APRIL 30TH, 1865: The eight suspects in the Lincoln assassination plot who had been imprisoned on the U.S. monitors Saugus and Montauk were transferred to the Arsenal Penitentiary, located on the compound of what is today Fort McNair. This was also the site of their trial by a military tribunal which returned its guilty verdict on June 30th.
Three of the eight, along with Mary Surratt, were hanged in the prison yard of the penitentiary on 7 July-- Lewis Paine who made the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Secretary of State Seward; George A. Atzerodt who had been designated by Booth to murder Vice President Johnson; and David E. Herold who had accompanied Booth in his escape from the city.
Michael O'Laughlin and Samuel B. Arnold, boyhood friends of Booth and conspirators in the actor's earlier plans to assassinate top officials, were sentenced to life in prison. Another accomplice, Edward Spangler, stagehand at Ford's Theatre, was sentenced to six years in prison. The remaining two of the eight who had been incarcerated on the monitors-- Ernest Hartman Richter, a cousin of Atzerodt, and Joao Celestino, a Portuguese sea captain--were released without being brought to trial.
--Old B-R'er
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