Henry Lawrence Burnett Henry Lawrence Burnett ( December 26 , 1838 – January 4 , 1916 ) was a brevet brigadier general for the Union in the American Civil War and a prosecutor in the trial that followed the Abraham Lincoln assassination . Early life . Burnett was born in Youngstown , Ohio , in 1838 . Determined not to become a farmer , he ran away from home to get an education and eventually married Kitty Hoffman , the daughter of a judge . Civil War . When the Civil War broke out , Burnett joined the 2nd Ohio Cavalry , where he rose to the rank of major . After being trampled by a horse and seriously injured , however , he transferred to the Judge Advocate General ' s Corps of the Department of the Ohio . After the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 , Burnett was called upon by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to be an Assistant Judge Advocate General . Along with him were John Bingham and Joseph Holt , the Judge Advocate General . The accused conspirators where George Atzerodt , David Herold , Lewis Powell a . k . a . Paine , Samuel Arnold , Michael O ' Laughlen , Edman Spangler , Samuel Mudd and Mary Surratt . The trail began on May 10 , 1865 . The three spent nearly two months in court , awaiting a verdict from the jury . Holt and Bingham attempted to obscure the fact that there were two plots . The first plot was to kidnap President Lincoln in exchange for the Confederate prisoners the Union had . The second was to assassinate Lincoln , Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H . Seward in a plot to throw the government into electoral chaos . It was important for the prosecution not to reveal the existence of a diary taken from the body of Lincoln ' s assassin John Wilkes Booth . The diary made it clear that the assassination plan dated from the 14th of April . The defence surprisingly did not call for Booth ' s diary to be produced in court . Holt was accused of withholding evidence , but it was never proven . On June 29 , 1865 , the eight were found guilty for their involvement in the conspiracy to kill the President . Arnold , O ' Laughlen and Mudd where sentenced to life in prison , Spangler six years in prison and Atzerodt , Herold , Paine and Surratt were to hang . They were executed July 7 , 1865 . Surratt was the first woman in American history to be executed . O ' Laughlen died in prison in 1867 . Arnold , Spangler and Mudd where pardoned by President Andrew Johnson in early 1869 . Post - Civil War . After his wife Kitty died , Burnett moved to New York to practice law , serving as counsel to the Buffalo and Erie Railroad . He was married a second time , to Sarah Lansing , only to find himself widowed once again in 1877 . At this point , Burnett left his children with his late wife ' s family and relocated to New York City . He married once again , this time to Agnes Tailer , and moved to an exclusive district of the city . In 1898 , President William McKinley appointed Burnett federal district attorney for the southern district of New York and upon completion of his four - year term , he was reappointed by McKinley ' s successor , Theodore Roosevelt . Seeking a country home away from the city , Burnett and his wife purchased a horse - breeding farm in Goshen , New York where Henry raced on the amateur circuit . He died January 4 , 1916 and was interred in Slate Hill Cemetery in Goshen .