Trial and Execution of Mary Surratt - 1865

Mary Surratt was tried and convicted and executed as a co-conspirator in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Her son escaped conviction, and later admitted that he was part of the original plot to kidnap Lincoln and several others in government. Was Mary Surratt a co-conspirator, or merely a boardinghouse keeper who was supporting her son's friends without knowing what they planned? Historians disagree, but most agree that the military tribunal that tried Mary Surratt and three others had less stringent rules of evidence than a regular criminal court would have had.