Adjusting the Ropes – Alexander Gardener

U.S. Library of Congres

On July 7, 1865 Mary Elizabeth Jenkins Surratt along with 3 others were hung in the Washington DC arsenal for the assignation of Abraham Lincoln.

Surratt was the first woman executed by the US government.

History records that, John Wilkes Booth was the man that actually fired the deadly shot that killed the 16^th president as he attended a play at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.. He died early the next morning. The rest of Booth's three co-conspirators were Lewis Powell and David Herold, who were assigned to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward, and George Atzerodt who was tasked to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson. By simultaneously eliminating the top three people in the administration, Booth and his co-conspirators hoped to sever the continuity of the United States government.
Mary’s son, John Surratt was a friend of Booths and former Confederate agent. Booth and his gang of would be assassins often met at the boarding house that Mary, who was recently widowed, owned in Washington DC.
She was arrested on April 17 and put on trial for be a part of the conspiracy to kill Lincoln. She was convicted on June 28, 1865 and sentenced to death a few days later. She would hang along with Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt on July 7, 1865.
The exact part she played in the plot to kill Lincoln has been the subject of debate over the past 150 years. Many claim she was a key player or at the very least she had prior knowledge of it. There is also some evidence to suggest that she way have helped the others to escape after the assignation. However, others claim that she was made a scapegoat by an angry Union that was eager to exact vengeance for the murdered president. We may never really know the whole truth.
Alexander Gardener was one of the most prominent photographers of the day.  Some of the most interesting and compelling images taken during the American Civil War were shot by Gardner. Gardner, who had photographed the body of Booth and taken portraits of several of the male conspirators while they were imprisoned aboard naval ships, photographed the execution for the government.
The series of images he shot of the moments before and after the execution are quite profound and can be at times difficult to look at.

The desire for justice juxtaposed with the idea of executing a woman during this time in American history has been captured completely in this image. I would consider it a critical part of the narrative that is the American Civil War. It is significant because it was the first of its kind.