April 27, 1865---The SULTANA disaster

APRIL 27, 1865:       

“We are going all to pieces.” --- Jefferson Davis

I

Jefferson Davis and his entourage enter South Carolina, where they are greeted as conquering heroes. Southern belles even strew flowers in the Confederate President’s path. The response of these ardent Confederates convinces Davis that the right thing to do is to carry on the war. In what one observer calls “curbside government” Davis and his Cabinet hold meetings in taverns, in woodlots, and along the swales of country roads. This isolated area of the Confederacy is unbattered by war, the people have not heard of Lee’s surrender, the news of Lincoln’s death is met by cheers, and Davis tells them, smilingly, to hold fast.  

Stoneman’s cavalry in Asheville is retasked to capture Jefferson Davis. Stanton orders that the Confederate President be given “a noose and a halter”. Stoneman’s men, who have just raided western North Carolina nonstop for a month are angry at Davis for denying them R & R, and are enraged over the death of President Lincoln. Each man is also spurred on by the thought of the $100,000.00 reward for the Rebel President’s person. 

Davis seems to have no idea he is a wanted man with a price on his head. He is likewise strangely blithe about the fact that the Federal Government blames him for Lincoln’s death. Even though he has been given all this information, he dismisses it.  Even after a local Minister chastises him for heading a nation in which such a terrible thing could happen Davis seems nonplussed. “You’d think that man meant to blame me.” 

His Cabinet is thunderstruck at Davis’ seeming obtuseness. One by one they begin to leave the Presidential caravan. 

His strange idyll lasts all day until a courier reaches him late at night with word of Johnston’s surrender. Calling it, “a disgusting betrayal” he uncharacteristically rages for hours. Afterward, he writes Varina a letter:  “We are going all to pieces.”

II

The sidewheeler S.S. SULTANA, plying the Mississippi River northbound from New Orleans to St. Louis, explodes spectacularly just north of Memphis, Tennessee. She is carrying 2,427 passengers when she goes, almost ten times her usual full capacity, and mostly recently released Union Prisoners of War. 

Over 1800 people die, and only 500 or so survive making the SULTANA disaster a greater loss of life than the TITANIC, 47 years in the future (1517 lost, 705 survivors). The official reason for the SULTANA’s loss is ascribed to overpressuring the boilers in order to allow the dangerously overloaded ship to fight the strong Spring flood of the Mississippi. However, in 1888, Robert Louden, a former Confederate spy, made a deathbed confession that he had placed several coal torpedoes in SULTANA’s bunkers during her stop at Memphis. Coal torpedoes were hollowed-out blobs of iron, painted black, and filled with explosives. One could certainly have sunk the ship. Although the official reason for the SULTANA’s loss remains boiler failure, Louden’s story casts light on the desperation of hard-core Confederates who were still fighting the war as April turned to May.

 

III

The Lincoln Funeral Train arrived at Buffalo, New York, at 7:00 A.M. The trip from Albany had taken a full fifteen hours because in places crowds blocked the tracks forcing the train to slow so that they could kneel and pray for the fallen President. 25,000 people waited at Utica’s depot in pouring rain just to see the train pass by. In Syracuse, thirty-five thousand citizens stood saluting as the train passed through. Former President Millard Fillmore, whose house had been stained with India Ink for not displaying black crepe, boarded the train in Batavia and traveled to Buffalo for the next funeral.

The Buffalo funeral held on April 27, 1865 was the second one the city staged. The city had held a funeral in absentia for Lincoln on April 19^th, the day of his Washington funeral.  

After the ornate service, Lincoln's casket was placed in St. James Hall, tilted at an angle so people could better view his face. Nearly 100,000 mourners, including future President Grover Cleveland, then an unknown young man, filed past the coffin until 8:00 P.M. when the doors were closed.  The train departed near midnight for Cleveland, Ohio.

IV

Lewis Powell, the would-be assassin of William H. Seward, shackled and hooded in the brig aboard the U.S.S. SAUGUS, attempts to commit suicide (or perhaps simply goes a little crazy) when he slams his head repeatedly into a bulkhead. To forestall any such future attempts, Powell is forced to wear a special padded hood that is even more claustrophobic and suffocating than the plain black silk hood he has been wearing. Powell cries when it is slipped over his head. 

Living conditions for the conspirators were terrible. Locked in hot, airless tiny cells ‘tween decks on the SAUGUS and the U.S.S. MONTAUK, they were shackled and hooded 24 hours a day. Meals were of bread and coffee, served four times a day, randomly. They were not allowed on deck, nor were they allowed to bathe or change their clothes. In total darkness, and essentially unable to move, they were forced to soil themselves. Powell, for one, began to show lapses of memory so severe that he was questioned for four hours by Federal authorities and a doctor in order to test his sanity. During this lengthy interrogation he further implicated the Confederate Government in the assassination plot.  “I am dead, and I am going to die,” Powell told his captors enigmatically.  

The conspirators had rare visitors --- their jailors, various interrogators, and Alexander Gardner, who took the pictures of them seen in these daily entries.  Lawyers were not permitted. Nor were spiritual counselors. Edwin Stanton had determined to break them all. 

Only Dr. Samuel Mudd and Mary Surratt, incarcerated in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, were not subjected to these dehumanizing conditions.

V

In North Carolina, the Army of Tennessee begins to dissolve. United States Military Railroad trains begin chugging away from Greensboro loaded with paroled Confederates happy to go home. As the trains make their various stops, word of the surrenders of Lee and Johnston begin to spread through the south (or are confirmed) along with news of Lincoln’s death. In eastern Kentucky, a small isolated force of 1,500 in and around Salyersville begins negotiating with the local Union commander regarding surrender terms. This negotiation takes three days. At Salyersville, the delay concerns the taking of the Oath of Allegiance to the United States (outnumbered, the Confederates eventually concede this point); it is a fairly typical surrender but for its length. In other places, delays are occasioned by the terms of parole --- is a given man a soldier free to go or a bushwhacker subject to arrest? In other places surrendering units demand to keep their combat flags. But in most locales, Lee and Grant’s “Gentleman’s Agreement” rules the day. Slowly, the Blood-Stained Banner and the Cross-and-Stars begin to fade into history.  

April 26, 1865--- "Useless . . . useless . . . "

APRIL 26, 1865:       

“Useless . . . Useless . . .” --- John Wilkes Booth
 

I

 

John Wilkes Booth was the hero of his own production. He was puzzled why no one else saw him as a hero. He was particularly disturbed that since he had crossed into the Confederacy he had been shunted from place to place --- Mrs. Quisenberry had refused to take him in, then Dr. Stewart, then the Peyton sisters. His one refuge had been the Nigger cabin of the Lucases, and he’d had to fight to get it. Now he was holed up in a drafty tobacco barn after having been evicted from the Garrett farmhouse. 

 

His leg was driving him crazy with pain. He’d probably be lame for the rest of his life, no thanks to Dr. Stewart, he thought angrily. And Herold had turned out to be a liability, a man who drank too much, talked too freely, and complained constantly. He thought about shooting Herold but for the moment he needed him to get around.   

Days of being on the run had acclimatized Booth to waking up on a hair trigger. So when he heard raised voices in the night at the Garrett farmhouse he was instantly alert.  It was 2:00 A.M.  

Several hundred yards away, the Garretts were entertaining some unwanted night callers.

***

“Open this door or we shall break it down!” bellowed Byron Baker, a Federal detective attached to the 16^th New York Cavalry.

“What do you want?” Richard Garrett said, opening his front door a crack.

For an answer, several troopers shoved the door hard, sending Garrett flying. In a moment, Garrett found himself in a heap on his own kitchen floor with a Navy revolver at his temple. “Now answer this man’s questions,” hissed the trooper holding the gun, “or I will decorate this house with your brains.”

“This man” --- Baker indicated the roughed-up Willie Jett --- “says he led two fugitives here. One of them is a lame man. His name is John Wilkes Booth. And he is the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. Where is he?”

Garrett stalled.  “They were here, but they left. Earlier today.”

“Where did they go?” Baker demanded.

“Into the woods.”

“A lame man in the woods? How?”

“He has a crutch.”

“A crutch, eh?” Boyd looked hard at Garrett (as a matter of fact, Booth did have a crutch, made for him by Dr. Mudd). “I think you’re a liar.” He turned to the trooper holding Garret down at gunpoint. “Bring this man outside.”

Garrett was dragged to his porch.

Baker directed a cavalryman to throw a rope over a sturdy tree limb. “Now, Ma’am,” he told the terrified Mrs. Garrett. “I am going to stretch your husband’s neck until he tells me what I want to know. Then, after he talks, I am going to leave him dangling. Right in front of you.” Mrs. Garrett started to cry.

“Make a noose!” Baker roared. A soldier started on the ropework.  

Jack Garrett, who had come running at the sound of the ruckus, interrupted. “Father, they have a whole Regiment here. I’m going to tell them the truth. Please don’t hurt my father, sir. The men you are looking for are in the tobacco barn, and they are armed.”  He explained that they were unwelcome guests.

“Keep an eye on these people,” Baker snapped at two troopers. “Men, bring your guns.”

***

Tobacco barns are built for curing tobacco. In order to do so, the tobacco needs to be exposed to the air. The walls of a tobacco barn are typically slatted, not solid, and it was through these slats that Booth and Herold could see the approaching Federal troops. 

“Keep quiet!” Booth ordered Herold at knifepoint. “Quiet and they’ll go away!”  He pulled out a pistol.

Jack Garrett pushed the barn door open. “Gentlemen, the Federal cavalry is here. I suggest you give yourselves up.”

Herold rose as if to go, but Booth called out from a shadow that he had done nothing wrong and would not surrender.

Baker entered the barn carrying a candle lantern.  “You will surrender, or I will burn this building down on top of your heads,” he said, shaking the candle lantern for emphasis. “You have ten minutes to make up your minds.”

“I want a fair fight,” Booth said irrationally. “Let me come outside and we can shoot it out.”

That stopped everyone in their tracks for a moment. Then Baker said, “This is no game. Give it up, or I will burn this barn.”

“You are not being fair,” Booth complained.

Baker dropped the candle lantern. The dry hay on the floor began to burn quickly, and the flames licked at the wall and spread with amazing speed. In just a few moments the barn was blazing. 

Herold ran toward the door crying out that he was giving up, that he was unarmed, that he had killed no one, and that he didn’t want to burn to death. “Let me out!” he screamed.

Behind him, Booth called him a “damned coward,” and raised his Spencer carbine. Whether he intended to shoot Herold in the back or shoot his way out, or go out in a blaze of glory no one knows.  Seeing the raised gun, Sergeant Boston Corbett fired at Booth with a .44 revolver, striking him in the right side of his neck. Booth went down like a poleaxed steer. 

Several of the troopers dashed into the flaming barn to grab the prostrate Booth. He managed to say dramatically, “Tell my mother I died for my country.”

 

But Booth didn’t die. He lingered pathetically, paralyzed from the neck down. The men carried him to the Garrett’s front porch where the noosed rope lay, forgotten. After an hour of struggling to breathe, he asked Baker to kill him. “Oh, no,” Baker answered. “We want you to get well.”

“Then we’ll kill you,” a trooper added.     

A doctor was called, who pronounced Booth’s wound mortal. It was only a matter of time, but how much time? 

It turned out to be hours. Sometime after dawn (was it 7:22 A.M.?) Booth finally asked one of the soldiers to raise his hands up so he could see them. He could barely speak, but managed to rasp, “Useless . . . useless . . .” before he fell silent for the last time; and soon after, John Wilkes Booth, the man who murdered Abraham Lincoln, breathed his last.  It was, by chance, his twenty-seventh birthday.

II

John Wilkes Booth followed his victim into the Great Beyond eleven days after Lincoln’s death. His was the second violent death to come to an occupant of the Presidential Box, but not the last.

Major Henry Rathbone, Booth’s slashing victim, and Miss Clara Harris finally did wed in 1867. It was not a happy marriage, though it produced three children. Rathbone was tormented by his inability to save President Lincoln’s life that night, and suffered from chronic depression and nervous exhaustion all his life --- what we would today call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). His condition was not helped by the public opprobrium he faced as “the man who let Lincoln die.”  His military career was stalled, and he was never promoted beyond Major. Eventually he was appointed Consul to a small German state, and the family relocated overseas.

Clara too suffered from PTSD, and became emotionally volatile and difficult. Henry was convinced she was having sexual affairs, though the evidence of any adultery is unclear. On December 23, 1883, Henry Rathbone shot and stabbed Clara to death, and then murdered their children. He attempted suicide by stabbing himself in the abdomen seven times, but survived. Committed to the Hildesheim Institute For The Criminally Insane, he died there in 1911.   

Mary Lincoln, whose mental state was always in question, became a hermit after Lincoln’s death, living in darkened rooms with the shades drawn. Tad Lincoln died young, at age 18, in 1871, and Mary deteriorated even further. There were several suicide attempts. In 1875, she became hysterical, believing for no reason that her last son, Robert Todd Lincoln, was dying. Robert had her committed to Bellevue (Illinois) Asylum; although she managed her release in 1876, Robert then had himself appointed her Conservator. The two never spoke again.  He did allow her to move to France, where she lived on a small pension awarded her by Congress (she had lobbied for a Survivor’s Pension as the widow of the slain Commander-in-Chief during wartime). She returned to Springfield in 1880, and died, probably of a cerebral hemorrhage, in 1882, at age 63.   

Although Robert Todd Lincoln had no love for the law, he prospered in it. He also prospered in politics, becoming the de facto leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party.  He served as Secretary of War (Edwin Stanton’s old job) from 1881 to 1885, and was briefly Ambassador to the United Kingdom. He was often opposed to the Progressive policies of President Theodore Roosevelt and his own father’s former private secretary, now Secretary of State, John Hay.

Robert Todd Lincoln, who was at his father’s bedside when President Lincoln died, was present for two other Presidential assassinations. He was standing next to President James A. Garfield in 1881, when Garfield was shot by Charles Giteau; and he was in the group of men traveling with President William McKinley, when McKinlety was shot by Leon Czgolsz. After McKinley’s shooting, Robert Lincoln refused to attend any more Presidential appearances. “Give him my regrets,” he would say, “but I’m sure he will understand.”

Robert Todd Lincoln died in 1926. 

III

Stoneman’s Great Raid ends with the sacking of Asheville, North Carolina. 

  

IV

Abraham Lincoln’s Funeral Train arrived in Albany, New York at around 11:00 P.M. for the eighth of his funerals (including the public, private, and departure ones in Washington D.C.). The President’s body was placed in the New York State Capitol Building.  

Public viewing of the remains began at 1:15 a.m. on April 26th. Mourners passed the open coffin at a rate of about one per second for twelve full hours. The line of mourners who did not manage to get inside the Capitol was one mile long when the doors closed.

The viewing was followed by the funeral procession, which included all of New York State’s leading politicians. During the procession, the news spread that John Wilkes Booth had been killed, grimly raising the spirits of the participants.

The Funeral Train departed for Buffalo at 4:00 P.M.

V

The list of accused Lincoln conspirators grew significantly in the eleven days following the President’s death:

1.      John Wilkes Booth, now deceased.

2.    David Herold, who was captured with Booth.

3.    Lewis Powell, the attempted murderer of the Sewards.

4.    Edmund Spangler, a Ford’s Theatre employee, accused of aiding in Booth’s escape. 

5.     George Atzerodt, who declined to kill Andrew Johnson on the night of April 14^th.  

6.    Samuel Arnold, a friend of Booth’s, who had received “suspicious” correspondence from the actor, and was unlucky enough to know all the other conspirators. 

7.     Michael O’Laughlen, recruited during Booth’s attempt to kidnap the President in March, and who may have been tasked with killing Edwin Stanton but failed.

8.    Dr. Samuel Mudd, who had set Booth’s leg.

9.    Mary Surratt, who owned the Washington boardinghouse and the Maryland tavern where the conspirators frequently met.

10.  John Surratt, whereabouts unknown, the son of Mary Surratt, and a known Confederate agent.    

11.  Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America. 

Some of the named conspirators were indicted for being part of Booth’s earlier kidnapping plot, and protested their innocence of having conspired to kill President Lincoln.

Mudd, for one, insisted that he had done nothing more than exercise the Hippocratic Oath.

Spangler had been arrested on the word of a witness who testified that he had heard Spangler say, “Let him go” as Booth ran out the back door of Ford’s Theatre.

Samuel Arnold, who admitted he moved in the same circles as Booth, claimed that he was just the unlucky recipient of odd, indecipherable notes from the killer.

Herold, Atzerodt, and O’Laughlen all claimed they had hurt nobody.

Mary Surratt insisted she had had no part in any plot and was under arrest for the supposed crimes of her absent son, who was innocent anyway.

Jefferson Davis, not in custody, had been implicated in the assassination upon the furious insistence of Edwin M. Stanton, who had placed a price (as Varina Davis had feared he would) of $100,000.

Rewards were also posted for several Confederate agents, including Jacob C. Thompson, the Confederate spymaster in Montreal.   

On this day, Stanton orders that the conspirators in custody, each of whom is already in solitary confinement, be fitted with black hoods to obscure any light, and that they are to wear them at all times, even while sleeping. Their hands are manacled with a device used in insane asylums, allowing no use of their hands. They cannot even feed themselves. Kept in tiny cells in the bowels of the ironclads U.S.S. MONTAUK and U.S.S. SAUGUS, there is not even room to lie down to sleep. They are forced to sit in their own excrement in total blackness for days on end.

VI

Joseph E. Johnston, once the Senior Headquarters General of the United States of America, and now the Senior General of the Confederate States of America, receives word at dawn that General Braxton Bragg C.S.A. has laid down his arms upon his own volition, and surrendered his Command to U.S. authorities.

If Johnston had any lingering doubts about what he was about to do they fled at this news.

At midmorning, with only five hours left to go before the cease-fire expires Joseph E. Johnston met with William Tecumseh Sherman at the Bennett Place for the third time. Even as the two men met, Philip Sheridan was coming toward Greensboro with cavalry, and leading a fully-manned infantry Corps. The clock was ticking loudly.

The two men met alone but for the company of General John Schofield U.S.A., who made was to ultimately make suggestions as to some supplemental surrender terms in the final Agreement that would be reached this day, and penned the document. No one transcribed Johnston and Sherman’s conversation. But it can be imagined:

“General, I want to thank you for seeing me again.”

“Of course, General.”

The two men undoubtedly shook hands. Johnston’s palm may have been sweating slightly as he said, “I am disappointed that your Government saw fit to reject the terms of the Eighteenth --- ”

“I have no authority, it seems, to treat with political matters,” Sherman said with a growl in his voice.

“That seems so. However, let the civil authorities sort that out. I see no point in more effusions of blood --- ” Johnston said.

“On that we can agree,” Sherman answered quickly.

“--- such bloodlettings will have no purpose. Given the present conditions under which the Confederate States of America exist, I believe it is the Government’s only remaining task to secure a just peace.”

“On that too we can agree,” Sherman said, relief entering his voice.

“I will be forthright. My Government has ordered me to continue fighting. But to do so will be to spread ruin throughout the South. Fighting is impracticable. It would be the greatest of crimes for us to continue the war.” Johnston took a breath. “When I attempted to present these objections to my Government I discovered that they have decamped, to South Carolina I would presume. Therefore, I am no longer in contact with my Government, just as General Lee was not at Appomattox, and I am taking it upon my own authority, just as General Lee did, to proffer the surrender of the Army of Tennessee,” Johnston explained.

“The terms will be those that were agreed to at Appomattox?” Sherman confirmed.

“Yes. However, there is one complicating factor, General Sherman.”

“And that is?”

“I am also overall Commander of the Military Department of the South, and I am offering to surrender all troops within my Department.”

“And that would be --- ?”

“All troops within North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, excepting those in independent Commands, and those with whom I cannot communicate.”

Sherman was shocked into silence for a long moment. “How many men would you assume to be under your direct command?”

“One hundred thousand.”

Sherman was staggered, but he had a task to complete. “And the independent Commands?”

“I will contact Generals Hampton and Forrest. I cannot guarantee their agreeance. Also, there are isolated commands and units, and I am unsure how many have turned to marauding and bushwhacking. More than I would like, I’m sure.”

“Once the fighting ends it will be the responsibility of the civil authorities to address the question of bushwhackers,” Sherman said positively. “At that point they will become common criminals.”

The two Generals sat down over a copy of the Appomattox terms. Most were quickly agreed upon, but it was decided to forego any ceremonial stacking of arms, though the heavy ordnance was to be turned over to the nearest Federal authorities. The men would collect their paroles from these same authorities. Given that the Agreement would cover all the South, in all its local conditions, Sherman decided to allow the men to keep their rifles.

“President Lincoln himself said at Hampton Roads that the rifles might be needed to shoot crows. General Grant and Admiral Porter were present when that was said, and I am certain they will support me in this,” Sherman said.  It was also a slap at Stanton.

“If I might make a suggestion, General Sherman?”

“Yes, General Schofield?”

“Might I recommend that transportation home be provided via the U.S.M.R.R. to any man that wants it? I know that there have been complaints about Lee’s men just wandering the countryside trying to get home. And this is a much larger surrender, sir.”

“An excellent idea. And open the Commissary to the paroled men. They may  take home as much food as they can carry. We’ve done much damage to the South, and who knows if these men will be able to put in a crop this year?  We don’t want a famine. Give them wagons if they are traveling in groups. Give them farming implements. Each man is to have ten days’ rations for himself at a minimum.” 

“That is extremely generous of you, General Sherman,” Johnston said with great relief.

“I want to relieve want, General, and to encourage the inhabitants, North and South, to renew their peaceful pursuits and to restore the relations of friendship among our fellow citizens and countrymen.” Sherman explained, writing it all out as what became known as Special Field Orders Number 65.  

It was the largest single surrender of the Civil War, encompassing over 89,000 soldiers from the North Carolina / Virginia border to the Florida Keys and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi.

Unlike Appomattox, there were no grand paintings made, no iconic swords displayed. There were just two men quietly talking at a rickety wooden table in a nondescript cabin.

But now it was almost all over. Johnston shook hands gravely with Sherman. He was to write a letter two days later to the man who became his lifelong friend:

“The enlarged patriotism exhibited in your orders reconciles me to what I have previously regarded as the misfortune of my life, that of having to encounter you in the field.”