The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln (review)

The degree of Mary Surratt's complicity in the plot to kill President Abraham Lincoln has been a matter of considerable debate since April 14, 1865. As her title clearly indicates, in The Assassin's Accomplice historian Kate Clifford Larson aims to settle the debate once and for all. In her estimation Surratt was, unequivocally, "guilty," for she was the woman who "nurtured and helped cultivate the conspiracy to kill" Lincoln (p. xiv). The "evidence," Larson insists, "cannot be ignored": Surratt "could have chosen not to help [John Wilkes] Booth, but she decided to assist him in whatever way she could" (p. 230). Ironically, although Larson criticizes historians in the past of "refashion[ing] evidence to support [the] contention that Mary was innocent and railroaded to the gallows" (p. 230), she makes herself susceptible to a similar charge: that she formed an opinion about Surratt's culpability early on, and in her subsequent research and writing about the case, has focused almost exclusively on the evidence that supports her theory.

I find this approach deeply troubling, particularly in light of Larson's earlier fine and carefully researched biography of Harriet Tubman, Bound for the Promised Land (2004). To put it simply, Larson seems much too eager to "prove" Surratt's extensive and malicious complicity in the Lincoln assassination conspiracy, and the appropriateness of her execution. As a result, the book feels hastily and sometimes even carelessly prepared. If Larson's footnotes are any guide, she has indeed read many of the salient secondary works, and has also directly or indirectly consulted individuals who are extremely knowledgeable about the topic, such as Laurie Verge (misspelled "Vergie" throughout) of the Surratt House and Museum in Clinton, Maryland, and the late James O. Hall. At the same time, Larson's style of documenting her sources is often frustratingly vague: whole paragraphs rich with assertions go by without a footnote, only enhancing the reader's impression that the author has approached such sources with insufficient care and with her conclusion about Surratt's guilt – articulated so vividly in the Introduction -- already formed and firm.

Similarly, with regard to primary sources, I would argue that Larson has relied much too heavily (and without any explicit interrogation of their value) on too few items, such as the "memoir" of Louis J. Weichmann, a key figure in the events under examination and one of the prosecution's chief witnesses, an unsavory and thoroughly self-interested young man whose testimony against Surratt and the "conspirators" helped, without question, to save his own neck. In terms of the actual trial testimony, Larson has depended on recorder Benn Pitman's version, which is indeed useful but not without significant flaws Larson should consider and mention: Pitman, for example, summarized, paraphrased, and reorganized much of what he heard in court, rather than writing out the testimony verbatim in chronological question and answer form. In addition, Pitman's version amounted to the Federal government's "official" account, and thus inevitably reflected the prosecution's biases. It bears noting that Larson might have done well to study thoroughly the sixteen rolls of microfilmed documents, held by the National Archives (M-599), compiled from the investigation of Lincoln's murder and the trial, among other things.

In sum, in my opinion The Assassin's Accomplice falls wide of its mark. The book presents a bold thesis about Mary Surratt's guilt, but it does not offer much – if any -- new evidence to support this claim. To the contrary, Larson all-too-readily dismisses the issue of how murky and confusing much of the evidence in the conspiracy case really was, not least of all the evidence against Mary Surratt. I myself would hardly insist that Surratt was an innocent bystander to Booth's schemes, but Larson's book does not succeed in persuading me that she...