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Lot 72
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CDV of Lincoln Conspirator Lewis Powell in Overcoat He Wore in Attempt to Kill Secretary of State Seward
CDV of Lincoln Conspirator Lewis Powell in Overcoat He Wore in Attempt to Kill Secretary of State Seward
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Description:

Abraham Lincoln Assassination
Washington, DC, ca. 1865
CDV of Lincoln Conspirator Lewis Powell in Overcoat He Wore in Attempt to Kill Secretary of State Seward
CDV

[LINCOLN ASSASSINATION]. Carte-de-visité of Lewis Powell. Washington, DC: Philp & Solomons, 1865. 1 p., 2.375" x 4".

Photographer Alexander Gardner took this photograph of Lewis Powell on board the USS Saugus, an ironclad monitor anchored in the Washington Navy Yard on the Anacostia River, where Powell was being held awaiting his trial. He is wearing the hat and overcoat he had worn on the night he attacked Secretary of State William H. Seward, nearly killing him. It includes the caption, "PAYNE, alias WOOD, alias HALL. Arrested as an Associate of Booth in the Conspiracy."

Historical Background

As the Civil War drew to a close, actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth and his fellow conspirators, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt, plotted to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln to aid the Confederacy. As the Confederacy's fortunes faltered, they decided to assassinate Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward to revive the Confederate cause. Booth assigned Powell and Herold to kill Seward, Atzerodt to kill Johnson, and reserved the president for himself.

Powell attacked and severely wounded Seward, Atzerodt got drunk and failed to target Johnson, and Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre. After a twelve-day search, authorities found and surrounded Booth and Herold in a tobacco barn on the farm of Richard Henry Garrett. Herold surrendered, but Booth refused, and the pursuers set the barn on fire. Sergeant Boston Corbett mortally wounded Booth in the burning barn, who died a few hours later.

By the end of April, authorities captured Powell and Atzerodt. They also arrested Mary Surratt, the owner of a boarding house where the conspirators met; Dr. Samuel Mudd, who set Booth's leg while he was fleeing through the countryside; Confederate veteran Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlen, who were involved in the kidnapping plot; and Ford's Theatre stagehand Edman Spangler, who had a passing acquaintance with Booth. Authorities were unable to capture John Surratt, who fled to Canada and then Europe.

A tribunal of military officers tried the eight conspirators between May 9 and June 30. They found all eight guilty of various crimes related to the assassination conspiracy, and sentenced four—Powell, Herold, Atzerodt, and Surratt—to death. They sentenced Mudd, Arnold, and O'Laughlen to life in prison and Spangler to six years in prison. They were imprisoned in Fort Jefferson at Dry Tortugas off Key West, Florida. O'Laughlen died of yellow fever there, and President Andrew Johnson pardoned Mudd, Arnold, and Spangler on March 1, 1869.

After the last rites and shortly after 1:30 p.m., on July 7, 1865, the four conspirators condemned to death stood on the drop for about ten seconds, and then Captain Christian Rath clapped his hands. Four soldiers knocked out the supports holding the drops in place, and the condemned fell. Within minutes, they were all dead. The bodies continued to hang and swing for another twenty-five minutes before they were cut down. The bodies were buried in shallow graves in the prison yard. In February 1869, President Andrew Johnson allowed relatives to claim the remains of Surratt, Herold, and Atzerodt. No one claimed the body of Lewis Powell.


Lewis Powell (1844-1865) was born in Alabama to a Baptist minister and his wife and grew up in Georgia. In 1859, the Powell family moved to Florida, where his father established a church. In June 1861, Powell lied about his age and enlisted in Company I of the 2nd Florida Infantry. He served in the Peninsula Campaign in 1862. After his one-year enlistment ended, he re-enlisted in May 1862 and rejoined the Army of Northern Virginia, participating in the battles of Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, where he was shot in the right wrist. He was captured and sent to a prisoner of war hospital in Pennsylvania. He was later transferred to a prison hospital in Baltimore. A female volunteer nurse helped him to escape in September 1863. He spent a few weeks at a Baltimore boarding house that was a frequent rendezvous point for the Confederate Secret Service, then returned to Virginia, where he served for more than a year in John S. Mosby's Rangers, a group of irregular partisan raiders. After delivering a Union prisoner to Richmond, Power returned to Mosby's Rangers but deserted on January 1, 1865. He entered the Union Army's lines on January 13, where he claimed to be a civilian refugee and took an oath of loyalty to the United States. He returned to Baltimore, where John Wilkes Booth recruited him for the plot to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln. After he beat an African-American maid, he was arrested, accused of being a Confederate spy. He was released on March 14, and he took another oath of allegiance to the United States. On the night of April 14, Powell attacked Secretary of State William H. Seward at his home near the White House, severely wounding Seward's son and his army nurse. He attacked Seward with a knife, also wounding him severely, then fled on horseback. Three days later, he returned to Mary Surratt's boarding house, where he was arrested. He was tried by a military tribunal, found guilty on June 30, and sentenced to death. He was executed by hanging at the Old Arsenal Penitentiary on July 7, 1865.

Philp & Solomons (1859-1874) was a publishing and bookstore partnership in Washington, D.C. The partners were bookseller Franklin Philp (1826-1887), who handled visual materials, and Adolphus S. Solomons (1826-1910), who had responsibility for the textual materials. Solomons helped to establish the American Red Cross and was the founder of the Jewish Protectory and Aid Society and the Russian Jews Immigration Aid Society. Philp was born in England and entertained visiting English celebrities at his home in Washington. According to one report, Philp overdrew the partnership account by $90,000 and left Solomons greatly embarrassed. Philp later became notorious for embezzling funds from his position as a clerk to the naval pay inspector at San Francisco, California.

Alexander Gardner (1821-1882) was born in Scotland and was apprenticed to a jeweler. He raised money to begin a socialist cooperative in Iowa, but never lived there. He became owner and editor of the Glasgow Sentinel in 1851. His interest in photography began when he saw images by Mathew Brady at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. He immigrated to the United States with his family in 1856 and began working with Brady as a photographer. In 1858, Brady placed Gardner in charge of his gallery in Washington, D.C. He made many portrait photographs in the first year of the Civil War, including several of President Abraham Lincoln. He served as a staff photographer under General George B. McClellan until McClellan's dismissal late in 1862. He later followed General Ambrose E. Burnside and General Joseph Hooker and photographed several Civil War battles. He and his brother opened their own studio in Washington, D.C., in May 1863. In 1866, he published the two-volume Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War with one hundred hand-mounted original prints, but the book did not sell well. He also documented Lincoln's funeral and the assassination of the Lincoln conspirators. He also photographed Native American leaders who came to Washington, but gave up photography after 1871 and founded an insurance company.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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  • Dimensions: 2.375" x 4"
  • Medium: CDV

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