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Lewis Powell (alias Lewis Paine). (April 22, 1844 in Randolph County, Alabama, USA – July 7, 1865 in Washington D.C.). Powell attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate U.S. Secretary of State William Seward, and was one of four people hanged for the Lincoln assassination conspiracy.
Early life
Powell was the son of a Baptist minister from Alabama. He enlisted in 1861, as a private with the Confederate Second Florida Infantry. He was wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg and taken prisoner in July 1863. After his parole and release, he returned to Baltimore and met John Wilkes Booth and John Surratt, Jr.
Lincoln plot
Lewis Powell attempted to kill William Seward on the same night, April 14, 1865, that John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln, by breaking into his bedroom and stabbing him repeatedly. Earlier in the month, on April 5, 1865, Seward had been injured in a carriage accident, and suffered a concussion, a broken jaw in two places, a broken right arm and many serious bruises. A neckbrace worn by Seward helped to save his life. Another member of the conspiracy, George Atzerodt, failed to to kill Vice-President Andrew Johnson, because he lost his nerve and got drunk. Powell was tried under the name of "Payne", by a Military Tribunal, in a highly irregular trial and was executed with three other conspirators on July 7, 1865. He went to the gallows calmly and quietly, though at some point he was believed to have pleaded for the life of Mary Surratt right before he was hanged. He is reported to have thanked the guards for their good treatment of him while he was in prison and then shouted "Mrs. Surratt is innocent! She dosen't deserve to die with us!" The trapdoor opened and he fell a short distance and "died hard" even taking longer to die and with more convulsing than Surratt next to him .
Oddity
In January 1992, Powell's skull was discovered stored at the Smithsonian Anthropology Department. Two years later the skull was re-interred at the Geneva Cemetery in Seminole County, Florida, next to the grave of his mother.
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1844 births | 1865 deaths | Abraham Lincoln | American assassins | American Civil War people | People from Alabama
"Lewis Powell (assassin)"