Michael
O'Laughlin was born in Baltimore, Maryland,
in June 1840. As a child he became friends with John
Wilkes Booth, who lived in the same street as the O'Laughlins.
O'Laughlin worked in the ornamental plaster trade before joining the
Confederate Army at the beginning of
the American Civil War. He left the
army in June, 1862 because of poor health, and returned to Baltimore
where he worked as a clerk in brother's feed business.
In 1864 John Wilkes Booth devised a scheme
to kidnap Abraham Lincoln in Washington.
The plan was to take Lincoln to Richmond
and hold him until he could be exchanged for Confederate
Army prisoners of war. Booth persuaded O'Laughlin to join the
plot. Others involved included George
Atzerodt, Lewis Powell, John
Surratt, David Herold and Samuel
Arnold. Booth decided to carry out the deed on 17th March, 1865
when Lincoln was planning to attend a play at the Seventh Street Hospital
that was situated on the outskirts of Washington.
The kidnap attempt was abandoned when Lincoln decided at the last
moment to cancel his visit.
When President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated,
O'Laughlin was living in Baltimore. On 17th April, 1865 O'Laughlin
gave himself up to the police. He confessed to his role in the plan
to kidnap Lincoln but denied any involvement in the conspiracy to
murder the president.
On 1st May, 1865, President Andrew Johnson
ordered the formation of a nine-man military
commission to try the conspirators. It was argued by Edwin
M. Stanton, the Secretary of War, that the men should be tried
by a military court as Lincoln had been Commander in Chief of the
army. Several members of the cabinet, including Gideon
Welles (Secretary of the Navy), Edward
Bates (Attorney General), Orville
H. Browning (Secretary of the Interior), and Henry
McCulloch (Secretary of the Treasury), disapproved, preferring
a civil trial. However, James Speed,
the Attorney General, agreed with Stanton and therefore the defendants
did not enjoy the advantages of a jury trial.
The trial began on 10th May, 1865. The military commission included
leading generals such as David Hunter,
Lewis Wallace, Thomas
Harris and Alvin Howe and Joseph
Holt was the government's chief prosecutor. Mary
Surratt, Lewis Powell, George
Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel
Mudd, Michael O'Laughlin, Edman
Spangler and Samuel Arnold were
all charged with conspiring to murder Lincoln. During the trial Holt
attempted to persuade the military commission that Jefferson
Davis and the Confederate government had been involved in conspiracy.
Joseph Holt attempted to obscure the fact
that there were two plots: the first to kidnap and the second to assassinate.
It was important for the prosecution not to reveal the existence of
a diary taken from the body of John Wilkes
Booth. The diary made it clear that the assassination plan dated
from 14th April. The defence surprisingly did not call for Booth's
diary to be produced in court.
During his trial the prosecution claimed that O'Laughlin had been
given the task of killing General Ulysses
S. Grant. However, O'Laughlin's lawyer, Walter S. Scott, was able
to show that his client was drinking with friends on the night of
the murder and had made no attempt to seek out Grant.
On 29th June O'Laughlin was found guilty of being involved in the
conspiracy to murder Lincoln and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Mary Surratt, Lewis
Powell, George Atzerodt and David
Herold were also found guilty of the crime and hanged at Washington
Penitentiary on 7th July, 1865.
O'Laughlin was sent to Fort Jefferson with fellow conspirators Samuel
Mudd, Edman Spangler and Samuel
Arnold. Michael O'Laughlin died of yellow
fever on 19th September, 1867.
(1)
Ben Pittman, The Assassination of
President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators (1865)
O'Laughlin
is a rather small, delicate-looking man, with rather pleasing features,
uneasy black eyes, bushy black hair, a heavy black mustache and imperial,
and a most anxious expression of countenance, shaded by a sad, remorseful
look.
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