John Harrison Surratt Jr. (13 April 1844-21 April 1916) was an American Confederate spy who, in March 1865, conspired with John Wilkes Booth to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln. While his mother Mary Surratt was executed for her alleged role in Lincoln's April 1865 assassination, Surratt was never convicted of a crime.
Biography[]
John Harrison Surratt Jr. was born in Washington DC in 1844, the son of John Harrison Surratt Sr. and Mary Jenkins. He studied for the priesthood with Louis J. Weichmann before the two men dropped out, and Surratt instead became postmaster of Surrattsville (now Clinton), Maryland on his father's death in 1862. Surratt served as a Confederate Secret Service courier and spy during the American Civil War, carrying dispatches about Union troop movements across the Potomac River. On 23 December 1864, Samuel Mudd introduced him to John Wilkes Booth, with whom he plotted to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln on 17 March 1865 and force the Union to resume prisoner-of-war exchanges with the Confederacy. However, Lincoln changed his mind about leaving the Campbell General Hospital to return to Washington, forcing the conspirators to abandon their ambush plot. Surratt later boarded the River Queen shortly before the Third Battle of Petersburg and failed to get close to President Lincoln, foiling another assassination plot. After Lincoln's assassination, Surratt fled to Montreal, Canada, where he was given sanctuary by a Catholic priest. He fled to England and served in the Papal zouaves before a old friend notified Papal officials and the US minister in Rome of Surratt's true identity. Surratt was arrested on 7 November 1866, but he escaped and lived with supporters of Giuseppe Garibaldi. He fled to Alexandria, Egypt, where he was arrested on 23 November 1866 while still in his zouave uniform. He was shipped back to the Washington Navy Yard in early 1867, and, eighteen months after his mother was hanged for her alleged role in the Lincoln assassination plot, Surratt was tried for his role in the plot. He was released after a mistrial and a hung jury, and he taught at the Rockville Female Academy and in Emmitsburg before working as treasurer of the Baltimore Steam Packet Company until his retirement in 1914. He died in 1916.