Four Swing from Gallows

[Draggingtree]

Four Swing from Gallows

by James L. Swanson

July 6, 2002

James L. Swanson is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor in chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. His latest book, with Daniel R. Weinberg, is "Lincoln's Assassins: Their Trial and Execution" (Arena Editions).

 

At around 11 o'clock on the morning of July 6, 1865, 137 years ago today, the clock began ticking on one of the most dramatic events in the history of Washington. It began when Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock rode to the Old Arsenal Penitentiary, today Fort Leslie McNair, carrying four sealed envelopes from the War Department. They were addressed neatly in a clerk's hand to four prisoners who were in solitary confinement at the Arsenal.

Hancock handed the envelopes to Maj. Gen. John F. Hartranft, commandant of the prison. Hartranft accepted the mail grimly. He suspected, without even breaking the seals, what news the envelopes contained, and the unpleasant duty that awaited him once the contents were divulged. Together, Hartranft and Hancock marched to the prison building and, walking down a long corridor from cell to cell, delivered the envelopes to their recipients — Lewis Powell, Mary Surratt, David Herold and George Atzerodt.

Torn open in fearful haste, the envelopes revealed their contents — death warrants. Having been found guilty by a military commission of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the attempted assassination of Secretary of State William Seward, the letters informed Powell (aka Payne), Surratt, Herold and Atzerodt of their sentences — execution by hanging.

For the defendants, that news was bad enough, but the rest was equally shocking. By order of President Andrew Johnson, they would be hanged the next day, July 7. Hartranft left the stunned prisoners, who had less than a day to live, to contemplate their fates. He had work to do. Was there anyone at the fort, he wondered, who knew how to build a scaffold?

The rapid conviction, sentencing and execution of the Lincoln assassination conspirators ended a trial that had meandered through May and June.

After Booth shot Lincoln at Ford's Theatre the night of April 14, and the president's death the next morning, soldiers and detectives fanned out through Washington and the surrounding countryside and rounded up hundreds of suspects. After leading his pursuers on a fantastic 12-day manhunt across the trails, swamps, rivers, pine thickets and farmland of Maryland and Virginia, Booth was cornered in a burning barn and shot to death. The archfiend was dead, but eight members of his supporting cast took center stage in his absence.

Johnson ordered that they be tried by a military tribunal, a controversial move that Read More http://www.cato.org/research/articles/swanson-020706.html

[cudjo]

Interesing read, people used to get real excited about hanging, did a lot of research in old newspapers with hubby on outlaws and hangings, don't think I would want to go to one but they sure were crowd pleaser a long time ago