Andersonville Prison, 1864

(National Archives)

As June faded into July during the summer of 1865, two full years had passed since the Battle of Gettysburg. That epic battle had proved the turning point of the war, and finally that war was at an end. Soldiers were going home, always remembering those comrades who remained buried in Virginia, Georgia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

The first Independence Day after the war was held on July 4, 1865.  It was a celebratory occasion for the cities of the North. Towns and cities of the South, however, were less excited to commemorate the Federal holiday. Former Confederates were not inclined to take part in the festivities as those north of the Mason Dixon Line.¹

In Washington, D.C., the trial of the Lincoln conspirators had ended on June 30. The jury had taken only a few days to deliberate before rendering their guilty verdicts. All eight conspirators were convicted of having a part in the plot to assassinate President Lincoln. For Lewis Paine, David Herold, George Atzerodt and Mary Surratt, the sentence was death by hanging. For Dr. Samuel Mudd, who repaired the assassin’s injured leg, the sentence was life imprisonment. The same punishment was affixed for Michael O’Laughlin and Samuel Arnold for their roles in the kidnapping plot against Lincoln. Ned Spangler, who had merely held Booth’s horse for moments as the assassin entered Ford’s theater on the night in question, received a sentence of six years in prison. The sentence was later commuted for Mudd, Arnold, and Spangler. O’Laughlin died in prison of a fever, at Fort Jefferson, on the archipelago of Dry Tortugas.²

On July 5, 1865, the verdicts were sent to President Andrew Johnson for approval. He immediately agreed. On that same day, the 17^th President signed another motion to create the United States Secret Service, the organization that would eventually, in addition to other duties, protect the life of the President. Three more future Commanders-in-Chief, however, would be assassinated, in spite of their efforts. President Johnson appointed William Wood as its first commander.³

The condemned conspirators heard their sentences on July 6, 1865. The four who faced execution were given only one day to prepare for the end. General Winfield Scott Hancock, who had commanded the Federal Second Corps at Gettysburg, was to oversee the executions. General John Hartranft of Pennsylvania was the provost marshal, and had the solemn duty of seeing to the prisoners until their sentences were carried out. The two generals visited all four prisoners in their cells and read them the order. In the distance, the scaffold was being constructed and all four condemned could hear the sounds of sawing and hammering as they heard their sentences read aloud.⁴

Both Hancock and Hartranft believed (and secretly hoped) that Mary Surratt would receive a reprieve from her sentence, as she was a middle-aged woman and in delicate health. Before that time, no woman had been executed by hanging in the United States until Mary Surratt earned that distinction, as President Johnson refused her stay of execution.⁵

Lewis Paine had expected the verdict and accepted it quietly. David Herold and George Atzerodt were visibly shaken upon hearing the sentence. Mary Surratt collapsed and wept.⁶

July 7 dawned with excessive heat and humidity – typical for a July day in the swampy regions of the nation’s capital. The official photographer for the execution, Alexander Gardner, set up his camera in front of the scaffold. As the sentence was to be carried out sometime between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., General Hancock posted sentries between the place of execution – the Arsenal Penitentiary near the banks of the Potomac – and the Executive Mansion. He expected President Johnson to give Mrs. Surratt a last-minute reprieve. It never came. When her attorneys attempted to speak to the new President, he refused to see them. Even Mrs. Surratt’s daughter, Anna, attempted to help her mother by seeing the President, to no avail.

Shortly after 1 p.m., the prisoners were led from their cells to the scaffold, and nooses were promptly placed. General Hancock clapped his hands, and the four fell to their deaths at 1:26 p.m. They were buried in the Arsenal yard, where their bodies remained until 1869, when they were given to their families for burial in the family plots. John Wilkes Booth’s corpse was also returned to the Booth family at that time.⁷

After the trial and execution, the populace was more than ready to move on. The war was over, and normal life was waiting for the survivors of those four terrible years. In the South, new businesses began to flourish, and entrepreneurs sought Robert E. Lee, hoping to gain his endorsements for their products or policies. Lee, a man of honor, declined.  He was, however, in penury; he had lost Arlington, his family estate, in the war. In July 1865, a New York book editor approached Lee, offering to purchase Lee’s memoirs, if he were inclined to write them. Lee spent the summer pondering the offer.⁸

In July, many prisoners of war were released and began the long journey home. Some of them were commanders who had fought at Gettysburg. General Joseph Kershaw was one who was paroled a few days before Appomattox. He reached home during the summer of 1865. Colonel Van Manning of the 3rd Arkansas Regiment, who had fought at Gettysburg, had been wounded and captured at the Wilderness in 1864. He had attempted escape several times in his Union prison, but never succeeded. In July 1865, he too headed home to Arkansas.⁹

As the long, hot summer continued, a diminutive woman began a new quest in an attempt for justice for the forgotten dead of the war. Clara Barton, at the request of Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s and then Johnson’s Secretary of War, headed south through the former Confederate states with former Union prisoner of war Dorence Atwater and an entourage of government agents. Their destination was the dreaded Andersonville Prison in southwestern Georgia, the notorious camp that caused the deaths of over 13,000 Union soldiers in less than a year. Atwater, who had been a prisoner there, had secretly documented the men who had perished in the camp, complete with their causes of death. When the group arrived at Andersonville on July 25, Miss Barton was shocked at the sight of the prison and the decrepit state of the graves. With Atwater’s help, she worked on identifying the names of the dead. She took her findings to Stanton. Many of those who died at Andersonville had served in the Army of the Potomac and had fought at Gettysburg. Most of the Gettysburg veterans interred there had been captured in 1864, the year Andersonville opened. Because of Miss Barton’s and Atwater’s efforts, Captain Henry Wirz, the commander of Andersonville, was eventually found guilty of war crimes and executed. He was the only Civil War commander to meet that fate.¹⁰

Had Abraham Lincoln survived, it is likely that the broken nation would have healed more quickly from its Civil War wounds. As it was, there remained many years before North and South, Union and Confederate, would reconcile. Military governments were set up in the summer of 1865, most of them led by former Union commanders. The heat of discontent remained through the summer and through the next several years. A finality, though, had set in at last. The war was over. In America there were new days coming, and a new beginning.

The Execution of the Lincoln Conspirators, July 1865

(Library of Congress)

Sources: Atwater, Dorence. Prisoners Who Died at Andersonville Prison. Andersonville, GA: National Society of Andersonville, 1981 (reprint, first published in 1865). Bohannon, Keith. “Colonel Van Manning, 3rd Arkansas Infantry”. 3rd Arkansas File, Gettysburg National Military Park (hereafter GNMP). Kauffman, Michael W. American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies. New York: Random House, 2004. Pryor, Elizabeth Brown. Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters. New York: Viking Press, 2007. Soldiers National Cemetery File, GNMP. Steers, Edward Jr. Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001. Swanson, James L and Daniel R. Weinberg. Lincoln’s Assassins: Their Trial and Execution. Arena Editions: 2001. Warner, Ezra J. Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1959.

Additional information gathered at Andersonville Prison NHS in Georgia, Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. and the Union Arsenal in Washington D.C., now a military post.

End Notes: 

1. Soldiers National Cemetery File, GNMP. 

2. Swanson & Weinberg, p. 26. Steers, p. 228. 

3. Kauffman, p. 383. Swanson & Weinberg, p. 23. 

4. Steers, pp. 228-229. 

5. Swanson & Weinberg, p. 24. 

6. Ibid. 

7. Kauffman, p. 391. Swanson & Weinberg, p. 27. 

8. Pryor, p. 436. 

9. Bohannon, p. 15. Warner, p. 171. 

10. Atwater, p. iii.