The Plot Against Abraham Lincoln
How John Surratt Conspired With John Wilkes Booth
© Jim Rada
Nov 23, 2008
With the hanging, Surratt’s associates were either dead or imprisoned. The country he had loved was no more. The President of the United States—a man Surratt hated enough to try and kidnap—was dead, but in death, the President had become a martyr.
On the occasion of Mary Surratt’s sentence to be hanged, the New York Herald summarized John Surratt’s life like this, “Her eldest child was John Surratt, on whose head a price a price his been fixed, at whose heels are ever the ceaseless feet of the death pursuit. Hunted, homeless, fatherless, and now motherless, his sister heart broken, John’s punishment exceeds that of any of his companions in the crime for which they have been sentenced.”
Becoming a Confederate Spy
John Harrison Surratt, Jr. was born April 13, 1844 in Washington City, the youngest of John and Mary Surratt’s five children. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Surratt was attending St. Charles College near Baltimore. His father died the following year while Surratt was home and he did not return to complete his schooling. Instead, he was appointed U.S. postmaster of Surrattsville, but he also became a postmaster of sorts for the Confederacy. He carried letters and troop information to Confederate boats on the Potomac River. In a 1870 speech, Surratt said, “We had a regular established line from Washington to the Potomac, and I being the only unmarried man on the route, I had most of the hard riding to do. I devised various ways to carry the dispatches - sometimes in the heel of my boots, sometimes between the planks of the buggy.”
Had things stopped at that level, Surratt might have been remembered as a faithful servant to a lost cause.
Becoming a Lincoln Conspirator
On December 23, 1864, Dr. Samuel Mudd introduced Surratt to John Wilkes Booth. With Booth’s persuasive manner, he ignited in Surratt a desire to do more for the Confederate States of America. Surratt willingly joined in Booth’s conspiracy to abduct President Abraham Lincoln. The plan was to stop the President’s carriage while it was en route to a destination. Surratt said in his speech, “To our great disappointment, however, the President was not there but one of the government officials - Mr. [Salmon P.] Chase, if I mistake not. We did not disturb him, as we wanted a bigger chase than he could have afforded us. It was certainly a bitter disappointment, but yet I think a most fortunate one for us. It was our last attempt.”
Triple Assassination Plot
Booth then escalated the stakes after Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term in 1865. He and his associates planned to kill Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward at the same time. Booth believed such a bold, theatrical move would cripple the United States government.
On the night Booth and some of Surratt’s other co-conspirators attempted their triple assassination, Surratt said he was in Elmira, NY spying for the Confederacy. However, it was believed initially that Surratt attempted to assassinate the secretary of state and some witnesses placed him in Washington in front of Ford’s Theater on the night of April 14. Either way, Surratt found himself a wanted man with a $25,000 bounty on his head.
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