Posted on 07/05/2018 9:18:10 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
On this day in 1865, President Andrew Johnson signs an executive order that confirms the military conviction of a group of people who had conspired to kill the late President Abraham Lincoln, then commander in chief of the U.S. Army. With his signature, Johnson ordered four of the guilty to be executed.
Confederate sympathizers David E. Herold, G. A. Atzerodt, Lewis Payne, Mary E. Surratt, Michael O’Laughlin, Edward Spangler, Samuel Arnold and Samuel A. Mudd were arraigned on May 9 and convicted on July 5 for “maliciously, unlawfully, and traitorously” conspiring with several others, including John Wilkes Booth, who had assassinated President Lincoln on April 14, 1865. In addition to targeting Lincoln, the conspirators had planned to kill General Ulysses S. Grant as he led Union armies in the Civil War against the southern states. Vice President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln to the presidency, was also one of the group’s intended prey.
Confederate President Jefferson Davis, although not charged in this particular action, was implicated for inciting the traitorous bunch to kill the Union’s key leaders. Davis was a former U.S. senator from South Carolina who led that state’s secession from the Union in 1860. The court claimed that Davis “aided and comforted the insurgents, engaged in armed rebellion against the said United States [and aided] the subversion and overthrow of the Constitution and laws of the said United States.”
(Excerpt) Read more at history.com ...
According to the War Department’s records, Mary Surratt and Edward Spangler had helped John Wilkes Booth gain entrance to the theater box in which Lincoln sat at the time of his murder. Spangler then “hindered” efforts to save Lincoln. Herold helped Booth escape through military lines. For his part, Payne attempted to kill Lincoln’s secretary of war, William H. Seward, at Seward’s home on the same night that Lincoln was shot. Seward suffered knife wounds to the face and throat from the attack, but survived. Atzerodt had apparently lain in wait for Vice President Johnson on the night of April 14; the report did not specify where. Finally, O Laughlin was charged with lying in wait to murder Grant. The others were convicted of giving aid or support to Booth at various times before and after Lincoln’s assassination.
Herold, Atzerodt, Payne and Surratt were sentenced to death by hanging. Spangler, O’Laughlin, Mudd and Arnold were given life in prison with hard labor.
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Back when the country took the threat of a cabal of conspirators, seditionists, and treasonists seriously. Jefferson Davis was implicated for inciting the treasonous cabal and "aided the subversion and overthrow of the Constitution and laws of the said United States." Maxine Waters should be brought up on the same charges.
The Brady photos of the hanging are spectacular. Lewis Powell stole a straw hat on the way up to the gallows, donned it and declared Mrs. Surratt’s innocence. (I have other ideas, lol!) The Surratt museum in Maryland is very interesting.
Democrats and anger issues - some things never change...
Mudd got the short end of the stick in that deal.
After seeing the likes of Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, Davis will likely be the LAST President from Mississippi.
Davis was arrested and never faced trial even though he demanded one. You are an idiot.
Mary Surrat got hung for??? We have politicians far more guilty of things than what Surrat was accused of, and they are still in politics.
You beat me to it. Gee, who would expect a channel specializing in history to report history accurately? /s
“Mudd got the short end of the stick in that deal.”
There’s a possibility that Mudd was in DC the night of the assassination. As well, he was definitely part of the earlier plot to kidnap Lincoln. Is it reasonable to think Booth stopped at his house by chance, and then didn’t inform him of what had just taken place?
If so, he was, at the very least, an accomplice after the fact to the assassination. And maybe more.
> Mudd got the short end of the stick in that deal. <
I used to think that as well. But then I read that Mudd had met with some of the conspirators, including Booth, numerous times before the assassination. So now it seems to me that Booth just didn’t happen upon Mudd’s house. Mudd’s house was a “safe house”, set up in advance.
Dr. Mudd is quite lucky that he wasn’t hanged along with the rest.
Brady was a genius. If you look close at the photos in succession, you see a soldier stationed on the ground, holding on to the gallows, being sick. Probably a hangover on a very hot day. What a terrible war!
I never believed Mudd was innocent, either. He was an acquaintance of Booth’s and Booth’s disguise that night was pretty pathetic. Mudd was also sympathetic to the Confederate cause like many Marylanders. He did great work at Dry Tortugas prison, though, and earned his early release.
I don’t know if he’s being sick or not, but he’s holding onto one of the two poles that will be jerked out from under the platform. Notice the other soldier is a swell.....................
What people tend to forget is the conspirators weren’t just after Lincoln; they wanted to decapitate the US government. Besides Lincoln, they went after VP Johnson, the Sec’y of War, and General Grant (who was supposed to be at Ford’s that night). It’s hard to imagine the outcome if they had been successful. I have to imagine that Reconstruction would have been much harsher for one thing.
Never knew they were after Grant. Dam good thing they failed because if they had got Grant, there would have been a hell of a lot more blood spilled.
He was the one who insisted that it was over and if the politicos insisted in their demands for violent repercussions against the South and its Generals, that he might take drastic actions. And Sherman would have lead the charge you all can bet on that one. After what they did to him because of his terms of surrender with Johnston.
John Wilkes Booth thought he’d become a National Hero to the South. As it was, most Southerners were horrified at what he did.
JW Booth frightened Mrs. Grant that afternoon by driving by her carriage and peering into it.
My great-great-grandma ran a boarding house in Granbury, TX. The legend goes that Booth survived and escaped to Texas. While in Granbury, he assumed the name John St. Helen and lived in granny’s boarding house. I’m thinking he also worked in great grandpa’s saloon. On his deathbed, St. Helen gave a death bed confession and told where to find the gun that killed Lincoln. The folks found the gun wrapped in a newspaper about the assassination under the boarding house.
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