Lincoln Assassination Trial

After John Wilkes Booth of Maryland assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Fords Theater in downtown Washington on April 14, 1865, Booth's conspirators were arrested and tried by a Military Court in Building 20 from May 9 to June 30, 1865. One member of the Military Court was Major General Lew Wallace, who later wrote Ben Hur. At this site, four conspirators involved in President Lincoln's assassination were hung and buried on July 7, 1865: George Atzerodt, David Herold, Lewis Paine, and Mary Surratt, the first woman to be executed in a Federal trial. General Winfield Hancock of Gettysburg fame was in overall command of the trial and execution. In 1867, the conspirators were disinterred and returned to their families. Immediately afterward, the Penitentiary was razed except for the portion of the building where the trial occurred. That building, now Building 20, has been renovated a number of times since the Civil War; it was originally built in 1831 as the female quarters of the Washington Penitentiary and at the start of the Civil War in 1861 was used as a shoe factory.

Arlington, Virginia · United States