Mary Suratt In The Conspirator

When people think of the assassination of president Lincoln, they often think about the person who assassinated him, John Wilkes Booth, a famous southern actor. No one ever thinks about the trials of his accomplices, or those accused of being accomplices to the assassination of President Lincoln. The stories of these accomplices were depicted in many books, articles, and even films. One film in particular, called the The Conspirator, illustrated the assassination of President Lincoln and the trials of Mary Suratt for the modern day audience. Like many films though, The Conspirator was meant to entertain the audience, but surprisingly, the main events of this movie were quite accurate; like the the depiction of Mary Suratt’s appearance along

To begin, the film The Conspirator depicted Mary Suratt’s personality and physical appearance without a flaw. In the movie, Mary Suratt was seen in an all black dress, with a black veil would occasionally cover her face. She was often seen with a pale and stoic face, occasionally showing emotion. Her hair was alway in a bun hidden underneath a bonnet (Conspirator). This movie illustrates Mary Suratt this way in order to help the viewers get a feel for who she is. An expressionless person often indicates that they are composed which Mary was able to do for the majority of the trial. This description of Mary Suratt was also mentioned in the book The Last Lincoln Conspirator : John Surratt's Flight from the Gallows. It states, “Mary Suratt…[was] pale, a little stocky, with a plain guileless face framed by dark hair parted in the middle

However, the way that the movie expressed Mary’s poor eyesight slightly off base. This is because in the film the person who mentions Mary Suratt’s bad eyesight was Aikens while according to the historical books, five witnesses testified saying that she had bad eyesight. This slight inaccuracy demonstrates that the film makers thought that the five people who gave the testimonies were unnecessary, perhaps even with the testimonies Mary’s death sentence would not change. Which might be the reason why they found this piece of information irrelevant and so did not include it in the film. The reason why they decided to keep the part where Mary Suratt is caught lying about not knowing Powell, is because this was one of the evidence that confirmed the suspicion that Mary Suratt was lying and that she was not to be trusted, which ultimately lead Mary Suratt to her