Exhumation of Conspirators

[L Verge]

Found in the files at Surratt House: This will appear as an article in the Surratt Courier in a few months, but here's a sneak peek for those of you who may not have ever seen this account. It is taken from a clipping in a bound scrapbook belonging to George Alfred Townsend (GATH) which is in the Library of Congress Manuscript Room. The clipping is undated and is from the Boston Traveler.

Lincoln's Assassination
Funeral of the Five Conspirators After the Execution

As a newspaper correspondent, I had occasion to visit the Old Capitol Prison in Washington in February 1869 [sic - bodies were at the old Washington Penitentiary, not Old Capitol Prison] to witness the exhumation and the rendition to their respective relatives and friends of the remains of the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination. President Johnson was about to go out of office and he issued an order permitting Christian burial to the bodies of the five persons implicated in the death of Lincoln -- Booth, Mrs. Surratt, Atzerodt, Payne [sic] and Harold [sic]. They had been buried in ammunition boxes of common pine wood, six feet long, two feet wide and two feet deep. When the lid was lifted from Booth's coffin, his face was perfect, with the exception of a small hole abut the size of a dime in each cheek. His hair was in good condition as if he had just come out of a barber's shop. In taking out the body to place it in a handsome rosewood coffin supplied by his mother, Mrs. Booth of Baltimore, the head dropped off from the body. Not so with Mrs. Surratt. Her face and form were perfect, and she looked like one in a happy, dreamless sleep. Her head adhered to the body in the process of transfer. Payne's body was greatly wasted, but Atzerodt's was the worst of all; for when the army blanket that covered his remains was lifted up, it revealed a shapeless mass of blackened bones and ashes, with a bald and separated skull in one corner. Talking of this matter of the Lincoln assassination, I remember asking Andrew Johnson one day, when we were traveling together through East Tennessee at a time when he was running for Congressman-at-large against Horace Maynard and Frank Cheatham, why it was he did not pardon Mrs. Surratt. He was in a communicative mood and he said: "The true history of that case has never been told. It was represented in the papers that I refused to see Annie Surratt, the daughter of Mrs. Surratt when she came to the White House the morning of the executions, asking for the pardon of her mother. The fact is that I never knew it was Miss Surratt, because a man in charge named Muzzy, who had general charge of the White House, came to me and said a crazy woman was down stairs and wanted to get in to see me and she wouldn't give her name, but was crying and tearing her hair and exhibited all the evidence of insanity."

"But would you have pardoned Mrs. Surratt", I asked, "supposing you had known better?"

"I don't think I would", he replied, in his bluff way. "She didn't do the shooting, but she was an accessory to it which is all the same."

NOTE: If I remember correctly, several months ago, we discussed a conversation that Johnson had with a gentleman near the end of his life, and his reply regarding Mrs. Surratt was a tad different.

[RJNorton]

(02-02-2018 03:54 PM)L Verge Wrote:  NOTE: If I remember correctly, several months ago, we discussed a conversation that Johnson had with a gentleman near the end of his life, and his reply regarding Mrs. Surratt was a tad different.

Yes - it was in Bill B.'s post here.

"Johnson said: "The execution of Mrs. Surrat [sic] was a crime of passion without justice or reason. She knew no more about the intentions of Boothe [sic]and his associates than any other person who chanced to know Booth or Asterot [sic]. They had simply boarded, as others had done, at her boarding house. She was entitled to a tral [sic] in open court and the record of the trial preserved. But her executioners knew the records would condemn them if kept till passion had subsided and they were destroyed."

[RJNorton]

(02-02-2018 03:54 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Found in the files at Surratt House: This will appear as an article in the Surratt Courier in a few months, but here's a sneak peek for those of you who may not have ever seen this account. It is taken from a clipping in a bound scrapbook belonging to George Alfred Townsend (GATH) which is in the Library of Congress Manuscript Room. The clipping is undated and is from the Boston Traveler.

Lincoln's Assassination
Funeral of the Five Conspirators After the Execution

As a newspaper correspondent, I had occasion to visit the Old Capitol Prison in Washington in February 1869 [sic - bodies were at the old Washington Penitentiary, not Old Capitol Prison] to witness the exhumation and the rendition to their respective relatives and friends of the remains of the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination. President Johnson was about to go out of office and he issued an order permitting Christian burial to the bodies of the five persons implicated in the death of Lincoln -- Booth, Mrs. Surratt, Atzerodt, Payne [sic] and Harold [sic]. They had been buried in ammunition boxes of common pine wood, six feet long, two feet wide and two feet deep. When the lid was lifted from Booth's coffin, his face was perfect, with the exception of a small hole abut the size of a dime in each cheek. His hair was in good condition as if he had just come out of a barber's shop. In taking out the body to place it in a handsome rosewood coffin supplied by his mother, Mrs. Booth of Baltimore, the head dropped off from the body. Not so with Mrs. Surratt. Her face and form were perfect, and she looked like one in a happy, dreamless sleep. Her head adhered to the body in the process of transfer. Payne's body was greatly wasted, but Atzerodt's was the worst of all; for when the army blanket that covered his remains was lifted up, it revealed a shapeless mass of blackened bones and ashes, with a bald and separated skull in one corner. Talking of this matter of the Lincoln assassination, I remember asking Andrew Johnson one day, when we were traveling together through East Tennessee at a time when he was running for Congressman-at-large against Horace Maynard and Frank Cheatham, why it was he did not pardon Mrs. Surratt. He was in a communicative mood and he said: "The true history of that case has never been told. It was represented in the papers that I refused to see Annie Surratt, the daughter of Mrs. Surratt when she came to the White House the morning of the executions, asking for the pardon of her mother. The fact is that I never knew it was Miss Surratt, because a man in charge named Muzzy, who had general charge of the White House, came to me and said a crazy woman was down stairs and wanted to get in to see me and she wouldn't give her name, but was crying and tearing her hair and exhibited all the evidence of insanity."

"But would you have pardoned Mrs. Surratt", I asked, "supposing you had known better?"

"I don't think I would", he replied, in his bluff way. "She didn't do the shooting, but she was an accessory to it which is all the same."

NOTE: If I remember correctly, several months ago, we discussed a conversation that Johnson had with a gentleman near the end of his life, and his reply regarding Mrs. Surratt was a tad different.

Steve writes, "I was trying to find an image of the Boston Traveller article Laurie just posted and transcribed. I couldn't find an image of the original, but I saw it reprinted in several newspapers and noticed something peculiar. In some of the reprints, Johnson is quoted as saying that he might have pardoned Mrs Surratt and in others he's quoted as saying he wouldn't have. The reprints say the article originally appeared in the 12 Dec. 1881 edition of the Traveller. Unfortunately, Traveller issues from 1881 aren't included in the Genealogybank newspaper database, so I don't which version is correct!

I've included images of both versions published in Dec. 1881 to post to the forum."

[L Verge]

I wonder who the correspondent was. Even though it is in a scrapbook belonging to G.A. Townsend, it is not clear (at least to me) if the article was written by Townsend or by someone else, and Townsend just wanted to save it.

It does seem, however, that Johnson's opinion expressed in this article years later meshes very well with his oft-quoted comment on Surratt owning the nest where the egg was hatched. I would also comment that the "crazy" Annie Surratt was not the only one attempting to see Johnson that day. She was accompanied by Fr. Walter; of course, the fact that the priest was in clerical collar at least might have swayed Officer Muzzy to not want a Catholic to see the President... When Mrs. Stephen Douglas arrived, she evidently swept past Muzzy or another guard and went on into the President's office. Didn't do any good, either.

[Steve]

The references for the two article images above, in the order Roger posted them, are:

1. The Wilkes-Barre Record (PA) 13 Dec. 1881 pg. 1 (note this is also the earliest version of the article I could find)

2. Rolla Herald (Rolla, MO) 29 Dec. 1881 pg. 1

There is no specific significance in choosing the Rolla newspaper article image, both versions of the article appear in multiple newspapers. So far, I haven't been able to find any "I don't think I would" versions printed on 13 Dec. 1881. The earliest of that version that I've found so far was from 16 Dec. 1881:

Bismark Tribune (ND) 16 Dec. 1881 (beginning in the middle of column 4):

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/...d-1/seq-5/

So somebody felt the need to alter the article just a day (or 3) after its initial printing in the Traveller. For some context, I should point out that the date given for the original article in the Traveller (12 Dec.) was during the trial of Charles Guiteau for the assassination of President Garfield.

[Steve]

(02-03-2018 02:57 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I wonder who the correspondent was. Even though it is in a scrapbook belonging to G.A. Townsend, it is not clear (at least to me) if the article was written by Townsend or by someone else, and Townsend just wanted to save it.

It does seem, however, that Johnson's opinion expressed in this article years later meshes very well with his oft-quoted comment on Surratt owning the nest where the egg was hatched. I would also comment that the "crazy" Annie Surratt was not the only one attempting to see Johnson that day. She was accompanied by Fr. Walter; of course, the fact that the priest was in clerical collar at least might have swayed Officer Muzzy to not want a Catholic to see the President... When Mrs. Stephen Douglas arrived, she evidently swept past Muzzy or another guard and went on into the President's office. Didn't do any good, either.

The University of Delaware has a collection of Townsend's papers:

http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/townsend.htm

Which includes scrapbooks of his articles/writings. Are there other articles of Townsend's in the scrapbook of his held by the Library of Congress? If there are, and considering that Townsend did extensive reporting on the assassination, I would say there is a good chance that he wrote the article.

The correspondent said that he got the quote from Johnson in Tennessee during Johnson's 1872 run for Congress. Does anybody know if Townsend was in Tennessee in 1872?

[L Verge]

If I remember correctly, some of Townsend's papers are also in either the Maryland State Archives or the Maryland Historical Society. His impressive home, Gathland, and the monument to war correspondents is open to the public in the foothills of Maryland. For some reason, I think Bob Allen (one of our Booth Tour narrators) did an article on that site and Townsend for the Surratt Courier, a number of years ago. I'll try to remember to contact him about GATH.

[Steve]

Laurie,

Townsend was in Tennessee around the time of Johnson's U.S. House of Representatives race against Horace Maynard in 1872!

There is a mention in the "Personals" section of page 4 of the 18 Sept. 1872 Memphis Daily Appeal mentions George Alfred Townsend briefly staying at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis while on his way to go report on "the present troubles in Arkansas".

   

Townsend could have met Johnson shortly before then or could have passed through eastern Tennessee during his return trip, meeting Johnson then.

You have to love the gossip sections of old newspapers!