Mary Surratt: The Woman at the Center of the Lincoln Assassination Conspiracy
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 25 August 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the weeks after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, authorities hunted not only John Wilkes Booth but also anyone suspected of aiding him. Among the accused was Mary Surratt, a widowed boardinghouse owner in Washington. Investigators claimed her home was the meeting place where the plan to kill the president took shape. The evidence was thin, the public mood was unforgiving, and her trial became a national spectacle. By July 1865, Mary Surratt stood on the gallows, becoming the first woman the U.S. government ever executed. Kate Clifford Larson, author of The Assassin’s Accomplice, shares the story. We'd like to thank the U.S. National Archives for allowing us access to this audio.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:14.0 | This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star |
| 0:20.7 | and the American people. And we love to |
| 0:24.0 | tell stories about history, one of our favorite subjects, Abraham Lincoln. We've told many |
| 0:29.9 | great stories about Lincoln. Go to Our American Stories.com and hit that search bar and type in |
| 0:36.2 | the words Abraham Lincoln and enjoy. |
| 0:39.1 | John Wilkes Booth did not act alone. |
| 0:42.6 | Eight people were eventually indicted as co-conspirators in Lincoln's murder. |
| 0:48.4 | One of them was a woman, Mary Surratt. |
| 0:52.1 | Here to tell the story is Kate Clifford Larson, author of The Assassin's Accomplice, Mary Surratt. Here to tell the story is Kate Clifford Larson, author of The Assassins Accomplice, Mary Sarat |
| 0:58.5 | and The Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln. |
| 1:02.2 | Let's take a listen. |
| 1:05.1 | After I finished my Harriet Tubman book, which came out in late 2003, I started, you know, looking around for another |
| 1:13.3 | project and every day I Google Harriet Tubman's name. I've done that since 2000 and I still do it |
| 1:21.2 | today. And one day, when I googled, this event popped up and it was from the Surratt Museum in Clinton, Maryland. |
| 1:31.3 | And they were hosting a tour, a bus tour, to the eastern shore of Maryland to see sites related to Harriet Tubman. |
| 1:39.3 | And I'm like, the Surratt Museum, what is that? |
| 1:42.3 | So I went to their website and it was, the Surratt Museum, what is that? So I went to their website, and it was, the Surat Museum is Mary Surratt's former home in Clinton, Maryland. |
| 1:51.1 | Used to be called Sarattsville. |
| 1:53.4 | And it's a house museum. |
| 1:55.6 | And it has a research center. |
| 1:57.5 | And I started reading this story about Mary Surratt, and I was shocked because I had gotten |
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