The Conspirator

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by honeychile

John Surratt got off on a hung jury - pretty evenly split, but most people at the time thought that losing his mother was punishment enough. He was also tried by a civil court, not a military court. The government didn't want to waste the time & money on a second trial. Frankly, I've yet to read anything that doesn't make him sound like a jerk - I'm talking Charlie Sheen style!

Frederick Aiken was actually both Frederick Aiken and John W. Clampitt - the juniors of Reverdy Johnson's firm. Reverdy Johnson couldn't represent Mrs. Surratt fully, because he refused to take the loyalty oath, but was held in very high esteem. It was his idea to take the tactic that Mrs. Surratt shouldn't be tried in a military court.

One of the benefits of the tour being in the actual locations is that, if one person is in one room, and another is in the next room, you can tell if someone could hear or see the other. It made a huge difference for the people on the tour. At the beginning, the tour guide asked who thought which people were guilty and who thought others were not. By the end, there was a lot of people who had changed their minds. One of the examples was with Dr. Mudd - even though his family has lobbied for exhonoration several times in the past 146 years, there is just too much evidence that he was involved.

Surprisingly, there were quite a few people who helped JWB escape who were either not arrested, or never brought to trial - but I realize that the movie was about Mrs. Surratt, not the whole picture. Oh, another thing that wasn't mentioned in the movie was how very much Mrs. Surratt used the phrase, "On my honor as a lady," (which led to a lot of joking about her "honor") or how much she leaned on her religion as a reason for her innocence as opposed to her comfort. That led to a whole faction of people who believed that the whole assassination was "a popish plot" (which is ridiculous).

This is really interesting. I wish I could have read more on the history of it before I saw the movie to be able to see what was accurate and what wasn't. Thanks for posting this. There's a lot I didn't know.

I just hate the fact that she was sent to death, but they had a hung jury over the moron who clearly should have been sent to his death. It just doesn't make sense, to me.