APRIL 15, 1865:
I
Just
around the time --- midnight April 14 / 15 --- that Edwin Stanton was hearing
the name John Surratt in connection
with the shooting of the President, John Wilkes Booth reached Surratt’s Tavern
in Surrattsville (now Clinton), Maryland. Surrattsville had been founded in the
1770s by the Surratt family, and John Surratt (he was actually John Surratt Jr.) had been appointed
postmaster of the town after his father died in 1862. His appointment was
approved in writing --- by Abraham Lincoln.
Surratt had used his position as postmaster to act as a Confederate
courier.
 |
| Surrat's Tavern, Surrattsville (Clinton) Maryland |
Booth
there collected a cache of weapons earlier laid in by Mary Surratt, John Surratt’s
mother and one of his fellow conspirators. He had a few quick drinks to dull
the pain of his broken ankle --- the adrenaline had long worn off by now ---
had his ankle wrapped, and pressed on into the Maryland night. He had company now --- another conspirator
named David Herold. Herold, a pharmacist who smuggled Northern drugs to the
Confederate armies, led Lewis Powell to Secretary of State Seward’s house, and may
have been the mysterious figure seen around Secretary of War Stanton’s house
earlier that night. No one is sure. But Herold stayed with Booth for the
remainder of the actor’s flight.
 |
| David Herold |
After
arming and refreshing themselves, Booth and Herold rode south down muddy roads.
Booth was making for the house of Dr. Samuel Mudd, a member of the Confederate
Secret Service operating in Maryland, the man who had introduced him (in late
1864) to John Surratt.
When
Booth and Herold reached Mudd’s house after four in the morning they said
nothing about Lincoln’s assassination, but they did ask for medical help. Mudd
set Booth’s leg, fed him, doped him, and sent him to bed, where Booth stayed
for the remainder of the day. In the meanwhile, Mudd carved Booth a pair of
crutches.
II
The
deathwatch at the Petersen Boarding House went on. Cabinet members and Generals
came and went, weeping, as did various and sundry lesser government
functionaries. Stanton, in consultation with the doctors, limited the number of
people in the room so as to give the dying President quiet. Mary Lincoln was
kept nearby.
There
was nothing anyone could do --- except wait for the end. Lincoln put up a
mighty struggle against death. He actually seemed to rally between 11:00 P.M.
and 2:00 A.M., but with no outside help available, his body’s gallant efforts
went wasted. After 2:00 A.M. his vitals began to become more depressed. He
never spoke, never opened his eyes, but occasionally twitched.
Stanton
--- in effect the Acting President now --- sent a messenger to Chief Justice
Salmon P. Chase’s house, asking Chase to confirm the Presidential succession
process. This was wise. Presidents had died in office before, but none had been
assassinated, and none had died while the nation was riven by Civil War.
Strangely, the Constitution barely addressed the important issue of
Presidential succession, and so Chase’s input was critical. Chase sent back to
say he was working on the matter.
Around
6:50 A.M., the President gave out a convulsive breath, and did not breathe
again for some time. The doctors were just about to pronounce him dead when he
sucked in a huge lungful of air, and the struggle went on. But by 7:15, it was
clear the end was near. Mary was sent for. She sobbed violently, as did the men
in the room, Stanton included.
Abraham
Lincoln, aged fifty-six, the man who had risen from a log cabin to the White
House, the man who had risen from rail splitter to attorney to President, the
only President to hold a patent*, the man whose mind had conceived the
Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, and the Second Inaugural, the
man who had led his nation wisely through a crucible of fire, passed from this
life at 7:22 A.M. on the morning of April 15, 1865.
“Now
he belongs to the ages,” Stanton said, through streaming tears.**
*Lincoln
had invented a pneumatic device to lift flatboats off sandbars.
**
Stanton actually said, “Now he belongs to the angels” while in the room, but
changed the last word to “ages” in his memoirs as he felt it had more gravitas,
and history has agreed with him.
III
Abraham
Lincoln is autopsied:
Surgeon General's Office
Washington City D.C.
April 15, 1865
Brigadier General J.K.
Barnes
Surgeon General U.S.A.
General:
I have the honor to
report that in obedience to your orders and aided by Assistant Surgeon E.
Curtis, U.S.A., I made in your presence at 12 o'clock this morning an autopsy
on the body of President Abraham Lincoln, with the following results: The
eyelids and surrounding parts of the face were greatly ecchymosed and the eyes
somewhat protuberant from effusion of blood into the orbits.
There was a gunshot
wound of the head around which the scalp was greatly thickened by hemorrhage
into its tissue. The ball entered through the occipital bone about one inch to
the left of the median line and just above the left lateral sinus, which it
opened. It then penetrated the dura matter, passed through the left posterior
lobe of the cerebrum, entered the left lateral ventricle and lodged in the
white matter of the cerebrum just above the anterior portion of the left corpus
striatum, where it was found.
The wound in the
occipital bone was quite smooth, circular in shape, with bevelled edges. The
opening through the internal table being larger than that through the external
table. The track of the ball was full of clotted blood and contained several
little fragments of bone with small pieces of the ball near its external
orifice. The brain around the track was pultaceous and livid from capillary
hemorrhage into its substance. The ventricles of the brain were full of clotted
blood. A thick clot beneath the dura matter coated the right cerebral lobe.
There was a smaller clot
under the dura matter of the left side. But little blood was found at the base
of the brain. Both the orbital plates of the frontal bone were fractured and
the fragments pushed upwards toward the brain. The dura matter over these
fractures was uninjured. The orbits were gorged with blood. I have the honor of
being very respectfully your obedient servant.
J.J. Woodward
Assistant Surgeon
U.S.A.
The
President’s body is then very thoroughly embalmed:
When the doctors had
completed their autopsy, undertaker Harry P. Cattell of Brown and Alexander
(please see the very bottom of this page) began his work. Mr. Lincoln's blood
was drained through the jugular vein. A cut was then made in the thigh and
through it a chemical substance was force-pumped which hardened the body like
marble. The undertakers then shaved the face, but they left a tuft on the chin.
The mouth was set in a very slight smile, the eyebrows were arched, and the
eyes were closed. Later Mr. Lincoln's body was dressed for the funeral and
burial in the same black suit he had worn to his Second Inauguration on March
4, 1865.
There
is no question that by 1865 medical standards, standards that had barely
outgrown Galen, the President’s wound was mortal. But the Lincoln shooting has
been studied closely, and many 21st Century neurologists believe
that Lincoln might have survived the shooting had modern trauma medicine
existed in his day.
For
one thing, the bullet was small, a metal pellet, fired from a low-velocity
weapon. It went through the back of his head and through part of his brain, but
did not strike the frontal lobes, the seat of cognition.
For
another thing, Lincoln lived nine hours after
being shot. Even though many doctors say he was “essentially brain dead” by two
A.M. that is still three hours after
the shooting, far beyond the “golden hour” spoken of in head trauma cases.
In
a modern trauma center, part of Lincoln’s skull would have been removed to
allow for brain swelling (always a factor in these types of shootings). This would have allowed for the intracranial
pressure to drop --- as it did when Dr. Leale removed the clot in the wound.
It
would take modern CAT scan, PET scan and MRI equipment to conclusively track
the bullet in the President’s brain, but the best guess is that Lincoln would
probably have suffered some paralysis, some sensory loss, and aphasia, although
his intellect would likely not have been impaired. Extensive rehabilitation
might have helped with many of these side effects.
There
is no way to know whether Lincoln would have lived. But he might have lived. And likely, the United States would be a far
different nation today if he had.
IV
In
Alabama, Wilson’s Raid reaches Opelika, burning its cotton warehouses.
At
New Hope Church in North Carolina, a Union engineering unit building a pontoon
bridge exchanges fire with a Confederate detachment across the river. After a
brief time, the Confederates withdraw. No casualties are reported.
In
western North Carolina, Stoneman’s Raid despoils the towns of Hickory and
Lenoir.
In
Kansas and in Missouri, Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers square off.
Unnamed
little contests flare and die in Texas, in Arkansas, and in Louisiana. As they
flare and die, so do the men fighting them. They are not even “battles” in the
proper sense of the term. The Confederates are largely leaderless, they have
little in the way of supplies and ammunition, they have no strategy, and they
have no real goal or any chance of “winning” anything. The two sides fight
because, simply put, that is what they do.
V
Before
eight A.M., Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase reaches Petersen House. Although
never really a friend of Lincoln’s, Chase owes his Justiceship to the departed
President.
“I’m
sorry. It is too late,” Stanton tells Chase.
“He
is dead, then?”
“He
died a little after 7:20.” Stanton begins to weep again. Chase wipes his eyes.
Finally, Stanton takes a long shuddering breath. “What have you got for me?”
“Andrew
Johnson must succeed to the Presidency.” Chase explains how he reached his
conclusion. Stanton the lawyer listens closely, and then nods. “Then we must do
it now.” He looks at his fellow Cabinet officers. “Any
questions?”
There
are none.
The
group of men leaves Petersen’s after making arrangements to remove Lincoln’s
body, and after assuring the shattered Mary Lincoln that they will handle all funeral
arrangements. They walk slowly to the Kirkwood Hotel, and call on
Vice-President Johnson.
Johnson
is agitated. “They will all suffer for this!”
“Yes,
Mr. Vice-President,” Stanton answers feelingly. “Are you prepared to take the
Oath of Office and become President?”
Johnson
says he is.
And
so Salmon P. Chase administers the Presidential Oath of Office for the second
time in as many months.
After
taking the Oath, Johnson says in an icy fume, “I am of the opinion that treason
is a crime. The best way to deal with rebels is to break their necks.” He suggests retributive mass hangings of
Confederate Prisoners of War and the arrest of Robert E. Lee as punishment for
Lincoln’s death.
Stanton,
who has no love for rebels or for Lee, nevertheless talks the new President out
of the scheme. “It may reinvigorate the rebels in the field.” Johnson agrees
that that may be true, and reverses himself. But it is an inauspicious
beginning to what will be a very troubled Presidency.
VI
Not
wishing to be in the area when General Johnston meets with General Sherman,
Jefferson Davis, the President of the collapsing Confederacy, leaves Goldsboro
N.C. for Charlotte, along with most of his Cabinet. They abandon the Government
Train and all its archives, preferring to go on horseback.
Later,
much is made of Davis’ timing in leaving the vicinity of the Union lines.
VII
General
William Tecumseh Sherman heard the first garbled rumors that Abraham Lincoln
has been assassinated. Fearing that his army would attack the Confederate lines
in revenge, he kept the tragic news to himself. He did not wire Washington for
confirmation, fearing that his telegraphers could not be trusted to keep such a
momentous secret, if true, and not really wanting to know himself. In the
meantime, he steeled himself for a meeting with General Joseph E. Johnston,
C.S.A., rescheduled now for the 17th of April.
VIII
Washington
is a dead city. Its streets are empty, its shops shuttered and dark, its few
open bistros serving only a few die-hard drinkers who talk over the news in
hushed tones. President Lincoln is dead. The
red-white-and-blue bunting of the night before is gone, replaced with solemn
black crepe. The flags, waving gaily only yesterday, are at half-mast, hanging
limply in the heavy air of a humid day. The gaslights, spelling out UNION,
VICTORY, and PEACE in immense letters are gone. They will never return. The
iron bells of the city’s steeples begin to toll.
 |
| The Capitol, draped in black |
An
angry mob gathers outside the Old Capitol Prison threatening to burn it to the
ground with its rebel prisoners inside. Stanton sends troops to restore order.
Ford’s
Theatre and Petersen’s Boarding House are cordoned off.
Called
back to Washington by the crisis, Grant comments:
It would be impossible
for me to describe the feeling that overcame me at the news of these
assassinations, more especially the assassination of the President. I knew his
goodness of heart, his generosity, his yielding disposition, his desire to have
everybody happy, and above all his desire to see all the people of the United
States enter again upon the full privileges of citizenship with equality among
all. I knew also the feeling that Mr. Johnson had expressed in speeches and
conversation against the Southern people, and I feared that his course towards
them would be such as to repel, and make them unwilling citizens; and if they
became such they would remain so for a long while. I felt that reconstruction
had been set back, no telling how far.
Throughout
much of the far-flung United States, north and south, fact is mixed with rumor.
People hear that Seward is dead and that Lincoln is alive. They hear that
Andrew Johnson has been killed. They hear that all three men were stabbed to
death. They hear that Lee’s army has broken its parole and is marching on
Washington D.C.
Newly-freed
slaves and U.S.C.T. feel the loss the worst. The Great Emancipator is gone, and
what now will become of them in this world run by men who want more and care
less?
In
Richmond, the United States Army has ordered a curfew. Black hangings limn the
former Confederate Capitol and White House. Few Richmonders are out and about,
and the few that are pass each other with eyes downcast. Here and there, there
are smirks, but the smirkers soon stop, because they find themselves given over
to furious Unionists and beaten --- sometimes to death. Confederates,
uncooperative with Union soldiers’ orders, find themselves facing bayonets and
gunbarrels. Confederate sentiments expressed this day earn one a quick trip to
the grave.
Robert
E. Lee speaks out: “The South lost its most just friend. His death is a crime that is
unexampled; a crime that all Americans should deprecate.” He counsels reason and calm.
There
are lynchings of known Southern sympathizers in Delaware, Maryland and
Pennsylvania. In New York, street thugs chase well-appointed Copperheads down
the street, hurling rocks. Their businesses are robbed, their houses defaced.
 |
| The Lincoln family home in Springfield had been let to renters for the duration of the President's term. Upon hearing of his death the tenant draped the house in black crepe |
Outlying Union military units, when they hear the news, attack Confederate units, giving no quarter.
A
surprising number of Southerners have already heard of the generous terms of
surrender extended to Lee, and assume that the same terms would be the norm
that would end the war. Most divine that the peace terms offered were Lincoln’s
ideas. People have already begun to speak not of The Reconstruction but of The
Reconciliation.
But
as the news of Lincoln’s death spreads, many Confederates, or now ex-Confederates,
are badly frightened and anticipate a vengeful Yankee bloodbath throughout the
prostrate South. It is later said that the harder a Southern man mourned Lincoln
publicly the more dedicated he was to the Confederate cause privately. And there
are indeed killings and acts of retribution for Lincoln’s murder this day and
for many weeks to come.
The news [ ] has swept
away from the public mind every sentiment of lienency or conciliation toward
the conquered brigands of the South, says the New
York Herald.
People talk approvingly
of vindictive justice, judges, juries, gaolers and hangmen, wrote George Templeton
Strong.
Reconciliation dies with Lincoln, at
least for two harsh decades.
But
mostly, there is numbness. People, North and South, stay indoors. A heavy
silence muffles even the sound of gunfire in far-flung corners of the nation.
Almost
all Northerners are shocked by the assassination. There is rage, but there is
also profound, poignant sadness. Walt Whitman says:
The day of the murder we
heard the news very early in the morning. Mother prepared breakfast—and other
meals afterward—as usual; but not a mouthful was eaten all day by either of us.
We each drank half a cup of coffee; that was all. Little was said. We got every
newspaper morning and evening, and the frequent extras of that period, and
pass'd them silently to each other.
As
the day draws on, Whitman repairs to his room to write:
When lilacs last in the
dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early
droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall
mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring,
trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial
and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I
love . . .
Whitman is emotionally crushed by Abraham Lincoln’s death, and writes an entire cycle of poems about the fallen President among which are Hush’d Be The Camps To-Day, When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom’d, and Whitman’s best-known piece, O Captain! My Captain!
Many Southerners are shocked as well:
“This is the worst blow
the Confederacy could have taken! Lee’s surrender is as nothing to it,” said Robert Ould, a
surrendered Confederate officer.
General
Joseph E. Johnston C.S.A. would later call Booth’s act, “the disgrace of the age,” and “a
blot upon the escutcheon of 19th Century Man.”
Some
Richmonders are pleased this day, but they toast each other in undertones, saying,
“All hail J. Wilkes Booth!” even
while fearing to be overheard.
More
sensitive minds feel that John Wilkes Booth has betrayed the Confederate cause
by dishonoring it.
 |
| "Columbia Weeping By His Bier" appeared in Harper's Weekly |
And,
like Robert E. Lee, the most thoughtful of the South’s people know that the
South has lost its greatest ally in securing the Civil Peace. As Southerners
were to write in 1905 and 2005 respectively:
Had Lincoln lived the
days of reconstruction might have been softened and the era of good feeling
ushered in earlier".
"For millions of
people, particularly in the South, it would be decades before the impact of the
Lincoln assassination began to release its terrible hold on their lives"
This
may all well be true. But in those regions of the South still resisting,
celebrations erupt that match in ardor (if not in ornateness) the celebrations
that Lincoln’s death brought to an end in the North. A legacy of bitterness is
being born.
 |
| "The League of The South" a modern neo-Confederate organization scheduled a "Celebration and Memorial for John Wilkes Booth" to mark the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's assassination. Such aberrations of humanity deserve no comment from the author |
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