April 14, 1865---"Sic semper Tyrannis!"

APRIL 14, 1865:  

Sic Semper Tyrannis” --- The State motto of Virginia 

I

The Battle of Morrisville:

Despite William Tecumseh Sherman U.S.A.’s responsive letter to Joseph E. Johnston C.S.A. of the previous day, advising him that Union troops would hold at Morrisville, North Carolina, and that Sherman “expect[ed] that [Johnston would] also maintain the present position of [his] forces” a cavalry battle erupts between Generals Judson “Killcavalry” Kilpatrick U.S.A. and Generals Wade Hampton III and Joseph Wheeler C.S.A. when Hampton and Wheeler attempt to protect their supply trains. Who fires the first shot is unknown --- each side later blames the other.

When reports of the battle reach each army’s respective senior headquarters, Sherman and Johnston both issue frantic orders for immediate disengagement before the exchange escalates out of control. Fortunately, the messages reach Kilpatrick, Hampton and Wheeler at the same time, and the commanders in the field meet under flags of truce to ensure that no more shooting goes on.  

As it transpires, Morrisville is the last battle between Sherman’s forces and Johnston’s forces. 

II

After a brief battle, Stoneman’s Raid seized Taylorsville, North Carolina. 

Wilson’s Raid took Mount Meigs and Tuskeegee, Alabama after skirmishes.

Widely expected to be the last man to surrender to the Yankees, General Nathan Bedford Forrest C.S.A. continued his lightning raids against Union forces in Alabama into mid-April. However, his latest war wound, acquired at Selma, slowed him down considerably. Even more critically, supplies for his men ran low in the face of an increasing Federal presence. 

It was on this day that Forrest first heard of the surrender of General Lee and The Army of Northern Virginia. In response, Forrest surprised his men by ordering a suspension of offensive actions against Union troops, pending confirmation of the news --- although Forrest made clear that defensive actions and supply raids were still to be carried out as usual.

III

President Lincoln awoke in a singularly splendid mood that Good Friday morning. Everyone who saw him remarked that he had a special spring in his step that day, and that rather than the odd shambling head-down shuffle he usually affected while walking, Lincoln was striding hither and thither with purpose and with his head upright. After breakfast with Mary, Tad, and Robert (who was in the city with General Grant) Lincoln went to his office.

After a brief meeting with several Radical members of his own Republican party, Lincoln went to the Cabinet Room. Most of the meeting concerned Reconstruction. Lincoln told his assembled advisors that he was troubled by the Radical Republicans “who possess feelings of hate and vindictiveness in which I cannot participate.” He spoke again of his desire to “let [the South] up easy.” He wanted no hangings, no show trials, he repeated. “We expect harmony and Union.” To prove his point he signed the pardon of a Confederate spy during the meeting. “There is no greater task before us” than resolving the end of the war and restoring states back to the Union, he tells his Cabinet.

Lincoln also told them of a dream he’d had last night --- not the “assassination dream” he’d suffered with three times in the last week, no. Last night’s dream was his “speeding ship” dream, and he only dreamt about the ship when a great Union victory or successful turning point was about to be reached in the war. 

“I believe that Johnston is going to surrender in the next few days,” the President said. “Just see if he doesn’t!” The timely receipt of a telegram from Sherman announcing that Johnston was asking for a cease-fire buoyed the President’s mood even more. 

After Lincoln excused himself, the usually-growly Secretary of War Edwin Stanton asked a rhetorical question of his fellows: “Didn’t our Chief look grand today?”

The President returned to his office for more meetings. He briefly saw Andrew Johnson; he and his Vice-President had not met since Inauguration Day, and Lincoln was troubled by Johnson’s clearly hostile attitudes toward his fellow southerners.

An unexpected guest was General Grant, who apologized to Lincoln for the late cancellation, but explained that his son in New Jersey had contacted him with an urgent problem and that Mrs. Grant insisted on taking the next train north. He apologized that they could not attend the theatre with the President and First Lady tonight.

It was a fateful decision. Although it was a true excuse, part of Julia Grant’s sense of “urgency” sprang from her desire to avoid Mary Lincoln’s uninviting company. Mrs. Grant had not yet forgiven the First Lady for her vile mistreatment of Mrs. Ord at City Point. But the absence of the Grants meant the absence of General Grant’s military guardsmen who accompanied him everywhere, and with Ward Hill Lamon in Richmond, the President’s most dependable bodyguard was likewise unavailable.

The President turned to signing bills. Congress was about to adjourn for the Easter holiday, and Lincoln wanted certain jobs done before they did. The last bill that Abraham Lincoln signed into law was one creating the Secret Service, a branch of the Treasury Department tasked with ferreting out counterfeiters. Later, in President Lincoln’s memory, the Secret Service (still a branch of the Treasury) would be assigned the exclusive task of guarding the President. 

The President also struggled to find last-minute theatre companions for the evening. An amazing eighteen additional couples (not counting the Grants) refused the Presidential invitation that night (it is impossible to imagine such a circumstance today). 

Finally, Lincoln arranged to pick up Miss Clara Harris (the daughter of Senator Ira Harris of New York) and her fiancée Major Henry Rathbone for the eight o’clock performance at Ford’s Theatre.

After he wrapped up his day in the office, Mary and Abraham Lincoln went for a carriage ride. Alone (but for their driver) in the open barouche, the two found themselves cuddling and talking of their future. 

A Lincoln impersonator squiring an unknown blonde. Any vile epithets, Mrs. Lincoln?

“It’s a beautiful spring day . . . Ah. Today is the first day I really feel that the war is over,” Lincoln told his wife. “Molly, you and I must be more cheerful in the future. Between the war and the loss of our darling Willie, we have both been so very, very miserable. 

 

“After my term is over, I expect we can go back to Springfield --- to Springfield --- and I will go back to practicing law with Billy Herndon. I would like to go home. I would like to go to California --- by train --- and I would like to visit Jerusalem, too, the holy city where David and Solomon walked.”

Abraham, Mary, Tad and Robbie c. 1864

As the carriage pulled up to the White House portico, Lincoln saw his friend, Illinois Governor Richard Oglesby and a number of other political friends leaving the White House.

Apparently Lincoln was Jewish. At least, he wore his hat in the house.

“Come back, fellows!” the President hallooed. “Come in, and we’ll have a few drinks before dinner. We have time.”

 

IV

The Lincolns were a little late to Ford’s Theatre on Tenth Street Northwest that Friday night.

A model of Ford's Theatre as it looked c. 1865

Lincoln’s good time with Oglesby and his cronies ran late. The men were entertained by Lincoln’s endless fund of funny stories and traded dirty jokes with much laughter while the President imbibed a few too many drinks. Of course, there were the inevitable interruptions caused by Presidential business. Mary had to send for him three or four times to come to the dining room around six.

Lincoln's opera glasses. A number of items were found in Lincoln's pockets after the shooting

Over dinner, the Lincolns discussed cancelling their evening plans. Mary had the beginnings of a headache and the President was just on the verge of being tipsy. It was the President who shrugged and said, “It’s been in the papers. Our appearance is expected.”

Lincoln's spare spectacles

As indeed it was.

Lincoln dressed in evening clothes, including kidskin gloves. He hated kid gloves and complained to his valet (as he always did when forced to wear them) that “These should have stayed on the lamb.”

Lincoln's bloodstained kid gloves

As he left the White House, he turned to a last-minute visitor, Speaker of The House Schuyler Colfax, and said, “I suppose it is time to go. But I would rather stay.” To his assistant bodyguard, George Crook, to whom he had given the night off, he said formally, “Good-bye, George.” Crook never forgot it. The President’s leavetaking had always been a simple “G’night.”

A Series 1864 Confederate five dollar bill was found in Lincoln's pocket. Ever since then this denomination has been known as "The Lincoln Death Note"

Both Colfax and Crook later said that they had intimations of something momentous, but hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

Traffic was as bad as Ward Hill Lamon had predicted. Celebrants, most far tipsier than their President, were singing and dancing along the sidewalks and in the gutters. The restaurants were packed, with lines reaching down from their doors for blocks. Brass bands played on every street corner, and street entertainers --- jugglers and japesters, mimes and musicians --- kept knots of people entertained. Incredibly, the alcohol and adrenaline cocktail that was Washington D.C. saw inevitable pickpockets and flim-flams that evening, but almost no violent crimes.

Almost none.

Washington glowed. Once again, every light in the alabaster city was shining. Flags flew or were draped everywhere, and where they weren’t draped, red white and blue bunting decorated every doorway, every terrace and every balustrade. The official buildings were decorated with gaslights that spelled out in immense letters UNION, VICTORY and PEACE.

In the crush, the Presidential carriage moved slowly. The Lincolns’ first stop was at Ira Harris’ home where they picked up Clara Harris and Major Rathbone. Rathbone was mostly silent during the rest of the drive --- he did not know the Lincolns and was abashed in the company of the President --- but Mrs. Lincoln knew Clara well, and they chatted gaily. Tad, in his boy soldiers’ uniform, maintained a running, excited commentary on everything he noticed in the streets. The adults must have been slightly relieved when Tad and his tutor, Thomas Pendel (called “Tom Pen” by the boy) were dropped off at the National.

They arrived at Ford’s Theatre about half past eight and twenty minutes after show time. The Presidential party greeted the Fords and their hired security man, John Parker, who as expected took up his post outside the Presidential box. When the President finally appeared in his box with a beaming Mary at his side, the audience gave them both a standing ovation. The cast interrupted their performance to join in the applause. Laura Keene waved to the President, who shyly returned the gesture.

Then they all took their seats.

V

To anyone born after the Great Depression and before September 11, 2001, to anyone who experienced Pearl Harbor, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Francis Kennedy, to anyone who remembers the shooting of John Lennon, to everyone who recalls 9/11, the Madrid, London and Mumbai terror attacks, and most lately the killings at Charlie Hebdo in Paris, one glance at the Presidential Box of Ford’s Theatre as it stood on April 14, 1865 brings to mind one word, and that word is “deathtrap.”

To be honest, even denizens of the Civil War era recognized the Presidential Box as a potentially dangerous place. To Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War, every place was a dangerous place in April 1865. To assure his own safety, Stanton had taken to avoiding all social engagements as the Civil War wound down. He had also ordered his senior staffers to avoid public places. In fact, on that Friday he had ordered one of his senior clerks to not attend the theatre with the Lincolns. He tried to talk the President out of going, too. If he could have ordered Lincoln to stay home he would have.

The floor plan of Ford's Theatre in 1865. The Presidential Box is the rhombus on the right hand side projecting over the stage

Stanton understood, better than most, that the end of the war was fraught with danger for the leadership of the Union; and the President was the most visible symbol of that Union.

Part of Stanton’s wartime job had been to track down Confederate agents. He was good at it, and it had made him paranoid. Volatile by nature, Stanton saw conspirators huddled on every corner. But he was correct in thinking that the death of the Confederacy had set loose more than a few demons in some men’s minds.

John Wilkes Booth jumped 12 feet from the Presidential Box to the stage, breaking his ankle in the process. He then ran across the stage from right to left

There were men abroad in the streets who could not cope with the collapse of their dreams, there were men who had struggled and suffered for the South and now saw their sacrifices becoming vain, and there were men who wanted to be heroic in their own twisted way. The killing of a President would have suited them nicely.

Washington was particularly magnetic for such men. Not only was the Union Government located there, but the city lay nestled between the borders of the Old Line State and the Old Dominion. Its daily population spoke with the soft liquid vowels of the upper south. A southern zealot from Maryland, for instance, would never be noticed in the streets.

Or, he might if he was handsome and famous, like John Wilkes Booth. 

The Presidential Box as it looked on the night of April 14, 1865. Normally a partition, running from the stanchion between the windows to the corner of the entryway vestibule (just visible at the lower right) divided the box into two smaller boxes

The Presidential Box at Ford’s Theatre was an odd-shaped affair, difficult to secure. It was actually two upper level boxes --- numbers seven and eight --- with a removable partition between them. 

 

Access to the dual boxes was clumsy. The main entryway from the outer hall led not into the box itself, but into a small closetlike vestibule with two doors, one leading to box 7 and the other to box 8. The partition normally stood at the right angle between the doors and stretched diagonally between the two arched side-by-side windows of the boxes.

 

The door to the vestibule of the Presidential Box. If he had been diligent, John Parker would have been somewhere within the frame of this photograph when Booth arrived. Even if Parker was diligent it is possible the famous actor, a familiar face at Ford's, might have gained access to the Box if he'd asked to greet the President

Without the partition, the enlarged box had an odd shape, not quite rhomboid and not quite a V. With the partition in place box seven was rather small and cramped, or, arguably, intimate. When the Lincolns had no guests they generally sat in seven.

A view of the Presidential Box from the doorway to Boxes 7 (top) and 8 (bottom)

Mary preferred a small padded chair which she could place on the President’s right. Lincoln liked to use a rocking chair, which he could tilt back against the vestibule door to box seven.

The door to box seven had a small judas to allow anyone entering to avoid whacking an occupant in the back of the head.

Box eight was larger. On this night Clara Harris was seated in an armchair with Major Rathbone stretched out along a divan along box eight’s outer wall. If he sat up on the near end of the divan he had an excellent view of the stage. Sitting on the far edge he could have seen anyone entering the box from the “8” door. 

If he could have seen them. The heavy furniture, most of it upholstered in dark red was black in the darkness, as was the thick red carpeting that muffled sound, and the red-papered walls. Once a show began, the only light in the box was whatever ambient light that reached the box from the gaslighted stage. The occupants of the box were shadows to one another. They could have come and gone, and maybe not been missed. Or perhaps entered the box at unawares and not been seen.

VI

About 10:05 P.M. the bellpull sounded at Secretary of State William H. Seward’s fashionable Lafayette Square townhome. Although it was an unusual hour for visitors, the occupants of the house had become used to odd comings and goings over the years --- messengers from the President, War Department couriers, Congressmen, impatient friends, and most recently, apothecaries and nurses. It had been ten days since Secretary Seward had been thrown from his carriage, breaking his jaw, and the doctors were wont to stop by late at night to check on their patient.

William Bell, Seward’s butler answered the door. A handsome though hulking man stood on the steps, a hat pulled over his eyes.

“May I help you?”

“I’m here from, uh, Dr. Verdi’s office. Dr., um, Verdi has prescribed a new medication for Mr., ah, Seward, and I’m to deliver it and show him how to take it himself.”

  

“I’m certain that Mr. Seward is asleep. Please return in the morning.”

“I can’t. Dr. Verdi says that . . . Mr. Seward must take his medicine tonight.”

“All right. Can you wait here a moment?”

“I’d prefer to come inside than stand out on the steps, if you don’t mind.”

Bell let the man in. “Is that his room up there?” the man said, starting to climb the staircase.

Bell ran after him. At the top of the third floor landing they came face to face with Seward’s son, Frederick.

“Mr. Fred, I’m sorry. This man --- what did you say your name was? --- has been sent by Dr. Verdi with a new medication for your father,” Bell explained. “I told him to wait in the vestibule, but he came right on --- ”

“I’m Mr. Payne,” the man answered. His name, as they would discover much later, was Lewis Powell.

“Well, my father is asleep, I’m afraid, and I don’t wish to wake him. Give me the medication with instructions, and I’ll see he begins his course first thing in the morning,” Fred said reasonably. He was stunned into immobility when “Mr. Payne” suddenly leveled a pistol at his chest from inches away. Fred Seward heard a hard click and a vile curse, and then everything went dark.

“Mr. Payne” had bashed Fred’s head in so savagely with the butt of his misfired gun that Fred’s brain was exposed in two places. Bell gave a shout of fear as Payne rushed the door to William Seward’s room.

William Seward’s night nurse was a man named Sergeant George Robinson, a wounded veteran of many battles. When Robinson opened the door to see what the sudden shout was about, Payne slashed him across the forehead and knocked him to the floor, stunned.

There was one other person in the room, Seward’s daughter Fanny, and her screams jolted her father awake. Doped with opium, he nonetheless put up a fight as Payne leaped on him and stabbed and slashed wildly.

What saved William Seward’s life that night was the medieval jaw splint he was wearing to heal his carriage accident injury. Although Payne tried to force Seward to turn his head in order to expose the older man’s jugular vein, the splint made that impossible. The knife blade clanged as it hit metal and squished as it plunged into the flesh of the Secretary of State’s face over and over. Most of Seward’s cheek was cut away.

Seward, finally, with a superhuman effort no doubt fueled by his own adrenaline, managed to roll off the bed and fall to the floor between the bed and the wall.

 

Payne still wasn’t done. He turned to attack Robinson again, after the man had risen to his feet, slashing his face one more time. He stabbed Seward’s son Augustus who had been in another part of the house and had come running at the sound of William Bell’s screams of “Murder!” Turning back to find Seward, he discovered Fanny covering her father’s body with her own. 

“No,” she pleaded as he plunged the knife into her body.

But suddenly Payne was hurled across the room, and saw the bloody and maddened visage of Sergeant Robinson as the man approached, murder writ large in his eyes. This time, Payne ran. Down the stairs and out onto the steps where he crossed paths with an innocent State Department courier named Emmerich Hansell, whom he stabbed in the spine on impulse, paralyzing him for the rest of his life.

“I’m mad! I’m mad!” shouted Payne as he ran off into the night.

William Henry Seward, before and after Lewis Powell's attack. The facial wounds were permanently disabling, and although the Secretary of State returned to his post months later (to famously buy Alaska in 1867), Seward never recovered from the combined effects of  his carriage accident, the attack on his family, his own wounds, and Frances' sudden death, He died in 1872 at age 70

The Seward house was as drenched in blood as an abattoir, though miraculously no one was killed. Seward recovered and eventually returned to his job as Secretary of State; Fred made a full recovery, though he never recalled anything about that night; Augustus and Sergeant Robinson suffered bloody but essentially superficial cuts; Fanny recovered from her stab wound with minor aftereffects; Hansell became a hemiplegic. William Bell, who had answered the door, was unharmed. Mrs. Frances Seward, the Secretary’s wife, survived unhurt as well, but the stress of that night ended her life only six weeks later.

But for all anyone knew at that moment, William H. Seward might die from infection and blood loss; so might Fred; so might Fanny.

VII

George Atzerodt, alias George Atwood, was sitting in the bar of the Kirkwood Hotel when ten P.M. came and went on the night of April 14, 1865. He knew he was supposed to be up in Room 126, killing Vice-President Andrew Johnson, but, as he later said in his own defense, “I had signed up to this conspiracy to kidnap the President, not to kill anyone.” He did however mention to a fellow Confederate sympathizer at the bar that he could expect “a gift” that evening.

At ten-fifteen, solemnly drunk, Atzerodt left the bar of the Kirkwood and went pub crawling for the night.

VIII

As the events of the night unfolded, Edwin Stanton took charge. After hearing that there had been “an incident” at the Seward house he left his own to hurry there. The grisly scene convinced him that the rumors emanating from Ford’s Theatre were, horribly, true. After assigning military doctors and a squad of soldiers to keep watch on the Sewards he rushed to Ford’s Theatre. He was too late; but a shadowy stranger, receiving no response to the bellpull at Stanton’s home, disappeared into the growing fog.

 

IX

The eight o’clock hour of Our American Cousin passes comfortably.

In the Presidential Box, Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln are holding hands. Mrs. Lincoln is chatting amiably with Clara Harris about her wedding plans. The President, realizing that Major Rathbone is intimidated by his presence, tries to put the young man at ease by telling him jokes. 

This computer-generated image gives some impression of the scene inside the Presidential Box just before Booth fired his derringer

At first the President is intent upon the play, leaning forward in his rocking chair so as not to miss a word. But every time his face appears in the box window the audience bursts into applause that disrupts the flow of the performance. Abraham Lincoln is at the acme of his popularity tonight.

Being considerate of the players, he leans back in his chair, invisible, letting Mary narrate the action to him. Eventually, his mind wanders to the subject of Reconstruction. He sits with hand on furrowed brow, preoccupied with matters of state as nine o’clock comes and goes. 

The President's rocking chair (with blood and brain matter stains) and a piece of the lap rug Lincoln had tucked around his legs in the box

Nearer ten o’clock Major Rathbone is dozing on his divan.

Just outside the outer vestibule door, John Wilkes Booth is recognized by a stagehand who wonders what the actor is doing wearing his hat indoors. The next time he looks over, Booth has disappeared. There is no sign of the theatre’s security man, John Parker.

Booth at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865

Booth is in the vestibule, leaning against the outer door, keeping to a shadow. He wedges his walking stick diagonally against the outer door jamming it closed. Perhaps he peers through the judas in the door to box seven at the back of his quarry’s head, just inches away. Perhaps he simply stands there for some minutes gathering the type of warped courage it takes to kill an innocent man.

Booth has to be stealthy. The door to box eight is wide open, and he can see Major Rathbone stretched out on the couch, almost directly in front of him. Any sudden movement, any unexpected sounds, and it will all end in ignominy.

Taking a deep breath, Booth steps out of the vestibule, and sidles along the short wall that forms a cattycorner in the dual boxes . . .

X

Mary Lincoln never heard the pop that heralded the end of her husband’s life, but Major Rathbone recognized a gunshot even in his sleep. He leaped off the couch and rushed the shadowy figure who was standing, arm extended, behind Abraham Lincoln.

He had been anticipated. The shadow-figure turned and slashed at Rathbone with a large knife, cutting him to the bone three times over and severing an artery in his forearm.

Suddenly, there was blood everywhere.

Clara Harris turned just in time to see her fiancée fall nervelessly back against the divan. Her first instinct was to go to him, but a man came out of the darkness. What little light there was mirrored itself on a large, bloody, blade in the man’s hand.

Booth's knife, that he used to slash Major Rathbone

Mary Lincoln was confused when a large dark object appeared in her peripheral vision falling over the outer lip of the Presidential Box. She thought for a moment that her husband had tilted his rocking chair too far forward and had somehow fallen out of the box. Then she realized that she was still holding his hand. She looked over at Abraham, and . . .

A thin wailing began.

John Wilkes Booth had fired a derringer at the back of the President’s head at pointblank range; immediately afterward, he took an impressive leap --- twelve feet --- from the Presidential Box to the stage of Ford’s Theatre.

It had --- almost --- all gone perfectly.

Booth, who specialized in what we would today call action hero roles, was no stranger to stunt jumping. He had done the same thing many times before as part of a performance. And he was no stranger to knives or guns. Static props did not exist in 1865, and so he knew how to handle weapons with a deftness and dexterity that allowed him to create the illusion that he was killing. It was a bare step from illusion to reality for John Wilkes Booth.

"Sic semper Tyrannis!"

And he had timed his attack perfectly; just one actor was standing downstage of him.

But he had made one mistake, and ultimately it would cost him his life. While leaping from the Presidential Box to the stage in his riding boots, one of his spurs had gotten snagged on the bunting that decorated the box that night. Booth landed awkwardly on the stage, snapping an ankle. But roaring with adrenaline, he kept moving.

Different eyewitness accounts tell different stories as to when he shouted the State Motto of Virginia --- “Sic semper tyrannis!” Thus always to tyrants! --- Some said they heard it as he jumped, some while he dropped, and others as he regained his feet on stage. Brandishing the bloody knife with which he had wounded Major Rathbone, he made the actors onstage run for their lives. Some jumped into the orchestra pit. One heard him hiss, “I have done it!”

He disappeared backstage.

Laura Keene, hearing the thin screaming from the Presidential Box, immediately left the stage and tried to reach the Presidential party. It was then she discovered that the vestibule door had been jammed. In the confusion, it took several minutes to open it.

The audience was bewildered. Some had heard the shot. Others had not. Many thought that the man leaping to the stage was part of the script. Others thought it was a bad joke on John Wilkes Booth’s part. Almost everyone agreed it was Booth. 

Laura Keene (here portrayed by a reenactor) was the first person from the theatre to reach the President. Her bloody dress and its component parts (including the button-on sleeves) became the target of souvenir hunters who tore at it later that evening

Panic, anger, rage and despair did not set in until a blood-smeared Laura Keene appeared at the window of the President’s box. “We need a surgeon!” Fortunately, there were several in the audience. One, a young Doctor Charles Leale, who had gotten his medical degree only six weeks earlier, was the first to reach the President.

The President was in distress, but at first Leale, who assumed that Lincoln had been stabbed like Rathbone, looked for a knife injury. There was none. Mary Lincoln begged him, “Doctor, please save my dear husband,” but Leale, who was uncertain what the injury was, wasn’t even sure how to begin. Then someone said the word shot, and in the darkness Leale found the small bullethole in the President’s skull. While examining Lincoln, Leale dislodged the clot that had formed in the wound, and Lincoln seemed to breathe easier. But Leale knew the wound was mortal, and so did the other doctors who soon crowded into the box.

Leale decided the wisest course was to get the President out of the cramped and airless space of the box, and drafted a group of men to carry the supine President out of Ford’s Theatre and across the street into Peterson’s Boarding House. Peterson’s was a popular and inexpensive digs for working actors. Had they all but known it, they laid President Abraham Lincoln down in a bed where John Wilkes Booth had once slept. They had to lay the President in the bed diagonally. Abraham Lincoln’s deathbed was too short for him.

 

President Lincoln's deathbed, once slept in by John Wilkes Booth, in the Petersen Boarding House

XI

Dashing down the back alley of Ford’s Theatre, John Wilkes Booth grabbed the reins of his mare from his hired groom, a young ne’er-do-well named “Peanuts” Borrows. Spurring the horse to a full gallop, he rode hell-for-leather for the southeastern boundary line of the District of Columbia. He reached a military checkpoint just ahead of the news, gave his real name to the soldier on guard, scribbled him an autograph, and disappeared into the vast light of a moon just past full.

XII

As the lights came up in Ford’s Theatre people began to grasp the horror. 

The Petersen Boarding House, where President Lincoln died. The house is now part of the Ford's Theatre N.H.S.

Laura Keene was drenched in blood. Clara Harris was drenched in blood. Mary Lincoln was drenched in blood. Henry Rathbone was still bleeding copiously, and would until one of the doctors attending the President had the presence of mind to ask if anyone else was hurt.

The enraged patrons of the theatre decided to burn the building as if it was somehow guilty of the wounding of the President. The managers contacted the police who stopped the crowd from burning the place, but it was ransacked.

It was not until the police sent a messenger to the White House that anyone there knew the President had been injured. 

Rumors began to fly through the carnival streets. At first, the President’s wound was described as being in the hand and Henry Rathbone was reported dead. Eventually, several varieties of rumors reached Edwin Stanton. But the stories were so mixed up that he could make nothing of them. It was not until a messenger came from the Seward house that Stanton left his own residence.

Stanton’s first visit was to Seward, and what he saw there horrified him. It also brought the reality of an attack on the President down on his head. Rushing to Ford’s Theatre he was told the President had been taken to Peterson’s across the street. 

When Stanton, Lincoln’s “thunderous God of War” saw Lincoln lying helpless he did something no one expected. He fell to his knees, sobbing, and wept like a child while holding the President’s hand.

The two men had not always been friends. Years before, when they co-counseled a legal case, Stanton had called Lincoln a “long-armed ape.” And while seeking the Presidential nomination for himself in 1860 he had referred to Lincoln as a “giraffe.” Close association with Lincoln had made Stanton a changed man, however, and Stanton had come to love Lincoln with a fierce, protective passion. Although he did not always agree with Lincoln’s actions, he shared Lincoln’s vision for America. And now, he was being told, all that was dying.

Mastering himself eventually, he brusquely ordered someone to remove Mary Lincoln from the room --- “Get that damned woman out of here!” --- mostly because, as he later ruefully would admit, he was afraid he would dissolve in sobs again when she did. Robert Lincoln stayed with his father.

Edwin Stanton swung into action:

First, he ordered all the celebratory gaslights banked and the bars and restaurants closed immediately. The streets were to be cleared.

Second, he ordered all the forts encircling Washington to be fully manned --- in case this was some last-minute Confederate assault he intended to crush it. He ordered three soldiers to be stationed on every block of Washington D.C..

Third, he ordered special details to guard all Congressmen, Supreme Court Justices, Cabinet Members, and the White House.

Fourth, Tad Lincoln was to be found and taken home without delay.

Fifth, Vice-President Andrew Johnson was not to be allowed out of anyone’s sight even to go to the privy.

Sixth, close all the newspapers and suspend the telegraph until further notice.

Seventh, send word to Grant and Sherman to be ready for an attack.

Eighth, militarize the D.C. Police and look for “Mr. Payne.”

And Ninth --- find John Wilkes Booth.

Before midnight, the raucous, joyous capital was a mourning ghost town. 

XIII

It was not long before Edwin Stanton’s dragnet snared its first real catch. Stanton had earlier ordered the arrest of any suspicious-looking characters just on grounds of being suspicious. The jails had quickly filled with bums, whores, and drunken, confused, revelers.

The mass roundup had begun in the vicinities of Ford’s Theatre, Seward’s residence, the Kirkwood Hotel (where Andrew Johnson was under heavy guard) and near the White House. 

 

At the Kirkwood it was only after the troops arrived, questioning everyone intensely, that the night clerk recalled “a dirty-looking German” hanging around the hotel the last few days. Being German and being dirty-looking apparently sufficed for probable cause on that terrible night. When the man’s room was searched, knives and guns were found. Even more damning, a Canadian bankbook belonging to John Wilkes Booth was turned up.

Starting at the Kirkwood’s own bar, the trackers followed the scent of the man. It was easy to find, and it smelled like whiskey. Everywhere they went they discovered that the fellow had been asking for news not of President Lincoln but of Andrew Johnson.

George Atzerodt was finally found pie-eyed and babbling in the back of a bar serving penny rotgut. Dragged off to the Old Capitol Prison and subjected to what we call today “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Atzerodt spilled his guts in more than one way. He admitted knowing John Wilkes Booth, admitted that there was a plan afoot to disrupt the U.S. Government, admitted that he was tasked to kill Vice-President Johnson but that he’d chickened out, and named even more names. One of the names brought Edwin Stanton to his feet when he heard it, and that name was John Surratt. 

For the first time there was evidence that the shooting of the President and the attack on Seward was not just some hydra-headed crackbrained scheme carried out by a pack of self-appointed Rebel avengers; for John Surratt was the name of a known Confederate agent, a man Stanton had had under surveillance for many months, and what is more, Stanton knew where he might be found --- either Surrattsville, Maryland or the Surratt Boarding House right in Washington. And Stanton did guess (correctly as it transpired) that where goeth John Surratt there goeth John Wilkes Booth as well.