LEGEND HAS IT THAT JOHN WILKES BOOTH WAS HIDING OUTside in the shadows near the front door of Ford’s as the presidential carriage rocked down the uneven dirt street and slowed to a stop, but no one really knows where he was at that precise moment. On April 29, 1865, Clara Harris wrote in a letter, “They say we were watched by the assassins; ay, as we alighted from the carriage … and when I think of that fiend barring himself in with us, my blood runs cold.” Wherever Booth was it is almost certain that somehow he verified with his own eyes that the Lincolns were actually inside the theatre. And he probably wondered at the identity of Lincoln’s guests and gauged whether Major Rathbone looked like the type who could pose a threat to his plans. It didn’t matter, really; no one was going to stop him from going through with it.
Next door at Peter Taltavul’s bar, the Star Saloon, it was a night like any other when the lights were on at Ford’s. Some playgoers downed a quick one before the show; others would come in during intermission to fortify themselves.
It was now about 9:00 P.M. Time for Booth to go inside the theatre for the first time since the Lincolns had arrived. Although the actor, like the Lincolns, entered Ford’s after Our American Cousin started, he was still on schedule. The play was like a clock, every word spoken was another tick of the second hand. After hearing just one snippet of dialogue, Booth would know, to the minute, how much time had elapsed from curtain raising, and how much time remained in the performance. He knew that he had at least another hour. He left Ford’s
In a little while, he returned to his alley stable, where he and Spangler had left the bay mare. Booth unlocked the door, threw his shawl over the horse’s back, and saddled her. He led his rented horse down Baptist Alley by the reins, up to the back door of Ford’s. He would have tied the animal to a hitching post behind the theatre, but he remembered the stable man’s warning that this horse did not like to be tied. She would pull at the post to break free. And anyway, what if he left the horse unattended and when he came back later discovered that someone had stolen her? Better to have someone hold the reins until he returned. He called through the open back door: “Ned. Ned Spangler!” There was no reply.
Inside Ford’s, employee John Debonay tracked down Ned: “Booth is calling you.” Spangler stepped into the alley.
“Hold this mare for ten or fifteen minutes,” Booth instructed him.
“I have not time,” Ned replied. The play was going on. He could not neglect his backstage duties and waste time holding a horse. He was needed at his post in the wings to shift scenery. He offered to summon another employee, John Burroughs, nicknamed “John Peanut” by his fellow staff members after the snack he sold to patrons.
Spangler sent for John Peanut. Booth gave Ned the reins, cautioning him that this horse would not stand tying and that she had to be held. Booth went into the theatre. When John Peanut came out he demurred, saying he was needed at the front of the theatre to make sure that people didn’t sneak in without paying. After a minute or two of bickering, he gave in and accepted the reins from Spangler. Ned went back to work. Mary Jane Anderson, a black woman who lived in an alley house behind the theatre, watched Booth lead his horse up the alley, walk past her front door, and call Ned Spangler. Once Booth went inside Ford’s, she couldn’t see the horse anymore but could hear how restless it was. “It kept up a great deal of stamping on the stones, and I said ‘I wonder what is the matter with that horse,’ it kept stamping so.” It was the second time Mrs. Anderson had seen Booth that day. In the afternoon, between 2:00 and 3:00 P.M., she watched him and a woman standing behind the theatre “for a considerable while,” having a conversation. Mary Anderson could not take her eyes off the handsome star: “I stood in my gate, and I looked right wishful at him.”
Booth, once inside Ford’s, wanted to cross behind the stage all the way to the other side of the building, where a small door led to a narrow passageway that ran west to Tenth Street and the front of the theatre. Booth asked an employee if he could walk across the stage, hidden behind the scenery. That was impossible, he was told. The “dairy scene,” a deep scene that required the full stage, was on, and there was no room to hide from the audience by creeping along behind the scenery. Instead, Booth would have to cross under the stage through a passageway and emerge on the other side.
Booth lifted the trapdoor and dropped below into darkness. Walking along the hard-packed dirt floor, he could hear the wooden planks of the stage creaking overhead, and the distant, muffled voices of the actors and laughter from the audience. He ascended the stairs at the end of the passageway, nudged open the trapdoor, and entered the passageway that ran lengthwise between Ford’s and the Star Saloon next door. He walked the length of the building and emerged on Tenth. Anyone who saw him now would assume he had come down Tenth on foot to take in the play. No one in the theatre, save a few employees, knew he had a horse waiting out back. There was time for one last drink.
Booth walked into the Star Saloon at around 10:00 P.M. The cramped, narrow, dimly lit establishment catered to the actors, stagehands, and playgoers who frequented Ford’s Theatre. Booth was alone. A regular, he nodded to owner Peter Taltavul and called for his pleasure: whiskey. The bartender poured him a glass and set the bottle on the counter within Booth’s reach. Water, too, please, Booth reminded him: Taltavul had neglected to serve the customary companion beverage. Booth’s pale, delicate fingers squeezed the glass, raised it to his lips, and he downed the drink the way a more temperate, thirsty man might swallow the glass of water. Booth savored the warming spirits. It might be a while before he could enjoy another one. Any customers who recognized the handsomest, best-dressed man in Washington kept it to themselves and did not disturb the famous actor. Booth slapped a few coins on the bar and left without saying a word. He exited onto Tenth Street, turned to his right, walked a few paces, and saw the president’s carriage still parked on the near side of Tenth several yards beyond the main door, the coachman and horse waiting to take Lincoln back home. Burke had gone for a drink after he dropped off the Lincolns and their guests, and then returned to the coach.
In the alley behind Ford’s, Mary Anderson watched John Peanut walking Booth’s impatient horse back and forth.
This was it. Booth tarried in the lobby, soaking in the atmosphere and listening to the dialogue. He was still on schedule. No need to rush. Walking to the lobby’s north end, he ascended the curving staircase to the dress circle, following the same path the Lincolns took to their box. Booth paused at the head of the stairs to take advantage of the best view of the president’s box, a vista that caused him to look slightly down, and diagonally across the width and length of the house. He walked slowly along the west wall. James Ferguson, still hoping to witness General Grant’s arrival, looked up from his first-floor seat and saw, on the other side of the theatre, another man—not Grant—approaching the box. He recognized John Wilkes Booth: “Somewhere near ten o’clock … I saw Booth pass along near the box, and then stop, and lean against the wall. He stood there a moment.”
Booth could see the door that opened to the vestibule that led directly into the president’s box. What he saw—or more accurately what he did not see—surprised him. The door was unguarded. He expected to find an officer, a soldier, or at least a civilian policeman seated there. Instead, seated near but not blocking the door was Lincoln’s valet, Charles Forbes, who had ridden to Ford’s atop the coach beside the driver. Booth paused to speak to Forbes, showing him some kind of card or piece of paper. To this day no one knows what words they exchanged, or what document Booth displayed. Was it a letter? Or merely the actor’s calling card? A card with Booth’s name on it would open almost any door in Washington. Forbes did not attempt to stop him. Booth proceeded to the door, realizing that, unless a hidden guard was perched inside the small vestibule, no one was going to stop him. He seized the knob, turned it, and pushed open the door. James Ferguson looked up again and watched Booth enter the box: “I looked back and saw him step down one step, put his hands to the door, and his knee against it, and push the door open. I did not see any more of him.” Yellow gaslight from the dress circle illuminated the dark vestibule. Booth peered inside. Empty. There was no guard. No one stood between him and the president of the United States.
Inside the box, the Lincolns were enjoying themselves, not because of the play but simply from being together, out of the White House, during their happiest week in Washington. At one point the president stood up to put on his coat—the cool night air had chilled him. Back in his rocking chair, perhaps thinking of their carriage ride that afternoon, Lincoln reached out and held Mary’s hand. In mock embarrassment she chided her husband for his boldness: “What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?” Lincoln replied to the last words he would ever hear his wife speak: “She won’t think anything about it,” and he smiled affectionately at her. Booth closed the outer vestibule door behind him so quietly that the occupants of the box heard nothing. He had been prepared to cut his way in with the knife if necessary. Instead, he had strolled in unmolested, as though he had reserved the box this night, as he often had on prior occasions. Bending down, he felt along the edge of the carpet near the wall for the pine bar—part of a music stand—he had hidden there that afternoon. When no one was watching he had returned to Ford’s that day, slipped unseen into the vestibule and box, and made his preparations. Hoping that no one had discovered it and tossed it into the trash as an odd piece of leftover lumber, he ran his fingers across the carpet. It was still there. He lifted the bar, first inserting one end into the awaiting mortise he had incised in the plaster wall and concealed behind a flap of wallpaper. He lowered the other end to nearly a parallel position, until it made contact with the door. He was careful not to hammer the bar into place by pounding it with the bottoms of two clenched fists. The noise might alert the theatre party sitting just a few yards away. Instead, he grasped the bar with both hands, using his weight to apply gradual, increasing downward pressure until the fit was tight. It took only a few seconds, just as he had planned. Now no one could follow him into the vestibule and prevent him from entering the president’s box.
Booth turned to face the two paneled wood doors—one to his left and the other directly in front of him—that opened into boxes seven and eight, now combined into one box for the Lincolns.
The actor’s black pupils flared wide, adjusting to the darkness, while also fixing on the only available light in the dim, claustrophobic chamber—a faint pinpoint emanating from the peephole that somebody, probably Booth, had bored through a right-hand panel of the door to box number seven. A cylindrical beam shone through from the illuminated box on the other side of the door, but it was so weak that it failed to span the narrow vestibule and put a small spot of light on the opposite wall. Instead the ray faltered in midair, diffused into the absorbing darkness.
Booth peeked through the dot of light on the door, giving himself a partial view of the interior of the box. He saw what he was looking for—a high-backed, upholstered rocking chair, just a few feet away on the other side of the door.
The seating arrangement in the box was perfect for an assassin. Lincoln sat at the far left, his rocker wedged nearly against the wall of the box. At this angle the president’s left side faced the audience, his right the interior of the box, and, to his front, the stage below. Lincoln was close to the door through which Booth would spring. Mary Lincoln sat to the president’s right, perched on a wood, caned-bottom chair. Next to her right was Clara Harris on another chair, and at the far right was Major Rathbone on a sofa. Booth could enter the box and move on Lincoln without having to get past the major.
Onstage, it was the beginning of act 3, scene 2. There were four scenes left before the end of the play. Mrs. Mountchessington and her daughter Augusta, a pair of English gold diggers, were conniving about how to marry off the girl to Asa Trenchard, a rich American bumpkin played by the celebrated comic actor Harry Hawk.
” Yes, my child, while Mr. De Boots and Mr. Trenchard are both here, you must ask yourself seriously, as to the state of your affections. Remember, your happiness for life will depend on the choice you make.”
“What would you advise, Mamma? You know I am always advised by you.”
“Dear, obedient child. De Boots has excellent expectations, but they are only expectations after all. This American is rich, and on the whole I think a well regulated affection ought to incline to Asa Trenchard”
It was approximately 10:11 P.M. Booth plunged both hands into the deep, copious pockets of his black frock coat and withdrew his weapons. In his right hand was the .44-caliber single-shot Deringer pistol, in his left the shiny and sharp Rio Grande Camp Knife. He steadied himself. Harry Hawk entered the scene from stage left. No, not yet. Too many characters—Mrs. Mountchessington, Augusta, and Asa Trenchard—were still onstage. Booth listened keenly to the dialogue of the play for his cue, the actors’ voices rising to the president’s box and echoing through the doors and into the vestibule where he remained hidden. Booth heard Asa Trenchard confess to Mrs. Mountchessington that he is not rich.
“Not heir to the fortune, Mr. Trenchard.”
“Oh, no.”
After a few more lines, Harry Hawk would hold the stage alone and would speak a line guaranteed to produce such uproarious laughter that it would smother the sound of just about anything including, Booth hoped, the report of a pistol.
Booth’s thumb pulled back the hammer of the Deringer until he heard it cock into firing position. His hand dropped to the porcelain doorknob.
“Mr. Trenchard, you will please recollect you are addressing my daughter, and in my presence!”
“Yes, I’m offering her my heart and hand just as she wants them, with nothing in ‘em.”
“Augusta, dear, to your room.”
“Yes, Ma, the nasty beast.”
Now, Booth knew, only two actors remained onstage.
The tension was unbearable. The syllables being spoken onstage sounded no longer like words but like the last ticks of a dying clock winding down. It was 10:13 P.M.
“I am aware, Mr. Trenchard, you are not used to the manners of good society, and that, alone, will excuse the impertinence of which you have been guilty.” Mrs. Mountchessington exited in a huff.
Harry Hawk was alone onstage now.
Booth opened the door and stepped into the president’s box. Hawk began reciting the last sentence Lincoln would ever hear, a corny broadside of comic insults that delighted the audience.
“Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Wal, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal…”
Lincoln was so near. If Booth desired, he could reach out and tap him on the shoulder with the Deringer’s muzzle. No one in the box had seen or heard him enter. The Lincolns, Harris, and Rathbone all continued watching the action onstage. Booth began the performance he had rehearsed in his mind again and again since that afternoon. He stepped toward Lincoln who was stationary—not rolling back and forth on the rockers of his chair. Booth focused his eyes on the back of the president’s head. He raised his right arm to shoulder height and extended it forward, aiming the pistol at Lincoln’s head. He didn’t even really have to aim—aiming suggests a marksman’s skill—he was so close to the president now that all he had to do was point the Deringer.
The factory had not set the pistol with a hair trigger, so until Booth increased his finger pressure to a few pounds the Deringer would not fire. He squeezed harder.
“…you sockdologizing old mantrap…”
As the audience exploded in laughter, at that instant, at the last possible moment before the pistol discharged, Abraham Lincoln jerked his head away from Booth, low and to the left, as though trying to evade the shot. The black powder charge exploded and spit the bullet toward Lincoln’s head. James Ferguson saw Lincoln move just before he saw the muzzle flash illuminate the box momentarily like a miniature lightning bolt. The president’s movement and the shot were simultaneous. Had Booth missed?
If he had, the assassin was suddenly at great risk because he didn’t have the twenty to forty seconds needed to reload—and, anyway, he hadn’t even bothered to carry more gunpowder and bullets in his coat. Now he was trapped between Lincoln and Rathbone, armed with nothing but the knife. If Lincoln’s peripheral vision had alerted him to the presence of an intruder creeping stealthily toward him, or if he had caught the blur of Booth’s arm moving into firing position, the president might have ducked the shot, or at worst suffered a nonfatal grazing head, neck, or shoulder wound. If only that had happened, then Lincoln, even at fifty-six years old, would have been a formidable opponent. The idea of venerable Father Abraham fighting back against the gymnastic, leaping, and sword-fighting stage star is not as farfetched as it sounds.
It was widely held in 1865, and certainly today, that the toil of the Civil War had transformed Lincoln into a ruined old man. Lincoln’s beard, his slow, ambling gait, and his careworn face, captured so movingly in the last photographs by Alexander Gardner in February 1865 and by Henry Warren in March 1865, gave credence to the myth of Father Abraham, the ancient, Moses-like figure leading his people. But there was another Abraham Lincoln that no one in Washington had ever seen: the vigorous, muscular Rail-splitter of the West. That image was more than a brilliant slogan from the presidential campaign of 1860. Lincoln had really been a rail-splitter, and a man hardened by years of brutal physical toil. With his creased apple doll-like head sitting atop a thin, six-foot-four-inch frame, President Lincoln might have looked old and weak. The wartime demands of the presidency had taken their toll, and Lincoln had lost twenty or thirty pounds during four years in office. But beneath that ever-present baggy frock coat and ill-fitting trousers, there remained a lean and formidable physique. Too soon doctors would discover and marvel at the age difference between his face and his body.
Had Booth missed, Lincoln could have risen from his chair to confront his assassin. At that moment the president, cornered, with not only his own life in danger but also Mary’s, would almost certainly have fought back. If he did, Booth would have found himself outmatched facing not kindly Father Abraham, but the aroused fury of the Mississippi River flatboatman who fought off a gang of murderous river pirates in the dead of night, the champion wrestler who, years before, humbled the Clary’s Grove boys in New Salem in a still legendary match, or even the fifty-six-year-old president who could still pick up a long, splitting-axe by his fingertips, raise it, extend his arm out parallel with the ground, and suspend the axe in midair. Lincoln could have choked the life out of the five-foot-eight-inch, 150-pound thespian, or wrestled him over the side of the box, launching Booth on a crippling dive to the stage almost twelve feet below.
But Lincoln had not seen Booth coming. He had not moved to avoid being shot. Instead, just as Booth was about to fire, Lincoln leaned forward and to the left to look down into the audience on the main floor. James Ferguson saw it all: “The President, at the time he was shot, was sitting in this position: he was leaning his hand on the rail, and was looking down at a person in the [theatre],—not looking on the stage. He had the flag that decorated the box pulled around, and he was looking between the post and the flag.”
The pistol, a fine, expensive weapon, had functioned perfectly. The trigger freed the cocked hammer from its tension spring. The hammer snapped forward, striking the copper percussion cap resting over the hollow steel nipple mounted on the barrel. The resulting spark flashed into the chamber, igniting the load of black powder. The explosion propelled the .44-caliber ball at a muzzle velocity slow by modern standards, but fast enough. Still, Booth had almost missed. If the president had leaned forward a little more, the bullet might have whistled just over his head.
Instead it struck him in the head, on the lower left side, a little below the ear. The ball ripped through his chestnut-colored hair, cut the skin, perforated the skull, and, because of the angle of Lincoln’s head at the moment of impact, drove a diagonal tunnel through Lincoln’s brain from left to right. The wet brain matter slowed the ball’s velocity, absorbing enough of its energy to prevent it from penetrating the other side of the skull and exiting through the president’s face. The ball came to rest in Lincoln’s brain, lodged behind his right eye.
Lincoln never knew what happened to him. His head dropped forward until his chin hit his chest, and his body lost all muscular control and sagged against the richly upholstered rocking chair. He did not fall to the floor. He looked as though he was bored with the play and had fallen asleep. It happened so fast that Lincoln lost consciousness before he heard the report of the pistol, smelled the burnt gunpowder, or was enveloped by the voluminous cloud of blue-gray smoke, the signature of all black-powder weapons. The sound of the pistol, more like the hollow “poof” of fireworks than the hard cracking of a modern firearm—another characteristic of nineteenth-century black-powder weapons with low muzzle velocities—echoed and hung in the box for several seconds. Then it traveled to the ceiling and the stage below and reverberated throughout the theatre.
Nobody moved. The president, Mary Lincoln, Clara Harris, Major Rathbone, and Booth remained perfectly still, as though posed in the studio for one of Alexander Gardner’s wet-plate albumen photographs that required a motionless exposure of several seconds. Time stopped.
The pistol’s report did startle a number of people in the audience. Some thought it was part of the play; others, an unscripted surprise in honor of the president’s visit. Some people didn’t hear it at all.
Rathbone, an experienced army officer who had heard gunfire before, was the first to realize that something was amiss. He turned to his left. The smoke, now tinted red from the gaslights, and the crimson upholstery and wallpaper that combined to give the box a fiery, devilish glow, partly obscured his vision. Rathbone rose from his seat, stepping in the direction of the president. At that instant he saw a wild-eyed man, his face ghostly against his black clothes, hair, and moustache. Like a demon, Booth emerged from the black-powder haze and sprang at him. Simultaneously Rathbone lunged for Booth, grabbing him by the coat. The assassin broke free, shouting but one word, “Freedom!” and thrust his right arm up, as high as he could reach. Rathbone’s eyes were drawn up by the gesture, and he saw what Booth clenched in his fist: a big, shiny knife, its menacing blade pointed directly down at him. Booth moved too quickly for Rathbone to read the patriotic slogans acid-etched into the blade: “Land of the Free/Home of the Brave”; “Liberty/Independence.” Booth was not going to try to fend off Rathbone with a few, puny forward jabs of the knife. Instead, he sought the death blow. He was going to deliver an arcing, theatrical swing pivoting from his shoulder that would drive the blade through Rathbone’s ribs and into his heart. Booth’s arm was already in motion, and at the last moment Rathbone raised his arm to parry Booth’s strike. The major grunted in pain. His reflexive, lightning-fast defensive maneuver saved his life, but the assassin’s blade sliced through his coat sleeve and into his upper arm. Blood gushed from the long, deep wound.
Booth had no more time to waste on finishing off Rathbone. The clock in his head was still ticking down. If he was going to escape the theatre, he had to get out of the box at once. He turned to the balustrade and swung one leg over the side. By now some members of the audience had looked up. Was that a man climbing out of the president’s box, preparing to leap to the stage? As Booth positioned for his leap, Rathbone came at him again, grabbing at his coattail. Distracted, Booth got tangled in the framed portrait of George Washington hanging from the front of the box, and one of his riding spurs snagged one of the flags that just a few hours before Harry Clay Ford had cradled in his arms when he ran into Booth on the street. It was the revenge of “Old Glory,” soon went the popular myth. Still he managed to free himself and imperfectly leapt forward to the stage. Booth hit the stage unevenly but still on his feet. He knew something was wrong. He could feel it in his left leg, near the ankle, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
Booth clambered to center stage, turned to the audience, and rose erect to his full height. His splendid chest had always made him appear taller than he was. Every second was precious to his escape, but he had rehearsed this part too well to forsake it now. He knew that this was his last performance on the American stage, and for this he would be remembered for eternity. He must not blow his lines. All eyes were upon him. He stood motionless, paused momentarily for dramatic effect, and thrust his bloody dagger triumphantly into the air. The gas footlights danced on the shiny blade now speckled with red and exaggerated his wild countenance. “Sic semper tyrannis,” he thundered. It was the state motto of Virginia—“Thus always to tyrants.” Then Booth shouted, “The South is avenged.”
The great crime. A fanciful print published shortly after the assassination.
DR. CHARLES LEALE HAD WITNESSED THE LEAP: “I SAW A MAN with dark hair and bright black eyes, leap from the box to the stage below … and [he] raised his shining dagger in the air, which reflected the light as though it had been a diamond.”
Harry Hawk, the only actor onstage when Booth made the leap, could not understand what was happening. Hawk, more than anyone else in the theatre, was in the best position to hear the shot, see the smoky cloud, and observe a familiar-looking figure climb onto the balustrade. Why, if he didn’t know better, he would swear that the man who landed hard on the stage, gathered himself, and was now approaching him rapidly with an unsheathed dagger looked an awful lot like John Wilkes Booth. Hawk had known Booth for a year and wasn’t likely to make a false identification. Hawk lingered indecisively, standing directly in Booth’s escape path. When Booth was nearly upon him, Hawk fled: “[H]e was rushing towards me with a dagger and I turned and run.” As Booth moved across the stage heading for the wings, James Ferguson, sitting just a few feet away, heard him exult to himself—“I have done it!”
Booth fled into the wings off stage right, slashing his dagger wildly at anyone—actor, orchestra conductor, or employee—who got in his way. William Withers said he felt Booth’s hot breath as the assassin pushed past him and struck at him with the knife. The conductor did not try to stop him. No one in the cast did. Booth had taken all the actors backstage by surprise and rushed past them.
Then a voice cried out from the president’s box. “Stop that man!” From the time Booth shot Lincoln, wounded Rathbone, fought his way out of the box, leapt to the stage, claimed center stage, uttered his cry of vengeance, and vanished into the wings, no one in the audience had done a thing. It was just as Booth had planned. Some in the audience gasped with fright and delight—they still thought it was part of the play. Others, including the actors near the stage and in the wings, were too shocked to obstruct or pursue Booth.
“Will no one stop that man?” an anguished Rathbone again pleaded to the crowd below. Clara Harris echoed his cry.
“He has shot the President!”
LESS THAN A MILE AWAY, ON MADISON PLACE, NEAR THE WHITE House on the east side of Lafayette Park, all was quiet at the home of Secretary of State William H. Seward. Bedridden since a terrible carriage accident on April 5, Seward drifted in and out of consciousness. Nine days before, when out riding with his daughter, Frances “Fanny” Adeline Seward; his son Frederick; and a family friend, the coachman, Henry Key, dismounted to fix a stubborn door that wouldn’t stay shut. The horses bolted, running madly through the city with the unmanned reins swinging wildly in the air. The secretary of state sprang from the moving carriage to try for the reins or horses, but he caught his shoe on the way out, tore off the heel, and was spun facedown into the street. The fall almost killed him, but he survived with a concussion, his jaw broken in two places, right arm broken between the shoulder and elbow, and deep bruises too numerous to count. Fanny rushed to his crumpled body, fearing he was dead.
That night Seward’s disfigured face swelled so badly that his own children could barely recognize him, and the blood pouring through his nose almost suffocated him. Seward’s personal physician, Dr. T. S. Verdi; Dr. Basil Norris, an army medical officer; and Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes attended him and cautioned the family to keep their patient under constant watch.
On April 9, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton visited Seward three times. The diplomat liked Lincoln’s fierce, iron-willed war leader.
“God bless you Stanton—I can never tell you half …”
Stanton hushed him: “Don’t try to speak.”
Early that evening Abraham Lincoln rushed to Seward’s big brick mansion, known as the “Clubhouse” among Washington insiders. The accident worried Lincoln. Carriage accidents were not trifling affairs in wartime Washington and could prove deadly. Mary Lincoln had nearly been killed when her carriage broke down and flung her headlong into the street. She hit her head hard on the ground and was lucky to survive. The sight of Seward, alive if not well, relieved Lincoln tremendously. They were great rivals once, when in 1860 the emerging rail-splitter from the west challenged Seward, the odds-on favorite for the Republican nomination, and later, when Seward tried to usurp him early in his presidency. But they made peace, and Seward evolved into a trusted adviser and confidant. Just back from Grant’s headquarters at City Point, Virginia, the president reclined on the foot of Seward’s bed and regaled him with the news—his remarkable visit to Richmond, and how he had gone to a military hospital and shook the hands of thousands of wounded soldiers. Then the president confided the best news of all. According to Grant, Lee’s surrender was imminent. After chatting quietly with Seward for nearly an hour, Abraham Lincoln departed. They never saw each other again. Lincoln’s prophecy proved true when a little later, Secretary Stanton visited the Clubhouse so he could tell Seward the news in person. Lee had surrendered. The war was over.
Now, on the fourteenth, Fanny watched over her father and listened to the sights and sounds of the never-ending celebrations in the streets. A torchlight procession marched to the White House. A band played “Rally Round the Flag.” Fanny was a tall, slender, brown-haired girl precociously conversant in literature and politics, and, at twenty, her father’s prize. With her mother Frances often away at their Auburn, New York, homestead, Fanny grew up in a world of political receptions, dinners, and historical personages and events. An avid and talented writer with an eye for detail, her secret diary that she began at age fourteen brimmed with subtle observations and trenchant character sketches of her encounters with the political, military, and diplomatic elites.
Around 10:00 P.M. she put down her book, Legends of Charlemagne, turned down the gaslights, and, along with Sergeant George Robinson, a wounded veteran now serving as an army nurse, kept watch over her recovering father.
Outside in the shadows, Lewis Powell and David Herold were keeping the Clubhouse under surveillance. The street was quiet. They saw no guards at the front door, or anywhere on Madison Place. Two hours ago, when they’d met with Booth at the Herndon House, their leader assured them that they would find their target at home. The newspapers reported the carriage accident days ago, and the extent of Seward’s serious injuries, and noted that he was recuperating at home, bedridden. That made Seward, of all of Lincoln’s cabinet officers, Booth’s most attractive target tonight. The others might prove difficult to track, and could be anywhere—dinner parties, entertainments, or traveling. Seward, alone, helplessly anchored to his bed, was sure to be home at 10:00 this evening. The actor issued simple instructions: invade the house, locate the secretary of state’s bedroom, and kill the defenseless victim with pistol fire and, if required, the knife. This was a difficult mission even for a man like Powell, a battle-hardened and extremely strong ex-Confederate soldier. Powell had three problems. First, how could he get inside Seward’s house? He couldn’t just walk in unannounced. By 10:00 P.M. the front door would certainly be locked. He would have to ring the bell. When—if—someone answered, he could not just shoot or slash his way through the threshold. That might attract the attention of passersby or rouse the occupants from their beds to defend themselves.
Cunning deception, not brute force, was the key. Booth concocted, probably with David Herold’s help, a brilliant plan. He told Powell to impersonate a messenger delivering important medicine from Seward’s physician, Dr. Verdi. To add the final touch of verisimilitude to the ruse, Powell would actually carry a small package wrapped in butcher’s paper and tied with string. Herold, the former pharmacist’s assistant experienced in making similar deliveries, probably tutored Booth and Powell in the appearance of such packages and then wrapped an empty box to mimic an authentic delivery from Dr. Verdi.
But then what? Once inside it was Powell’s job to track down Secretary Seward in the sprawling, three-story mansion. Booth did not provide him with a floor plan. He could rule out the first floor. But Seward might lie in one of a number of upper rooms. Powell faced a third challenge: he did not know how many occupants—family members, State Department messengers, nurses, doctors, servants, maids, and guards—were on the premises. Certainly several, but perhaps up to a dozen. A more cautious man might have told Booth he was mad. But Powell, a slavishly loyal one who called his hero “captain,” agreed. Anything for his master. David Herold also complied, as long as he did not have to bloody his hands by killing somebody and could wait for Powell outside, holding their horses.
From the shadows, Powell and Herold had watched Dr. Verdi leave around 9:30 P.M. After him had come Dr. Norris, who visited briefly and departed around 10:00 P.M.—just in time, according to Booth’s preset timetable. The house was quiet now. They watched the gaslights go dim in several rooms, a signal that the occupants were settling in for the night. A short while later Powell handed his horse to Herold and strode across the street to the secretary of state’s front door. He rang the bell. Herold’s dull, hooded eyes warily scanned up and down the block as he stood watch, safeguarding their mounts.
Upstairs, on the third floor, Fanny Seward was watching over her sleeping father, and did not hear the bell. She did not know that outside a man waited to, like Macbeth, murder sleep.
Down on the first floor, William Bell, a nineteen-year-old black servant, hurried to answer the door. Late-night callers were not unusual at the Seward home. At moments of crisis State Department messengers bearing telegraph dispatches might arrive at any hour of the day or night. And ever since the carriage accident, members of the cabinet, military officers, and three different doctors called frequently. There was no reason at all why William Bell should not open that door.
Before him stood a tall, attractive, solidly built man, well dressed in fine leather boots, black pants, a straw-colored duster, and a felt-brimmed hat; he was holding a small package in his hands. The masquerade worked. Nothing about Powell’s conventional appearance raised Bell’s suspicions. Bell greeted Powell and asked politely, as Seward had trained him, how he could help the visitor. Powell explained his mission: he was a messenger with medicine from Dr. Verdi. That sounded satisfactory to Bell. Dr. Verdi had left his patient within the hour and lived only two blocks from the Sewards. Obviously, Bell reasoned, the doctor must have prescribed some medicine but did not have it with him in his well-worn doctor’s bag. When Verdi got home he probably summoned a messenger to deliver the healing product. Up to this moment Powell did nothing to call undue attention to himself. He even pronounced Dr. Verdi’s name correctly, with the proper Italian accent. Powell stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. Bell reached out to accept the delivery. No, Powell said, he could not give it to a servant. The doctor said he had to deliver it personally to the secretary of state and instruct him how to take the medicine. Bell countered that he was qualified to receive deliveries on Seward’s behalf. Powell was adamant. “I must go up.” He must see the secretary personally—those were his instructions. For five minutes, the assassin and the servant bickered about whether Powell would leave the medicine with Bell. “I must go up,” he repeated like a mantra. “I must go up.”
Powell, growing impatient, inched relentlessly toward the staircase, backing Bell up to the landing. Bell was in grave danger now. Powell’s patience was almost out, and he knew how to deal with a recalcitrant, disobedient Negro like this, just as he had in Baltimore a few months back, when, as a houseguest of the mysterious and attractive rebel Branson sisters, he struck and nearly stomped to death a black female servant who sassed him. He didn’t have a knife or pistol then. Now Powell turned away from Bell and lifted a foot to the first stair, then another to the second. Bell chattered on, but Powell kept pounding up the staircase slowly, his boots striking the stairs with dull, methodical thuds that echoed like a ticking case clock to the floors above. If Bell interfered now, he would face Powell’s knife. Luckily for him, he did not attempt to block Powell’s path. Instead, he ascended the stairs with him. The assassin warned Bell that if he didn’t allow him to deliver this medicine, he would report him to his master and get him in big trouble. Cowed, Bell, like a schoolmarm, warned Powell not to tread so heavily on the stairs. He might wake Mr. Seward.
At the top of the staircase Frederick Seward, who served his father as assistant secretary of state, confronted Bell and the stranger. Powell did not know it, but Frederick stood only a few feet from the closed door to his father’s sickroom. The stranger explained his mission again. Frederick told him that his father was asleep and that he would take delivery of the medicine for him. Again Powell refused, arguing that he must see the secretary. Incredibly, Powell, thanks to that little package he prominently displayed as a prop, had still not aroused suspicion about his true intentions. To Frederick he seemed merely like a stupid messenger, a man so dull-witted that he took instructions literally, believing that Dr. Verdi meant for him to actually place the package into the secretary of state’s hands. Soon Powell would make Frederick regret his assuming condescension.
Inside the bedroom, Fanny sensed a presence in the hall. Perhaps President Lincoln had come for another visit, she thought. Such a late-night call would not be unusual. Lincoln was famous for his nighttime walks. Perhaps he had strolled to the telegraph office at the nearby War Department for the latest news and then decided to call on the secretary. Fanny hurried to the door and opened it only a little to shield her father from the bright gaslight that would otherwise flood the bedchamber. She saw her brother and, to his right, the tall stranger in the light hat and long overcoat. She whispered, “Fred, Father is awake now.” She knew in an instant that she had done wrong. “Something in Fred’s manner led me at once to think that he did not wish me to say so, and that I had better not have opened the door.” Powell leaned forward and tried to peer into the dark room, but Fanny held the door tight to her body, and the assassin was not able to see his target. He stared at Fanny and, in a harsh and impatient tone, demanded, “Is the Secretary asleep?” Then Fanny made a terrible mistake. She glanced back into the room in the direction of her father, and replied, “Almost.” Fred Seward grabbed the door and shut it quickly.
It was too late. Innocently, Fanny had given Powell the priceless information he needed. Secretary of State William H. Seward was in that room, lying helpless in a bed against the wall, to the right of the door, defended by no one, Powell probably assumed, but a frail-looking girl. Powell did not know that Sergeant Robinson was in the bedroom too. Powell resisted the impulse to draw his knife that instant and burst through the door. With William Bell and Frederick Seward hovering close, his wit restrained his body and he calculated his next move. The pair was no match for him, but together, they could delay by precious seconds his entry to the bedroom. Trickery had taken him this far—time for one more charade.
Powell continued to argue with Frederick outside the door. Finally Fred, exasperated, gave Powell an ultimatum: surrender that medicine now, or take it back to Dr. Verdi. Powell glared at the young Seward, still refusing to yield the medicine. Finally, the persistent messenger feigned surrender in this battle of wills. He stuffed the package into his pocket, turned around, and began his descent. He did not remove his hand from the pocket. Bell, walking down ahead of Powell, turned over his shoulder and chided him again about walking so loudly. Bell continued down the stairs, his eyes looking ahead now to the front door through which, in a few moments, he would, with pleasure, conduct the illmannered stranger into the street. At the top of the stairs Frederick Seward, satisfied at turning away an annoying pest, took his eyes off Powell’s back and headed for his room. In a flash, Powell reversed course and bounded up the stairs. Before Seward could turn around, Powell already stood behind him. Seward whirled but too late: Powell was pointing a Whitney revolver at him, the muzzle inches from his face. In another moment a .36-caliber conical lead round would explode his face, and the hot black powder would, at this range, not only kill him instantly but also burn and disfigure his flesh a hideous black.
“I’m mad, I’m mad!” Lewis Powell,
Secretary of State Seward’s assassin.
Powell, staring into Seward’s eyes, squeezed the trigger. The hammer fell and struck the percussion cap. Seward had no time to move—he knew he was dead. Then he heard a metallic click. Misfire! Either the copper percussion cap malfunctioned or the faulty powder charge in the chamber did not ignite. The reason did not matter: Seward was still alive. But Powell, unlike his master Booth, had five more rounds in his revolver. He could draw the hammer back with his thumb, cock the pistol, rotate the revolver’s cylinder to bring a fresh round into firing position, and shoot again. It would take just a moment. Then Powell made the first of two miscalculations that jeopardized his mission.
Instead of trying to fire again, Powell raised the pistol high in the air and brought down a crushing blow to Seward’s head. He hit him so hard that he broke the pistol’s steel ramrod, jamming the cylinder and making it impossible to fire the weapon again. In a fury, Powell, using all his might, clubbed Seward repeatedly with the barrel of the broken Whitney. William Bell ran down the stairs and into the street, shouting, “Murder!” Watching from across the street, a skittish David Herold knew this was not part of the plan.
Fanny, ignorant of the mayhem on the other side of the door, sat down in her chair beside her father. A few minutes after her encounter with the determined stranger, she heard “the sound of blows—it seemed to me as many as half a dozen—sharp and heavy, with lighter ones between.” She thought the servants were chasing a rat. When the sounds continued, Fanny turned to Sergeant Robinson: “What can be the matter? Do go and see.” Suddenly afraid, she rose and accompanied him. While Fanny was puzzling about the sound, Lewis Powell stood on the other side of the door, beating in her brother’s brains. As soon as Robinson opened the door, Fanny saw a horrible sight—her brother’s face, wild-eyed, covered with blood. Powell moved lightning fast. He shoved Fred aside and struck Robinson in the forehead hard with the knife, stunning him with the blow. The assassin pushed past the reeling sergeant and the waiflike girl blocking his path and sprinted to the bed with his arms outstretched, clutching the knife in his right hand and the pistol in his left, brushing Fanny with it as he passed.
In near darkness, Fanny raced Powell to the bed, trying to throw her slender body between the huge assassin and her helpless father. Unable to get ahead of him, she could do no better than run beside him. The assassin reached the bed and pounced upon Seward. Fanny shouted, “Don’t kill him!” Seward awoke, tried feebly to raise himself, turned to the left, and saw Fanny. Then he looked up. He glimpsed Powell’s unforgettable rugged face, lantern jaw, and searing eyes. The assassin’s left hand pushed down hard on the secretary’s chest, pinning him to the bed. Powell’s right hand clutching the knife rose high until he exerted every ounce of strength he possessed to swing down a tremendous blow. The knife flashed past Seward’s face, cutting into the sheets and plunging into the mattress. Powell had missed. Inflamed, Powell thrust the knife above his head again and delivered another powerful blow. He missed again. In the dim light, and with Seward positioned by his doctors on the far side of the bed so that his broken arm could hang free over the side, Powell’s aim was off. His style of attack was wrong. The theatrical arcing swing of the knife that Booth employed against Major Rathbone had no place in an almost pitch-black room. The darkness made it too hard to aim the pivoting strike. Moreover, Powell, unlike Booth—renowned for his expertise with swords and daggers—was not a knife fighter. As a Confederate soldier, his primary tools were firearms—the musket and the pistol—not edged weapons. Powell needed to get in close and slice across Seward’s throat, or stab through an eye socket into the brain, or sink the blade into the soft stomach tissue.
Determined not to miss again, Powell adjusted himself and delivered a third mighty blow aimed at Seward’s throat. The agonized groan that rose from the bed told Powell he had finally baptized his knife. The blade slashed open Seward’s cheek so viciously that the skin hung from a flap, exposing his teeth and fractured jawbone. His cheek resembled a fish gill. Seward choked on the warm, metallic tasting syrup that spurted from his mouth and poured down his throat. The bedsheets, stained with blood and scarred by the blade, and preserved to this day as holy relics at Seward’s home in Auburn, New York, survive as mute testimony to the power of Powell’s striking arm.
Across the room Sergeant Robinson regained his senses and made a split-second decision: he would fight to the death before he allowed the assassin to murder the secretary of state and Miss Fanny. He rushed Powell. In an instant the two battle-hardened Civil War veterans grappled in a death struggle. Powell’s strength surprised Robinson—he could barely hold on to him as Powell went for the bed again. Fanny, temporarily dazed, thought for a moment that it was all a “fearful dream.” Then she knew. She screamed, not once, but in a ceaseless, howling, and terrifying wail that woke her brother Augustus, or “Gus,” who was asleep in a room nearby. Fanny then opened a window and screamed to the street below. That was enough for David Herold. He kicked his horse and fled, abandoning Powell to fate. Undeterred by Fanny’s screaming, Powell kept fighting. His adventures at Gettysburg and with Mosby’s Rangers made him cool under fire. His resolve stiffened. He would not permit one man and a screaming girl to scare him off.
Gus Seward, dressed in his nightshirt, raced to his father’s room and saw the shadows of two men fighting. Confused, he thought his father had become delirious and the male nurse was trying to restrain him. As soon as Gus seized the shadowy figure he believed was his father, he knew it was someone else. Now combating two men, Powell fought harder, slashing wildly with the knife. When Robinson got behind him and wrapped him in a bear hug, Powell reversed the knife, thrust it blindly over his shoulder, and stabbed Robinson twice in the shoulder, deeply and to the bone. Robinson ignored the wounds and kept fighting. In the dark it was hard to see the knife coming clearly enough to parry the blows. Throughout the battle Powell hadn’t said a word. When the sergeant and Gus wrestled Powell into the hall and into the bright gaslight, Powell and Gus, their faces inches apart, locked eyes. Then Powell spoke for the first time during the attack. In an intense but eerily calm voice, the assassin confided to Gus, as though trying to persuade him, the strangest thing: “I’m mad. I’m mad!”
Secretary Seward’s wife, alarmed by Fanny’s screams, emerged from her third-floor, back bedroom in time to witness the climax of the hallway struggle between Powell and her son Gus. Uncomprehending, she assumed that her husband had become delirious and was running amok. Fred’s wife, Anna, rushed to the scene, and Fanny ran out of her father’s bedroom and shouted, “Is that man gone?” Bewildered, Mrs. Seward and Anna replied, “What man?”
Powell wound his arm around Robinson’s neck in a choke hold, and the sergeant braced himself for the knife that was sure to follow at any moment. Then, in a curious act of mercy, Powell let him go and, instead of stabbing him again, punched him with his fist. Powell fled down the stairs. On his way out, he caught up with Emerick Hansell, who was running down the staircase, trying to stay ahead of the assassin. The State Department messenger, on duty at Seward’s home, was fleeing rather than joining the battle. But Powell gave Hansell a parting gift as he ran past him—an inglorious stab in the back. Hansell crumpled to the floor. He had been stabbed over the sixth rib, from the spine obliquely toward the right side. The cut was an inch wide and between two and a half and three inches deep, but the blade had not penetrated the lungs. Powell ran into the street, his eyes searching desperately for David Herold, but found nothing more than his lone horse. Powell tossed his knife to the ground, mounted his horse, and, instead of galloping into the night, calmly and inconspicuously trotted away. William Bell, flailing in the street, pursued Powell on foot for a few blocks, yelling all the way. Unable to keep pace with the horse, he gave up and returned to the Clubhouse.
Fanny ran back to her father’s room only to find the bed empty. “Where’s father?” she cried in panic. She spotted what she thought was no more than a pile of discarded bedclothes on the floor—but it was the secretary of state, bloody and disheveled. To save his life he had rolled out of bed during the attack and crashed to the floor, hoping to escape Powell’s reach in the dark room. That agonizing tumble aggravated his broken bones and sent spasms of pain through his body. Fanny slipped on a big puddle of blood and tumbled to the floor beside her father. He looked “ghastly … white, and very thin.” And that made her scream: “O my God, father’s dead.” Sergeant Robinson, ignoring his own wounds, flew to her side, lifted the broken Seward from the floor, and laid him tenderly in his bed. Seward opened his eyes, looked up at his terrified daughter, and, in unimaginable pain and fighting off the effects of shock, concentrated his mind, spit the blood out of his mouth, and whispered: “I am not dead; send for a doctor, send for the police, close the house.”