A Haunted History of Invisible Women by Leanna Renee Hieber

Author:Leanna Renee Hieber
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Citadel Press
Published: 2022-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

SO, WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE OF MARY SURRATT? SHE’S NOT REALLY likable. You can’t really cheer for her. What is the fascination with her? Why are the keys to her jail cell and the noose she was hanged with on display at The Lincoln Museum?21 Why is her former tavern a museum now, an essential stop on the Booth reality tour, the “Vatican of the Lincoln assassination subculture?22 Why does her black-clad figure float through our folklore, a mainstay of every book, article, and tour featuring DC ghosts, even as the real woman has been largely forgotten by the general public? And is this damned, cursed villainess even worth remembering? What significance does Mary Surratt’s ghost ultimately have?

It’s indisputable that Mary’s ghost does possess some serious significance. She’s mentioned everywhere: No account of DC ghosts is complete without her.23 What’s really interesting about the confluence of ghosts and the nation’s capital is that even the most reputable, nuanced, and firmly historical sources will mention ghosts almost as a matter of course, from the Washington Post to the Library of Congress. That’s what’s so fascinating about Washington, DC—the great seat of American power is chockablock with ghosts, and everyone is so very willing to talk about them. In many social and intellectual circles, it’s a bit taboo to talk about a ghost in anything approaching a sincere manner. Yet in Washington, DC, the spectral is taken surprisingly seriously.

You’ll find musings on this topic from such reputable sources as the National Portrait Gallery and the White House History blog. These are outfits devoted to serious study of art and history, and their insights on the significance of ghosts are pretty solid. Ghosts serve a purpose; they “communicate culturally significant information” and enable “the anchoring of a chaotic past with the present.” 24 We couldn’t agree more. This country remains obsessed with Civil War–era ghosts; it’s the great national wound that still hasn’t healed. This goes at least part of the way toward explaining Mary’s significant presence in national ghostlore; her specter still haunts us just “as the Civil War still haunts the United States.”25 Like history itself, Mary’s story is unresolved and perhaps unresolvable.

It is tempting to dismiss Mary Surratt as purely terrible because of her pro-slavery stance, but at the same time it’s also tempting to try to complicate her narrative, to frame her story in sympathetic terms because she was a human being, after all, a woman just trying to get by; because the terms of her execution were questionable, particularly if you don’t believe in the death penalty; and because her treatment by the press during her trial was harsh indeed, just as her portrayal in contemporary ghostlore is sometimes problematic. There is a raft of literature discussing the “unresolved” nature of Surratt’s involvement in the assassination that attests to this desire to, against all hope, clear her name. We want to believe, but at most all you can do is address the legality of the trial itself and not her actual guilt.

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