The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln | 
| Author: Kate Clifford Larson
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 152528
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.2 x 1
ISBN: 0465038158
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.7092
EAN: 9780465038152
ASIN: 0465038158
Publication Date: June 2, 2008
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Product Description
In The Assassin’s Accomplice, historian Kate Clifford Larson tells the gripping story of Mary Surratt, a little-known participant in the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln, and the first woman ever to be executed by the federal government of the United States. Surratt, a Confederate sympathizer, ran the boarding house in Washington where the conspirators-including her rebel son, John Surratt-met to plan the assassination. When a military tribunal convicted her for her crimes and sentenced her to death, five of the nine commissioners petitioned President Andrew Johnson to show mercy on Surratt because of her sex and age. Unmoved, Johnson refused-Surratt, he said, “kept the nest that hatched the egg.” Set against the backdrop of the Civil War, The Assassin’s Accomplice tells the intricate story of the Lincoln conspiracy through the eyes of its only female participant. Based on long-lost interviews, confessions, and court testimony, the text explores how Mary’s actions defied nineteenth-century norms of femininity, piety, and motherhood, leaving her vulnerable to deadly punishment historically reserved for men. A riveting narrative account of sex, espionage, and murder cloaked in the enchantments of Southern womanhood, The Assassin’s Accomplice offers a fresh perspective on America’s most famous murder.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Compelling, but not authoritative August 20, 2008
This is a compellingly written book that brings together data from a wide variety of primary and secondary sources to paint a vivid, well-realized portrait of Mary Surratt.
That said, the other reviewers who have complained about historical, factual, and typographical errors have quite a bit of justification. I was disappointed by the sloppiness of the book.
But Kate Clifford Larson's prose style is engaging, and although not an authoritative text by any means, this was a fascinating read.
 TOO MANY ERRORS-Even the maps are wrong August 2, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
A book of this nature must have a bibliography. This is a college professor? Is she citing comic books? She ignores the most comprehensive and thoroughly researched book on the subject -American Butus- never citing it once. St Marys Church is drawn in the wrong place on the map in the first page. That is a clue to the inaccuracies of things to come.Dr Mudd didnt attend St Peters Church near his house in Bryantown not because he wanted to hatch murder plots at St Marys Church in Piscataway.But because St Peter wasnt ordained a saint til 1880 and St Inigoes was a Jesuit Church for the Jesuits' slaves on their plantation St. Inigoes. That is a big guess-too bad wrong. In fact Mudd is buried at St marys- his home parish. Mary Surratt, nee Jenkins was from a family of Catholics.not espicopalian, ANother famous St marys parishener was Admiral Raphael Semmes CSA (but one would have to know something about the civil war to know that name)
The Jenkins family of southern MD is listed by the Catholic Church as one of the colonies founding catholic families. Mary was "fair, fat and forty" by all eyewitnesses, not the sleek temptress on the cover. Oxen Run is by the present day Naylor Road and Suitland Parkway in SE DC.
NOT OXON HILL in suburban Maryland where the new National Harbor Center.
Before you write a book- drive around the subject or at least check out google earth. Professor I give you an F!
 The Woman Who Nurtured a Nest of Conspirators July 1, 2008
At last, we have a judicious and thoroughly unbiased account of Mary Surratt's involvement in the assassination of Lincoln. Professor Larson goes to great lengths to give Mary the benefit of the doubt. Court records and trial transcripts are gone over with a fine tooth comb proving what many have surmised for years: Mary was a willing co-conspirator who allowed all of the conspirators, including Booth, to use her boarding house and tavern at Surrattsville, as a meeting place for planning the death of Lincoln. There are new tidbits of information concerning Mary's inept lawyers, if you can call what they did, practicing law. Yet, even with their obvious stupidity, what was revealed by the witnesses, indicate that Mary was not the pious, innocent boarding house keeper she pretended. Even the Catholic clergy brought in as character witnesses, couldn't vouch for much; many didn't even know her that well.
The evidence exists that President Johnson did receive information regarding a stay of execution for Mary, but with all the evidence, it is obvious that he had no choice but to let the matter proceed.
It is only in the afterglow of the hangings, that public furor over the execution of the first woman by the federal government, increased to a rising crescendo, egged on by Southern sympathizers.
Highly recommended, I would only suggest that the author, in a revised edition, include an extensive bibliography that would better assist those who are new to this area of Civil War study.
The Conspiracy to Kill Lincoln June 24, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
In the Assassin's Acomplice, the author recounts the possible involvement of Mary Surratt in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The author admits that when she began researching this book, she assumed as many others did that Mary was innocent and that Surratt's hanging was a miscarriage of justice.
Mary Surratt was a Confederate sympathizer during the Civil War. She moved her family from what is now Clinton, MD to Washington where they lived in a home her deceased husband had bought years earlier. She turned the house into a boardinghouse that became the meeting place for many of the consipators involved first in a plot to kidnap President Lincoln and finally the assassination.
The author does an excellent job of recounting the events in the months prior to the assassination of Lincoln up through to the execution of not only Mary but three other co-conspirators; Mary Surratt was the first woman executed by the United States government. The author touches on what Mary might have known about both the kidnapping and assassination plots, and the author herself admits that by the time she completed her research for the book, she was convinced of Mary's guilt as a conspirator and that Mary had full knowledge of what Booth planned.
I don't think we will ever know what Mary Surratt knew or didn't know about the plots against Lincoln and other members of the government, and while I was left feeling Mary must have known something, I thought the full extent of her guilt was not fully exposed. The author made it clear that Mary did little to help herself during her trial and that her defense team was so incompetent in defending her that they actually helped bolster the prosecution's case against their client.
A Sorry History June 19, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book is full of error, (i.e., Dr Mudds residence in Prince George County, Mudd was a neighbor of the Surrats, etc.), as well as conjecture and enuendo. Incidents are magnified to become major events. The author fails completely to realize that those who adhered to the Confederacy were just as dedicated, if not more so, then the Northeners. They fully believed in their cause and it is only because they lost the war they became the "goats". This book is not well balanced, it is anti-Catholic and anti-Southern. Pass it by
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