Most people know that John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. What many people don’t know is that Lincoln’s assassination was part of a larger conspiracy, one meant to disable the entire United States government. In addition to Booth, federal agents identified eight other people involved in the plot to kill the president and key members of his cabinet. At their trial, four were sentenced to prison terms; the remaining four were sentenced to hang, an order that was carried out on July 7, 1865. Mary Surratt was among those executed, making her the first woman to be executed for a crime in the United States.
After the execution, the gallows used in the execution were disassembled and moved to the Old Arsenal in Washington, D.C., the pieces hidden in a pile of timber to discourage souvenir seekers. In 1885, the Secretary of the Kansas Historical Society heard of the scaffold’s location and wrote to the Quartermaster, requesting a piece for the society’s collections. He received a
nearly three-foot long, rectangular-shaped piece of wood. It is part of the Society’s collections to this day.
Could this piece of wood really be part of the gallows on which the Lincoln conspirators hanged? In 2009, Barry Cauchon, a researcher who focuses on the conspirators and their execution, began an in-depth study of the gallows fragment. Using primary source documents from the Kansas Historical Society and
other sources, as well as photos of the gallows from the day of the execution, Cauchon set out to prove the authenticity of the artifact. After three years of work, he will present his findings at a special program funded through a grant from the Kansas Humanities Council. Cauchon will speak at the Kansas Historical
Society at 7 p.m. Saturday, February 2, 2013, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, February 3, 2013. Washburn University history professor Rachel Goossen will speak about the historical events that led to the execution and Museum Registrar Nikaela
Zimmerman will discuss the artifact’s provenance. The program is free to the public.
Photos of the gallows fragment are forthcoming.
See the Execution of the Conspirators photo held by the Library of Congress for a view of the whole gallows.
Post by KSHS Museum Registrar Nikaela Zimmerman