John M. Lloyd
[9] The American Civil War broke out in April 1861, and in 1862 Lloyd may have left the force due to his political views.
[10] Mary Surratt, a widow and Confederate sympathizer, owned a tavern, inn, carriage house, corn crib, forge, general store, granary, gristmill, stable, tobacco curing house, wheelwright's shop in the center of town,[12][13][14] and 200 acres (81 hectares) of nearby farmland.
Over the next five months, she rented rooms to a number of people, including Louis J. Weichmann; John Surratt; George Atzerodt, and Lewis Powell.
These last three men, David Herold and John Wilkes Booth subsequently conspired to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln in March 1865.
[20][21][22][23] On April 11, Mary Surratt rented a carriage and drove to the Surrattsville tavern to collect (she later said) a debt owed her by a former neighbor.
[33][35][36][37] Federal investigators immediately identified Booth and his co-conspirators, and believed they had headed south into Maryland and then Virginia in an attempt to escape.
Nodley Anderson, an innkeeper in the hamlet of Piscataway, Maryland, notified them that the Surratt tavern in Surrattsville was a notorious meeting place for Confederate spies, and that Lloyd may know something about the assassination.
After the police left, he fled the tavern and went to the home of his wife's relatives in the hamlet of Allens Fresh, Charles County, Maryland.
Several sources claim Lloyd was an alcoholic, and was denied liquor or bribed with it in order to make him talk.
[48][49][50][51][e] Larson argues that the interrogation merely consisted of "several days of back-and-forth questioning, stalling, intimidation, and obfuscation, manipulating Lloyd and wearing him down in the hopes of extracting a confession.
Cottingham played off Lloyd's fears that his family might also be arrested or tried, and that the military would seek to put him to death unless he confessed.
[45] Lloyd informed his interrogators that John Surratt, Atzerodt, and Herold had hidden a pair of carbines, ammunition, some rope, and a wrench in a wall on the second floor.
He also revealed that Booth and Herold had visited the tavern near midnight on April 14, taking one of the guns as well as the field glasses and some whiskey.
"[50] Lloyd was transferred to the Union Army's headquarters at Bryantown, Maryland, where he was further interrogated by Colonel Henry H. Wells.
Portions of his testimony tended to implicate John and Mary Surratt, George Atzertodt, and David Herold in the assassination plot.
Secretary of War Stanton and military prosecutors understood that Lloyd would go free, but they would win the conviction of Surratt and the others in the process.
[56][57] Lloyd testified on May 13 and 15, 1865,[58] regarding the hiding of the carbines and other supplies at the tavern in March, and the two conversations he had with Mrs. Surratt in which she told him to get the "shooting irons" ready.
[61] Lloyd's testimony had been the most important for the prosecution's case,[62][63][64] for it indicated Mary Surratt played an active role in the conspiracy in the days just before Lincoln's death.
[68] The nine-member military tribunal hearing the case sentenced Mary Surratt, George Atzerodt, David Herold, and Lewis Powell to death on July 5, 1865.
As their crimes had occurred in an area under military jurisdiction, the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act denied them any appeal.
