Judicial Murder of Mrs. Surratt

[L Verge]

(10-13-2017 07:15 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Thanks for your help once again, Steve. If I find anything additional from the Johnson Home curator, I will pass it on.

I noted in the first link that Johnson supposedly mentioned that Stanton committed suicide by cutting his throat. This has bounced around for years. I wonder if Johnson was the sole source of this unsubstantiated rumor?

I have received the following reply from Kendra Hinkle from the NPS at the Andrew Johnson Home:

I've spent most of the day in the Andrew Johnson Papers, V. 16, and there is quite a lot regarding Mrs. Surratt in them, particularly in regard to Judge Holt. While nothing is stated precisely in regard to the McElwee reference, there are several allusions to the same concepts...

There is information from Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, who cooberrated [sic - corroborated] that "I never saw the record of the trial, the decision of the court, or the petition for clemency, nor was I even present at any consultation in regard to either, or any matter touching her trial and execution." He made this statement in 1873, in response to Mr. Bingham stating that "the petition in behalf of Mrs. Suratt was 'presented to the President and was duly considered by him and his advisers before the death sentence upon Mrs. S. was approved, and that the President and his Cabinet, upon such consideration, were a unit in denying the prayer of the petition.'"

Johnson alluded to the passions of the time in a speech in 1872:

"...the nation was reeling in delirium; notwithstanding sympathy and excitement ran high - ran from one end of the land to the other - notwithstanding the rebellion had just collapsed, though peace was not made; passion and anger had grown out of it. The assassination produced the wildest excitement throughout the whole of the American Continent. Yet, notwithstanding all this - when reason seemed to topple and fall upon her throne, and I was brought in by this act as President of the United States - for I, too, was one of the parties to be assassinated - Under all these circumstances, and here was the ship of State riding as it were in the trough of the sea, and we could not tell whether she would be engulphed, and collapse, and pass to the bottom to be lost forever. But there sat I, holding the helm of the ship of State, doing what I could to preserve her balance and equilibrium."

He also made a speech in Chattanooga in 1874 in which he stated, "All that I did was to let the law take its course...I may have done wrong in this pardon matter. We are all liable to err..."

I would still like to know more about McElwee... Also, I am at home without Kate Larson's book, Assassin's Accomplice. Could someone check to see if Kate lists the Johnson Papers held by the NPS as a source?