Nature's First Law: Louis J. Weichmann and Mrs. Surratt

NATURE'S FIRST LAW: LOUIS J. WEICHMANN AND MRS. SURRATT Joseph George, Jr. The boardinghouse belonging to Mrs. Mary E. Surratt was one of the meeting places where John Wilkes Booth and his associates gathered on several occasions in 1864 and early 1865 to plan the abduction of President Lincoln. Once captured, the president would be taken across the Potomac and delivered to Richmond where he would be offered in exchange for badly needed Confederate prisoners of war in northern camps. Once his plan won the approval of some old Baltimore friends, Michael O'Laughlin and Samuel B. Arnold, Booth set out to recruit others who were familiar withWashington streets, Maryland backroads, and Potomac inlets. These included David Herold, who knew the roads leading out of Washington into southern Maryland; GeorgeA. Atzerodt, who kept a boat on the Potomac and knew the river well; Louis Payne, who was willing to follow Booth unquestioningly; andJohn H. Surratt, a Confederate agent who could cross the river without detection by federal troops. John Surratt's mother's house was the rendezvous where several meetings were held in preparation for the abduction, although all the above mentioned conspirators never met there together at any given time. After the attempt in March 1865 to kidnap the president had failed, Booth decided that assassination would replace abduction.1 OnApril 14, 1865, Booth shot Lincoln at Ford's Theatre while Payne attacked Secretary of State William H. Seward at his home. Although suffering serious knife wounds, Seward survived. Atzerodt was delegated to murder Vice President Andrew Johnson but lost his nerve, and the attack never materialized. Although Booth was killed trying to escape, Herold, who was with him in Virginia at the time, was captured. Payne was apprehended when he sought sanctuary at the Surratthouse. Arnold, Atzerodt, and O'Laughlin were all apprehended and placed on trial before a military tribunal in May 1865. The War Department, in 1 The best study of Booth's efforts to kidnap Lincoln is William Hanchett, "The War Department and Booth's Abduction Plot," Lincoln Herald82 (Winter 1980):499-508. Louis Payne is the well-known alias used by Louis C. Powell at the time of the assassination. Ciyil War History, Vol. XXVIU, No. 2Copyright®1982 byTheKentState University Press 0009-8078/82/2802-0001 $01.00/0 102civil war history charge of the investigation and prosecution, wanted to capture Surratt but could not find him. However, army authorities did arresthis mother and included her, along with Samuel A. Mudd, a physician who set the fugitive Booth's broken leg, among those it charged with conspiracy to assassinate the president. The military tribunal gave varying prison terms to four of those charged and sentenced to death four others: Atzerodt, Herold, Payne, and Mrs. Surratt. They were hanged onJuly7, 1865.2 In large measure, Mary Surratt's conviction and execution were brought about by twenty-three-year-old Louis J. Weichmann, a tenant at her boardinghouse. In his later years, he wrotehis version ofthe assassination and trial of the conspirators but never published it. He died in June 1902, but it was not until 1975 that his manuscript appeared in print. In this book, Weichmann depicted himself as an innocent boarder unwittingly duped by Mrs. Surratt and her son, John, for their treasonable purposes. When he came to realize the true nature of the conspiracy, after Lincoln's death, Weichmann appeared before the investigators and told all he knew about the Surratts, their friends, and mysterious conferences at the Surratt house. At the military trial, beginning in May 1865, Weichmann's testimony as a government witness led to the conviction of the eight defendants, the execution of four of them, and an enduring hatred from John Surratt and his friends.3 That is the story Weichmann wanted the public to believe, but he dared not publish it during his lifetime . What follows is an evaluation of the credibility of Weichmann as a witness against Mary Surratt. It deals with a Weichmann who was on the fringe of a group of southern sympathizers in Washington involved in blockade-running and an attempt on one occasion to abduct the president . When some of these young...