WHM: America's Criminal Women
Topic: Women's History Month
Mary Eugenia Jenkins Surratt (1817-1865)

On July 7th, 1865 America put to death the first woman.

The story began on April 14, 1865, when, just days after the end of the war, John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln. His co-conspirator Lewis Powell stabbed, but did not kill Secretary of State William Seward, third in line for the presidency. Another conspirator, George Atzerodt was assigned to kill Vice President Johnson, but failed to even attempt his assignment.

The players involved in the assassination of President Lincoln were associated by Sarratt's son via the boarding house she ran, and she had made two business trips to areas of southern sympathy shortly before, and Sarratt was convicted and hung in the fallout after that fateful day. That was the sum of the government's case against her.

Sarratt's cowardly son fled to Canada before capture but returned and stood trial in 1867. The trial was held under military law, and was prosecuted overly zealously in the case of this lone female, involving the suppression of evidence that would have cleared her. She was denied the opportunity to testify on her own behalf, and some of the men involved were intimidated into falsely testifying against her. To add insult to injury, the lawyers assigned to defend her learned of her conviction through the newspaper.

Sarratt was hung, along with four "accomplices," while four others were given life sentences. Before the sentence was carried out, Lewis Powell, who was considered the "brains" of the operation, pleaded for Sarratt's release and proclaimed her innocence.

Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg (1915-1953)

Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg and her husband Julius were sentenced to death on April 15, 1951. Mrs. Rosenberg was the first woman to be executed for espionage.

In the "red scare" the followed the second world war, and with the relatively open anti-Semitism of the era, Rosenberg was an easy target for government prosecutors. Her husband and brother were arrested in the summer of 1950; her arrest followed shortly after. There was no specific evidence offered to support the prosecution's claim of espionage, and it was not until months later that they claimed that she had typed notes on atomic secrets for her brother. Both insisted on their innocence, but Rosenberg's sister-in-law, Ruth Greenglass (who was never indicted) testified against them. Rosenberg's brother quickly turned state's witness in exchange for reduced charges and a light sentence.

The sentence of death dolled out by the court came as shock to civil libertarians the world round, but alas their campaign for clemency failed. Even J. Edgar Hoover had recommended a lighter sentence.

The Rosenbergs were not only the first civilians ever executed for espionage, they were the first of civilian and military personnel to be executed for espionage during peacetime. Ethel Rosenberg was not even convicted of treason, but "conspiracy to commit espionage." Technically, the Soviet Union (who the Rosenberg's alledgedly sold atomic secrets to) and America were still allies as a result of their cooperation in WWII. The couple was executed on June 19, 1953, the day after their 14th wedding anniversary. They were survived by two sons under the age of eleven.