page_title: Lewis Powell (conspirator)
section_title: Confinement
hierarchical_section_title: Lewis Powell (conspirator) / Trial / Confinement
caption_attribution_description: English: Lewis Powell (alias Lewis Payne), an associate of John Wilkes Booth, who attempted to assassinate Secretary of State William H. Seward on the same night that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
context_page_description: Lewis Thornton Powell, also known as Lewis Payne and Lewis Paine, was an American Confederate soldier who attempted to assassinate William Henry Seward as part of the Lincoln assassination plot. Wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg, he later served in Mosby's Rangers before working with the Confederate Secret Service in Maryland. John Wilkes Booth recruited him into a plot to kidnap Lincoln and turn the president over to the Confederacy, but then decided to assassinate Lincoln, Seward, and Vice President Andrew Johnson instead, and assigned Powell the task to kill Seward.
  Co-conspirator David Herold was to guide Powell to Seward's home, then help him escape, but fled before Powell was able to exit the Seward home. He arrived at the boarding house run by Mary Surratt, mother of co-conspirator John Surratt, three days later while the police were there conducting a search, and was arrested. Powell, Surratt, Herold, and George Atzerodt were sentenced to death by a military tribunal, and executed at the Washington Arsenal.
context_section_description: Reporters were denied access to the prisoners, but photographer Alexander Gardner received clearance. On April 27, Gardner began taking photographs of those who were caught up in the government's dragnet. One by one, each prisoner was brought on deck and photographed in a few positions. Gardner took far more photographs of Powell than anyone else. Powell obliged Gardner by posing seated, standing, with and without restraints, and modeling the overcoat and hat that he had worn the night of the Seward attacks. Among the most famous of the photographs is one in which Powell sits against the gun turret of the Saugus, staring into the camera in a modern fashion, relaxed and direct.
  Powell's confinement was not easy. He was constantly shackled with a form of manacles known as "lily irons", a riveted handcuff that had two separate iron bands on each wrist that prevented bending of the wrist or use of the hands independently. Like all the male prisoners, a heavy iron ball at the end of a 6-foot (1.8 m) long chain was manacled to one of his legs. Shackles were riveted closed about the ankles, which caused Powell's feet to swell considerably. Like all the prisoners, he had only a straw pallet on which to sit or lie and a single blanket for warmth. The same meal was served four times a day: coffee or water, bread, salted pork, and beef or beef soup. On April 29, all the prisoners aboard the monitors and at the Old Capitol Prison were moved to newly constructed cells at the Washington Arsenal.
  The prisoners were not permitted to bathe or wash until May 4, when all bindings and clothes were removed and they were permitted to bathe in cold water in the presence of a soldier. In early May, General John F. Hartranft, special provost marshal overseeing the prisoners, began improving the living conditions. Powell and the other prisoners began to receive fresh clothing—including undergarments—more frequently, more food, and writing instruments. When Powell was observed raising the iron ball to his head, Hartranft feared Powell might be contemplating suicide, and had the ball removed on June 2. Living conditions improved again on June 18, when the prisoners were given a box to sit on, outdoor exercise time each day, and reading material and chewing tobacco after each meal.
  On April 22, Powell repeatedly banged his head into the iron walls of his cell aboard the Saugus. Whether it was a suicide attempt, as his jailers believed, or not, it deeply alarmed military officials. A canvas padded hood, with only a slit for the mouth and nostrils, was fashioned. Powell and all the other prisoners aboard the monitors were forced to wear them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to prevent any further suicide attempts. Only Mary Surratt and Mudd were not required to wear the hoods. Powell cried when the hood was placed on him. The hoods were hot, claustrophobic, and uncomfortable, and in the humid confines of the monitors in the steaming Washington summer, the prisoners suffered immensely. On June 6, Hartranft ordered them removed except for Powell's.
  The apparent suicide attempt worried prison officials for another reason. Powell allegedly could not remember what state or country he had been born in or his age. Military personnel became concerned that he was insane or was being driven mad by his confinement. Three physicians were called in to determine his sanity, and on June 17, he was interviewed for three hours and 40 minutes by Major Thomas Akaryote and John T. Gray. The military tribunal later ruled him sane. With Booth dead and John Surratt still at large, Powell was the individual who knew most about the conspiracy, and government officials pressed him for information. Major Thomas T. Eckert spent hours with Powell over the weeks until his execution, trying to get him to talk.
caption: Powell in the hat and overcoat he wore on the night of the attack
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