The creepiest pictures ever
Lewis Thornton Powell was born in rural Randolph County Alabama, (they have always been old school there, having just repealed Prohibition in 2012) on April 22, 1844 to a local Baptist Minister, Lewis Powell suffered a kick from a donkey as a teen that left his face and his jaw distended, which gave his face an eternally quizzical look.
When the Civil War started, Lewis at age 17 joined up with the local 2nd Florida Infantry near his new home in Jasper, Florida (ministers then as now often moved). The 2nd Florida was soon assigned to E.A. Perry’s newly formed Florida Brigade alongside the 5th and 8th Florida. Perry’s Brigade served under Anderson’s Division of Longstreet’s First Corps, of the Army of Northern Virginia.
They fought in the Battles of Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, and Antietam from Aug-Sep 1862. In November of that year Lewis was sent to hospital with an undisclosed illness. As cholera, dysentery and diarrhea killed thousands in the ranks at that time, its likely he suffered from one of these. One Colonel David Lang took command of the Florida Brigade and led the 2nd Florida, with Lewis back in the ranks at Fredricksburg in Dec 1862 and Chancellorsville in May 1863. Under Col. Lang’s command the Florida Brigade fought at Gettysburg in July 1863. There Lewis was wounded in the wrist and sent once again to hospital.
A Union one.
You see, he had been captured. Nevertheless, Lewis soon escaped, met up with partisans of Col John Mosby’s 43rd Battalion of Virgina Cavalry and from there was seconded to the Confederate Secret Service under the name Lewis Paine. On April 14, 1865, Powell/Paine was assigned to assassinate Secretary of State William H. Seward. It was to be a three-way decapitation of the government with Seward gone, John Wilkes Booth killing President Lincoln, and a third conspirator killing the Vice President.
Upon arriving at Seward’s home, armed with a knife and a Whitney cap and ball revolver, Powell/Paine attempted to kill the Secretary, but found himself in a struggle with not only the statesman but also his two grown sons (one of whom was a West Point graduate and a decorated Colonel in the Union Army), a military corpsmen, and a visiting messenger from the State Department.
In the five on one fight, where Powell/Paine’s revolver jammed, he lost but fled, with Seward and company bruised and beaten but alive.
Powell in wrist irons aboard the monitor USS Saugus, photographed by Alexander Gardner, 1865. It was just after his 21st birthday. You can’t unsee this guy’s stare.
Powell in wrist irons aboard the monitor USS Saugus, photographed by Alexander Gardner, 1865. What a haunting guy.
He was soon caught, imprisoned on a series of US Navy monitors, then, with co-conspirators David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt, hung from the neck until dead on July 7, 1865. He took five minutes to suffocate on the rope. In his defense at the trail his attorneys tried to argue first that he was insane then that he was acting as a soldier, attempting to complete his duty as he had been ordered. Both of which failed.
His body was lost to time, but his skull was kept for medical examination. Found in a dusty collection in the Smithsonian in 1992, he was finally interred in a grave in a military grave in Florida.
