she had involved herself in later, she was panicked. That's why she denied knowing Lewis Paine that night, which is what incriminated her in the first place.

In reading the transcripts of the trial I came across nothing...no smoking gun as it were-that convinced me that Mary knew on the night of April 14th that an assassination-NOT a kidnapping- was in the works.

Personally, I agree that Mary did not know that the plans had changed to murder. However, I also understand how the laws of conspiracy made her guilty of the crime under vicarious liability.

As for Johnson's views on the "elite" Southern aristocracy, no one could ever accuse the Surratt family of being part of that element of society. They were modest, middle-class folk at the best of times by Southern Maryland standards.

PS: I also suspect that a secondary charge could have been applied by the tribunal if they could have done so legally -- a charge that the conspirators were also guilty of being secessionists and Confederates. In my mind, the case was not just about the murder of the president... And, I am not saying that to be snippy. I truly believe that it was the mindset in much of the land at that time that these "losers" (representing the Confederacy) had to become a lesson to others.

I would like to be able to disagree with that last part but I cannot because you are, unfortunately, right on the money. The executions were motivated by not only justice, but revenge. Johnson pretty much underscored that sentiment when he justified the hanging of Mrs. Surratt by saying that she owned the "nest that hatched the egg".

And no, the Surratt family was not part of the slave owning elite of the Confederacy, but they did sympathize and side with them. Johnson, a poor Southerner, really knew how to hold a grudge. He was a very proud, bitter man. Have you ever read his notorious, inebriated speech on Inauguration Day March 04, 1865?? He spent a great deal of it frothing against the planter class in the South. The wealth and power of his "betters", along with their desire to break apart the U.S. by secession, was what he held against them. Not their views on slavery and race.