Was John Surratt engaged to Miss Roose?

[BettyO]

I think the shunning more or less was in relation to the fact that many folk considered John Surratt a scoundrel because it was felt he had abandoned his mother. Baltimore was definitely "pro Confederate" during the war and as Laurie said, very few had strong feelings about Lincoln either during the war or after; particularly in the phase of "Confederate memorial revival" in the 1880s and 1890s when Veterans and their wives were attempting to create a sense of "The Good Ol' Days" regarding the "moonlight and magnolia" myth of the Old South. There were a lot of articles written criticizing the hanging and "judicial murder" of Mrs. Surratt. It was, I think definitely felt that Mrs. Surratt was innocent and that her son had deserted her.