Over the weekend, I went with a friend to see Robert Redford’s new movie “The Conspirator,” about Mary Surratt, who was tried and convicted of conspiring to kill President Lincoln in 1865.
I know the name of Lincoln’s actual killer John Wilkes Booth. I’ve even read newspaper stories about Dr. Samuel Mudd who also was convicted of having a role in the assassination (and later pardoned by President Andrew Johnson). Mudd’s supporters have for years tried to clear his name, to show that he was not one of the conspirators.
But Mary Surratt? Where did she come from?
Redford’s movie was as educational as it was engaging, its aura as dark as the period in history that it portrayed. It told the story of a Maryland-born woman living in Washington who sympathized with the Confederates in the Civil War. Maryland was considered a Union state but had plenty of people who sided with the South and its bull-headed adherence to slavery.
Her son John was a Confederate spy who lived at his mother’s boarding house along with some of the others convicted in the conspiracy. Booth visited there often, and some believe this is where they all plotted to initially kidnap the president and exchange him for the release of Confederate prisoners. That plan did not pan out, however.
The assassination occurred at the tail end of the war, around the same time that Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, VA, and the South had lost the fight. Strict loyalty to the Union was very important and disloyalty was suspect.
What Surratt knew about the plot and whether she received a fair trial are at the crux of Redford’s movie. The movie raised the question of whether she was actually part of the conspiracy or just a devoted mother who turned a blind eye to her own son’s involvement. Redford painted the federal government as a crazed vigilante in its efforts to convict “someone” for the murder. The triggerman Booth had already been killed, so Surratt and the others had to share the blame and punishment of death.
Surratt’s defense attorney John Aiken, who had served in the Union army, was not initially keen on defending her because he thought she was guilty. He soon determined that her guilt or innocence was not as important as the notion that everyone by law was entitled to a fair trial before a jury of their peers – even in the midst of war.
Surratt was the first woman executed in the United States, by hanging, according to wikipedia. Once I read that, I was certain that I must have come across her name before but just didn’t remember it. With this new movie, Redford may have helped make her place in history a little less unknown.
It was a fascinating movie, coming amid the country’s commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the war in 1861. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more stories that bring this period of history to life – and remind us of other people like Mary Surratt.
