GARDNER ALEXANDER (1821 1882) Thus It Be Ever With Assassins

Sale 2340 - Lot 9

Price Realized: $ 27,500

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 25,000 - $ 35,000

GARDNER, ALEXANDER (1821-1882)
"Thus It Be Ever With Assassins," the hanging of the Lincoln conspirators, July 7, 1865. Albumen print, 6 1/4x8 5/8 inches (15.9x21.9 cm.). 1865

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From the William E. Simon Collection of Historical Documents, Christie's, New York, June 14, 2005.

This key image depicts reporters, soldiers, and witnesses gathered around the scaffold holding the execution party and their guards and ministers. The condemned, from right to left, were George Atzerodt, charged with attempting to murder the vice-president, David Herold, who had assisted Booth in his escape attempt, Lewis Payne, convicted for trying to assassinate the secretary of state, and Mrs. Mary Surratt.

The albumen print shows the dangling, hooded bodies of Mary Surratt (who kept a boardinghouse where the conspirators met), George Atzerodt (charged with the attempted assassination of Vice President Johnson), David Herold (who assisted Booth on his flight from Washington) and Lewis Payne (who attempted to assassinate Secretary of War Stanton).

Entitled 'After the Drop: The Execution of the Lincoln Assassination,' this famous photograph is one of a series of ten images, "Hanging of the Lincoln Conspirators," captured by Alexander Gardner (assisted by Timothy O'Sullivan) on July 7, 1865, representing the official record of the execution at the Washington Penitentiary. The Scottish-born photographer was the sole photographer permitted to document the execution, but the photographs were considered too graphic for public consumption and were recreated as illustrations for Harper's Weekly.

Gardner's biographer, Mark Katz wrote that these scenes "remain the most vivid images from the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It was the longest picture-story recording of an event to date, capturing a complex, significant series of events. Gardner and O'Sullivan's execution series was a 19th-century precursor of the kind of photo-journalism that subsequently became so important" (Witness to an Era, p. 192).