Today in history

A woman, Mary Surratt, was arrested as a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination. She was the first woman put to death by the United States Government. (Well, not counting all the Native American women killed while the U.S. troops were eradicating them from the land, but the first woman to be punished by capital punishment through a court of law, anyway...)

"Because she and several other of the conspirators were Roman Catholics, there was speculation that the assassination was somehow connected to a papal plot. There was still fairly rampant anti-Catholic sentiment in the country at that time. "

Of course. And just in time for the Pope's visit. Have Americans always been this paranoid?