Research Paper On The Conspirator

The Conspirator was directed by Robert Redford. It was released in April 2011. The Conspirator is the true story of Mary Surratt, the only female charged as a co-conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Seven men and one woman are arrested and charged with conspiring to kill the President, the Vice-President, and the Secretary of State. Mary Surratt owned a boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and others met and planned the attacks. As the entire nation turns against her, she is forced to rely on her unwilling lawyer to find out the truth and save her life. Frederick Aiken defended Surratt before a military tribunal. As the trial unfolds, Aiken realized his client may be innocent and that she is being used as bait and prisoner

On June 29th, 1865, Mrs. Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael O'Laughlin, Edman Spangler and Samuel Arnold were found guilty of being a part of the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln. They were executed by hanging. In the movie they sent letters to Mrs. Surratt daughter Anna and a family priest to give to her son that she would be hung for her crimes. Surratt, Powell, Atzerodt and Herold were all sentenced to be hanged at Washington Penitentiary on July 7th, 1865. In the picture you can see that four conspirators were hung including Mary Surratt, Lewis Payne Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt. They were hooded and then a noose around their neck. The movie did not go in detail on if any of the victims struggled or died quickly. While looking up facts on Lincoln’s assassination and the trial, I found in a couple of excerpts that Mrs. Surratt and Herold died instantly and the other two struggled. In the ending of the movie it was stated that Mary Surratt became the first women to be executed by the federal government. According to Spartacus Educational it states “Five out of the nine members of the Military Commission, recommended that Mrs. Surratt be shown mercy "due to her sex and age". President Andrew Johnson was later to say he was never told this and he gave the order to hang

Acting President Andrew Johnson ordered that the conspirators to be tried by a military tribunal. According to an Order of the President that was signed by Andrew Johnson it states “That the persons implicated in the murder of the late President, Abraham Lincoln, and the attempted assassination of the Honorable William H. Seward, Secretary of State, and in an alleged conspiracy to assassinate other officers of the Federal Government at Washington City, and their aiders and abettors, are subject to the jurisdiction of, and lawfully triable before, a Military Commission.” In the picture to the right is a picture of the military commission. In the movie Reverdy Johnson, who was initially defending Mary Surratt, was talking to Aiken on the steps of the Capital saying “A military trying a civilian is an atrocity.” According to the definition of atrocity, an appalling or atrocious act, situation, or object, especially an act of unusual or illegal cruelty inflicted by an armed force on civilians or prisoners, it related the trial. In the Sixth Amendment in the United States Constitution is that all citizens have the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed. Mary Surratt was not granted a fair trial because the government