Lewis Powell Criminal
Lewis Thornton Powell (April 22, 1844 – July 7, 1865) was one of the conspirators in league with John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. He failed in his attempt to assassinate Secretary of State William H. Seward on the same night. (He was also known as Lewis Payne/Paine.)Powell was a Confederate soldier of distinction, who had been wounded at Gettysburg, and then served in Mosby’s Rangers, before working with the Confederate Secret Service in Maryland. Here he met Booth, who recruited him into an unsuccessful plot to kidnap Lincoln. But on April 14th 1865, Booth resolved to assassinate Lincoln, Seward and Vice-President Johnson.Powell was given the task of killing Seward, with the help of David Herold, who would guide him to Seward’s home and keep his horse ready for the escape. But Powell only managed to injure Seward before the alarm was raised, and Herold fled. Unfamiliar with Washington, Powell appears to have wandered the streets for three days before arriving at a boarding-house run by Mary Surratt, mother of co-conspirator John Surratt. By chance, the police were searching the house at that moment, and arrested Powell, who was duly identified by Seward's son.Powell and three others, including Mary Surratt, were sentenced to death by a military tribunal, and were hanged at the Washington Arsenal courtyard. Powell went to his death proclaiming the innocence of Mary Surratt, even from the scaffold.
