Coming This Fall

[Linda Anderson]

I don't think that Mary would have found being a devout Catholic an impediment to being a secessionist. She more than likely thought that God was on her side and when she prayed for her intentions with her Rosary, those intentions may very well have been to rid the country of the tyrant Lincoln.

As for her lying on the scaffold, didn't she lie when she denied knowing Lewis Powell when he showed up at her boarding house on the evening of April 17? She even used God's name.

"I [Major Smith] stepped to the door of the parlor, and said, 'Mrs. Surratt, will you step here a minute?' Mrs. Surratt stepped there. Said I, 'Do you know this man?' She said, raising her right hand, 'Before God, sir, I do not know this man; and I have never seen him.'"

Also, wouldn't she lie about being involved in the assassination so as to not implicate her son, John, and daughter Anna?