BOOTH HAD BEEN LUCKY. ON APRIL 24, THE MAJORITY OF THE manhunters were still spinning their wheels in Maryland, uncertain whether their quarry had crossed the Potomac. Compared with the level of activity in Maryland, Virginia’s northern neck was still lightly patrolled. That was about to change.
That morning, Major James O’Beirne had a telegram sent to the War Department telegraph office in Washington. It was this office that, on the night of the assassination, sent Stanton’s telegrams that broke the news to military commanders, and to the nation. It was this office that transmitted Stanton’s orders to begin the manhunt. And from this office came the news flash that the president was dead. Now, ten days later, Major Thomas Eckert, head of the telegraph office, received a message from Major O’Beirne that galvanized the manhunt. Two men, reported O’Beirne, had been seen crossing the Potomac on April 16. If those men were Booth and Herold, then Lincoln’s assassin had been in Virginia for the past eight days. This report required action.
And Colonel Lafayette C. Baker just happened to be on the scene when the telegraph arrived. The notorious detective and War Department “agent,” and a favorite of Stanton’s, had been in town since April 16, in response to Stanton’s dramatic telegram summoning him from New York to join the manhunt and find the murderers of the president.
Since his arrival his imperious, deceitful, and self-promoting demeanor had rubbed a number of the hunters the wrong way. He tried to steal other detectives’ leads and, without prior authorization, he had even issued a $30,000 reward proclamation of his own. He was snooping around the telegraph office when Eckert heard from O’Beirne. Baker read the message:
PORT TOBACCO, MD., April 24, 1865 10 A. M.
(Received 11 A. M.)
Major ECKERT:
Have just met Major O’Beirne, whose force had arrested Doctor Mudd and Thompson. Mudd set Booth’s left leg (fractured), furnished crutches, and helped him and Herold off. They have been tracked as far as the swamp near Bryantown, and under one theory it is possible they may be still concealed in swamp which leads from Bryantown to Allen’s Fresh, or in neck of land between Wicomico and Potomac Rivers. Other evidence leads to the belief that they crossed from Swan Point to White Point, Va., on Sunday morning, April 16, about 9:30, in a small boat, also captured by Major O’Beirne. John M. Lloyd has been arrested, and virtually acknowledged complicity. I will continue with Major O’Beirne, in whom I have very great confidence. We propose first to thoroughly scour swamp and country to-day, and if unsuccessful and additional evidence will justify it, we then propose to cross with force into Virginia and follow up that trail as long as there is any hope. At all events we will keep moving, and if there is any chance you may rely upon our making most of it. Country here is being thoroughly scoured by infantry and cavalry.
Baker seized the telegram, rushed back to his Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters across the street from Willard’s, and told his cousin, Detective Luther Byron Baker, the news.
“We have got a sure thing,” Lafayette said, “I think Booth has crossed the river, and I want you to go right out.”
“There are no men to go with me.”
“We will have some soldiers detailed.” Lafayette begin writing a request for troops to General Hancock. “Is there no one in the office who can go with you,” he asked his cousin.
“No one but Colonel Conger,” Luther replied.
“Can he ride?”
“I think so.”
There was just one problem with O’Beirne’s clue. Yes, two men had been seen crossing the river on April 16. But they were not John Wilkes Booth and David Herold.
aROUND THE SAME TIME THAT BOOTH ARRIVED AT GARrett’s farm, an unsuspecting young army officer in Washington, D.C., got swept up in the manhunt’s whirlwind. On the afternoon of April 24, capturing Lincoln’s killer was the last thing on the mind of Lieutenant Edward P. Doherty, a company commander in the Sixteenth New York Cavalry regiment. While others took up the frenzied pursuit of John Wilkes Booth, Doherty’s unit had not received orders to join the chase. Instead, he whiled away the time enjoying the spring afternoon: “I was seated, with another officer … on a bench in the park opposite the White House.”
A messenger tracked him down, interrupting his leisure with an urgent, written message: “HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF WASHINGTON / April 24, 1865 / Commanding Officer 16th New York Cavalry / Sir: You will at once detail a reliable and discreet commissioned officer with twenty-five men, well mounted, with three days’ rations and forage, to report at once to Colonel L. C. Baker, Agent of the War Department, at 211 Pennsylvania Ave. / Command of General C. C. Augur.” Doherty’s commanding officer, Colonel N. B. Sweitzer, had annotated the order and assigned the mission to Doherty: “In accordance with the foregoing order First Lieutenant E. P. Doherty is hereby detailed for the duty, and will report at once to Colonel Baker.”
Luther Baker, Lafayette Baker, and Everton Conger
pose as manhunters for Harper’s Weekly.
Doherty rushed back to his barracks, ordered his bugler to blow “boots and saddles,” and he took the first twenty-six men who jumped to the call. Doherty wondered what this mission was about, but it was not the business of a lowly lieutenant to ask questions. He would find out soon enough, when he arrived at Baker’s headquarters. Within half an hour the lieutenant and his detail reported to Colonel Baker, who handed him freshly printed, paper carte-de-visite photographs of three men. Doherty failed to recognize two of them—they were standing poses and the faces were tiny—but the clearer image of the third man electrified him. It was John Wilkes Booth. He was going after Lincoln’s assassin!
But not by himself, Lafayette Baker admonished him. He was to take two detectives with him, Lafayette’s cousin, Luther Byron Baker, and Everton J. Conger, a former cavalry colonel from the 1st District of Columbia Cavalry. Colonel Baker decided to stay behind in Washington, where he could continue to intercept telegrams and also safeguard his interest in the reward money. Colonel Baker gave Doherty his destination, and with that the twenty-six-man detachment of the Sixteenth New York Cavalry, accompanied by two detectives, began its pursuit of Lincoln’s assassin. Doherty led his men to the Sixth Street wharf, where they boarded the steamer John S. Ide—an unusual name that combined the assassin’s first name with an insinuation of the ides of March and Julius Caesar’s misfortune. The vessel plied the waters of Aquia Creek and landed at the wharf at Belle Plaine, Virginia, where the troops disembarked and traveled overland, south toward Fredericksburg. If they kept moving, the troopers of the Sixteenth New York would reach Port Conway, where Booth and Herold had crossed the Rappahannock, by tomorrow afternoon, April 25.
NO ONE IN WASHINGTON WAS CONFIDENT THAT THE SIXteenth New York Cavalry was on Booth’s trail. And Stanton’s dramatic—and lucrative—four-day-old proclamation of April 20 had still not resulted in Booth’s capture. The War Department issued a new proclamation on April 24. This one offered no additional rewards and appealed not to greed but to the patriotism of the black population of Washington, Maryland, and Virginia.
THE MURDER OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.
APPEAL TO THE COLORED PEOPLE!
HEADQUARTERS MIDDLE MILITARY DIVISION,
Washington, D.C., April 24, 1865.
To the colored people of the District of Columbia and of Maryland, of Alexandria and the border counties of Virginia:
Your President has been murdered! He has fallen by the assassin and without a moment’s warning, simply and solely because he was your friend and the friend of our country. Had he been unfaithful to you and to the great cause of human freedom he might have lived. The pistol from which he met his death, though held by Booth, was fired by the hands of treason and slavery. Think of this and remember how long and how anxiously this good man labored to break your chains and to make you happy. I now appeal to you, by every consideration which can move loyal and grateful hearts, to aid in discovering and arresting his murderer. Concealed by traitors, he is believed to be lurking somewhere within the limits of the District of Columbia, of the State of Maryland, or Virginia. Go forth, then, and watch, and listen, and inquire, and search, and pray, by day and night, until you shall have succeeded in dragging this monstrous and bloody criminal from his hiding place. You can do much; even the humblest and feeblest among you, by patience and unwearied vigilance, may render the most important assistance.
Large rewards have been offered by the Government, and by municipal authorities, and they will be paid for the apprehension of this murderer, or for any information which will aid in his arrest. But I feel that you need no such stimulus as this. You will hunt down this cowardly assassin of your best friend, as you would the murderer of your own father. Do this, and God, whose servant has been slain, and the country which has given you freedom, will bless you for this noble act of duty.
All information which may lead to the arrest of Booth, or Surratt, or Harold, should be communicated to these headquarters, or to General Holt, Judge Advocate General, at Washington, or, if immediate action is required, then to the nearest military authorities.
All officers and soldiers in this command, and all loyal people, are enjoined to increased vigilance.
W. S. HANCOCK
Major General U.S. Volunteers
Commanding Middle Military Division
Hancock had the text set in type, the crude layout evidence of the haste with which it was produced. Then he had his proclamation printed as one-page, letter-size handbills or broadsides, which were distributed by his men to the black people of Washington, D.C.; Maryland; and Virginia. Hancock’s instinct that Booth could not escape without encountering blacks was correct—the assassin had been seen by a number of them—and perhaps, Hancock reasoned, his call to action might inspire someone to hunt down Booth, or at least to inform on him.
ON THE EVENING OF APRIL 24, BEFORE IT GOT DARK, RICHARD Garrett invited his guest inside for supper. Booth took pleasure in the old man’s genuine hospitality, so different from Dr. Stuart’s cold hand. No one at the Garrett table hurried him to wolf down his meal and get out of the house. Instead, Booth savored his leisurely supper and the friendly company and engaged the family in harmless small talk. John Garrett returned home after dark and found that Boyd was still at the table with his entire family—his father, Richard; and stepmother, Fannie; his younger brothers, William and Richard; three sisters; and Miss Lucinda K. B. Holloway, Fannie’s unmarried sister and the children’s live-in tutor. After supper Booth hobbled outside, sat on the wood front steps, and removed a pipe from one of his coat pockets. Could John Garrett spare some tobacco and a match? Booth wondered. In no time the assassin ignited a bowl of Virginia tobacco, cured in a local barn—perhaps the Garretts’ own, before they stopped drying the leaves there—and enjoyed his first smoke in days. Booth luxuriated in a blissful respite from the manhunt and found a temporary peace on the front porch of this quiet, remote Caroline County farmhouse, a satisfying meal settling in his belly, the sweet aroma of pipe tobacco pleasuring his senses.
John Garrett suggested that they retire and invited Booth to share his room. Booth would sleep in a real bed tonight. Relying on his good, weight-bearing leg, he walked and half jumped up the stairs to the second floor. Booth stripped off his frock coat and unbuttoned his vest, exposing to Garrett a leather belt supporting two revolvers and a Bowie knife. Booth draped his clothes over a chair and unbuckled his pistol belt, which he hung over the headboard of one of the two beds in the room. The Garrett farmhouse might be a peaceful sanctuary, but the assassin wanted his weapons close by and within a quick arm’s reach while he slept. Who knew what trouble the night might bring?
BOOTH SAT IN A CHAIR AND ASKED GARRETT TO HELP HIM pull off his tall, knee-high, leather riding boot. Garrett took a good hold and yanked hard until the snugly fitting boot popped off. On his other foot Booth wore a government-issue leather army shoe, slit open at the top to make taking it on and off easier. When Booth slipped out of his trousers, Garrett got a close look at the bad leg and asked how it had happened. Given John Garrett’s four years of service, Booth knew he had to talk convincingly to fool a man who had seen real war wounds before. His story worked again: “He told me that he was wounded at the evacuation of Petersburg. He … kept up the impression all along that he had been a Confederate soldier, and he now said that he had belonged to A. P. Hill’s corps, and that he had been wounded by a shell fragment at the evacuation of Petersburg. He said his wound was not very painful except when he touched it.”
Garrett offered Booth one of the beds, and he and his brother William shared the other. Their guest was exhausted. Booth got into bed, turned over, and spoke just two words: “Good night.” John Garrett assumed, correctly, that Mr. Boyd wanted to speak no more that night. The soft mattress and pillow lulled Booth to a quick slumber. It was his first night in a proper bed—not counting one night in the rude Lucas cabin—since April 15, nine days ago. It felt good to rise from the cold earth and sleep like a civilized man again. It was also the first night of the manhunt that Booth and Herold spent apart.
At Belle Plaine the manhunters had divided their forces, too. Two columns, one of five men commanded by Everton Conger, and the other with the rest of the men, led by Edward Doherty, both probed south. The cavalrymen searched farmhouses and barns, questioned inhabitants, and sometimes adopted various ruses to trick the locals. As the Sixteenth New York worked all night toward Port Conway, Booth’s hard-won head start from the manhunters began to shrink. It had taken Booth ten days to travel from downtown Washington to the Port Conway ferry. It would take the Sixteenth New York, alerted by telegraph and transported by steamboat, just one day to close the gap between Washington and Port Conway. The same superior technology that the Union had used to defeat the Confederacy was now employed against Booth.
Booth’s mind surrendered to fatigue and roamed freely through the landscape of his dreams, where no man could follow him. He did not need his pistols during the night. He slept deeply and undisturbed and did not awaken until late in the morning on Tuesday, April 25. It was the eleventh sunrise since the assassination. John Garrett awoke early. Observing their guest still fast asleep, he dressed quietly and went downstairs. When William Garrett followed his brother down a few minutes later, Booth was still asleep. The actor was unaccustomed to farmers’ hours. His body followed the nighttime rhythms of the city and theatre life, not the crack-of-dawn rigors of country living. William told his eleven-year-old brother Richard to watch over Booth until he awoke, then bring their guest his crutches and gun belt and wait on him while he dressed. William left the house to graze the cattle before returning for breakfast.
When Booth failed to answer the breakfast call, John Garrett went upstairs to check on him. Booth, awakened by the summons echoing through the house, had just gotten up. Garrett told him that breakfast was ready, but Booth, still weary, begged off. Please tell the family not to hold the meal for him, he requested. That was fine, replied Garrett: “[I]t was entirely unnecessary as we were not in the habit of waiting meals for soldiers as they were privileged characters and might eat when they got ready.” John Garrett walked downstairs, ate, and rode over to Mr. Acres, a neighborhood shoemaker, to have a pair of boots repaired.
Eventually Booth roused himself. Little Richard Garrett fetched his clothes and crutches and helped him dress. Booth sat in the chair, inserted his leg into the tall boot and, unable to use his bad leg for leverage, pulled extra hard with his arm and back muscles. Delicately, he slipped the foot of his broken leg into the low-cut shoe. He eyed his pistol belt, still hanging on the headboard. He decided that he would not need his revolvers or Bowie knife this morning. He left the belt on the bed. He stood up, took the crutches, and, unarmed, proceeded downstairs, careful not to misstep and tumble down the stairs. Booth headed to the front porch, reached into a pocket for his pipe and a pinch of tobacco, and enjoyed a late-morning smoke. After he finished off the bowl, Booth stepped down to the front yard and inspected the property a little, venturing to the barn and back. On the front porch he reclined on a bench and promptly dozed off. His spent body and overtaxed brain craved the rejuvenating sleep.
When Booth woke up, William Garrett joined him on the porch. William asked the same question that his brother posed last night: where had he been wounded? On cue, the actor trotted out the stock story about Petersburg, the exploding artillery shell, the leg wound. Why did William ask? Hadn’t his brother already told him this morning what Booth had said the night before? Booth, perhaps suspicious that William was testing him for any discrepancies in his story, spun a convoluted tale to explain how he ended up at Locust Hill.
It all started at Petersburg, began Booth, showing William his injured leg for effect. After the evacuation of that city, he wanted to go to Annapolis, Maryland. He crossed the Potomac but then discovered that the federals were forcing all Confederate soldiers to swear a loyalty oath to the Union, and of course he would never agree to that. Booth claimed that until a few days ago, he had taken refuge in a small, unnamed Maryland town. Then he and his cousin, also named Boyd, went on a “spree,” hired two horses, and encountered some Union cavalry troops. Unwisely, they boasted to their former enemies how easily they had crossed the Potomac. This riled the cavalrymen, who informed on them and triggered a subsequent pursuit. Booth laid it on thick for Garrett now. When the cavalry caught up with them, they got into a “fracas” that led to “a little shooting touch” before they escaped by fleeing into a swamp, where they spent the night. The next evening, Booth explained, he and his cousin tied their horses in a pine thicket and walked down to the Potomac River, where they had to spend almost all of their money to buy a boat, to cross back over to Virginia. But it was a stormy eve, and they spent all night on the river without crossing, instead finding themselves opposite Mathias Point. Then, finally, reaching the point, they made their way to Port Royal, and the Garrett farm.
It was a wild, deceitful tale, sprinkled cleverly with sufficient truthful details—Booth was chased by cavalry, he did travel with another man, he did cross a swamp, he did hide in the pines, he did buy a boat, and he did cross the Potomac—that it seemed believable, or at least coherent. Booth told this complex tale to establish in Garrett’s mind two vital ideas, one true, the other false: the truth that the Union cavalry was after him, and the lie about why. Booth wanted William Garrett to know, by his own admission, before William discovered it later on his own, that the cavalry might be coming. And he wanted him to believe that it was for a trivial reason. That way, if horse soldiers did arrive in the neighborhood, asking questions about two men, William Garrett would not be surprised, and he would never suspect that his house-guests were Lincoln’s assassins. William Garrett did not challenge the saga’s authenticity. Booth, satisfied that he had accomplished his purpose, got up from the porch and, with the help of his crutches, went for another solitary walk, again in the direction of the barn. Then Booth returned to the house and sat down on the lawn with the young Garrett children.
IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY, REMEMBERED ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD Richard Baynham Garrett: “That day was bright and warm. It was an unusually early spring that year, and the grass in the yard was like velvet, while the great orchard in front of the house was white with apple blossoms.” Booth relaxed by entertaining his little audience. “All the forenoon,” recalled Richard Garrett, “our visitor lounged upon the grass under the apple trees and talked or played with the children … he had a pocket compass, which he took pains to explain to the children, and laughed at their puzzled faces when he made the needle move by holding the point of his pocket knife above it.” Booth took special delight in three-year-old Cora Lee Garrett. “He called her his little blue-eyed pet,” recalled her nine-year-old sister Lillian Florence Garrett, or Lillie. “At the last meal he took with us, she sat by his side in her high chair.” At the dinner table, Cora’s mother spoke sharply to the girl and, Lillie reported, the child “burst into tears. Booth at once began to soothe her, and said, “‘What, is that my little blue eyes crying?’”
Early in the afternoon the Garretts and their guest took their seats at the dinner table. John, back from Acres the shoemaker, sat down next to his brother William, and opposite Booth. He had heard some exciting news while on his errand, John announced. A man told him that a recent issue of a Richmond newspaper reported that the U.S. government was offering a $140,000 reward for Abraham Lincoln’s assassin. The Garretts had heard rumors about the murder as early as April 22 or 23, but without confirmation until John heard the story about the reward a couple of hours ago. William boasted that if the reward was that big, the assassin “had better not come this way or he would be gobbled up.” Booth smiled wryly. How much was that reward, again? he asked. John restated the figure. “I would sooner suppose more like $500,000,” suggested Booth, suppressing mild hurt at what he felt was too modest an amount. Surely the president’s assassin, the most wanted man in America, was worth more than $140,000? Had Booth known the true, much lower figure—a mere $50,000—he would have been truly insulted.
The family began a lively discussion of the assassination. “While at dinner the tragic event was commented upon, as to the motive which prompted the deed and its effect upon the public welfare,” Lucinda Holloway observed. Booth listened attentively, not speaking a word. Then one of Garrett’s daughters suggested that Lincoln’s assassin must have been a paid killer.
Booth gazed at the girl, smiled, and broke his silence: “Do you think so, Miss? By whom do you suppose he was paid?”
“Oh,” she replied witlessly, “I suppose by both the North and the South.”
“It is my opinion,” Booth replied knowingly, “he wasn’t paid a cent.” Instead, he speculated, the assassin “did it for notoriety’s sake.”
Booth improvised this little bit of theatre flawlessly. The Garretts did not know it, but the actor-assassin had just staged a spontaneous, unscripted performance at their dinner table. “I did not notice any uneasiness about him,” admitted John Garrett.
Ingeniously, while masquerading as another man, the assassin commented on his own crime, and analyzed, for the pleasure of his private audience, and also for his personal amusement, the motives of Lincoln’s killer.
After dinner Booth went outside and relaxed on the porch bench, by now his favorite place at the house. He was in no hurry to leave Locust Hill. He needed rest. Considering his ordeal over the last eleven days, he would happily spend a month with the Garretts recuperating from his injury and regaining his strength. Plenty of sleep, good cooking, some pipe tobacco, clean clothes, and leisurely rests in the fields would revive his body and spirit. And perhaps an occasional shot of whiskey or brandy, his favorites. Reluctant to break the spell of this idyll, Booth said nothing to the Garretts all morning or at the afternoon dinner table about leaving Locust Hill.
But it was time. Booth asked John Garrett if he had a map of Virginia. Booth owned one, but his copy of “Perrine’s New Topographical War Map of the Southern States,” a handy field guide that folded into a pocket-size booklet protected by yellow, paper board covers, was back in Washington, in the hands of U.S. detectives who had discovered it in George Atzerodt’s room at the Kirkwood House. Garrett told Booth that he owned no map of the state. Then what about that big map of several Southern states hanging on a wall in the house, suggested Booth. Would John be kind enough to take it down so that Booth could study it? Garrett went inside, unpinned the school map, and spread it on a table.
Booth’s eyes ranged over the map and he asked Garrett for a piece of paper. John obliged, asking why Booth wanted the map. He explained that he was plotting the route from Locust Hill to Orange Court House. There he hoped to obtain a horse from one of the many Marylanders who he heard frequented the area. Then Booth told John, just as he had told William Garrett that morning, that he refused to return to Maryland because he would never sign an oath of allegiance to the Union. From Orange Court House, Booth planned to ride for Confederate General Joe Johnston’s army, still in the field and, unlike Lee’s surrendered Army of Northern Virginia, still a viable fighting force. And from there he would cross the border into his ultimate destination, Mexico. Booth declared that it was better to leave the country than swear loyalty to the Union. Garrett left the room and Booth remained hunched over the table, staring at the map, writing notes on the routes to distant places he hoped to reach. Alone, Booth tore a piece out of the map and stuffed Virginia in his pocket.
This was no time for a geography lesson. Booth should have departed Locust Hill at first light, and certainly no later than several hours ago, when he awoke in late morning. He was still too far north, and Garrett’s farm sat within striking distance of Union troops. In truth, as the afternoon lengthened, Booth shouldn’t be there at all. The manhunters could appear at any moment without warning. He should leave at once; he dare not remain there any longer than one more night. Finished with the map, Booth came out onto the porch and sat on the bench. John Garrett saw him remove from his pocket “a small memorandum book” and begin writing. From his position, sitting below Booth on the front steps, John could not see what he wrote.
Distracted by noise from the road, Garrett looked up and saw a few riders moving past their front gate. “There goes some of your party now,” John said, guessing the riders were the same men who had dropped Booth at Locust Hill yesterday afternoon. Booth looked up from his book. He asked John to go into the house, walk up to the bedroom, and get his pistol belt. Confused, Garrett asked why Booth wanted his revolvers. “You go and get my pistols!” the assassin commanded without explanation. Garrett obeyed, but when he got to the bedroom and looked out the window, the men were gone. They had ridden past the gate, in the direction of Port Royal, without turning into the farm. He left the gun belt hanging on the headboard, returned to the front porch without the pistols, and told Booth that the men were gone. The assassin and Garrett took their seats.
Five minutes later John Garrett noticed a stranger, on foot, walking from the gate toward the house. Booth rose from the bench and shouted for eleven-year-old Richard Garrett to run upstairs and bring down his pistols right away. In a flash, the child was back on the porch carrying the heavy gun belt. Quickly, Booth swung the belt under his coat and wrapped it around his waist, cinching the buckle tight. Then he stepped off the porch and began walking toward the approaching stranger. John and little Richard Garrett watched transfixed, expecting a gun battle to break out in their yard at any moment. Booth and the stranger, who had a carbine slung around his shoulder, met midway between the road’s inner gate and the farmhouse. Booth did not draw his pistols and the stranger did not level his long arm. It was David Herold, who was back from his overnight stay a few miles southeast of Bowling Green at the home of Joseph Clarke, a friend of Bainbridge. After waiting for Davey all day, Booth had begun to wonder if he was coming back.
Booth and Herold stood in place about fifty yards from the house and talked for several minutes. “What do you intend to do?” asked Davey.
“Well, I intend to stay here all night,” Booth announced.
Herold did not like the sound of that plan. Lingering in one place too long increased their risk of capture. And he was losing heart for life on the run: “I would like to go home. I am sick and tired of this way of living.”
Then, together, they walked to the house. Booth introduced Davey as his cousin, David E. Boyd. Booth asked John Garrett if cousin Boyd could spend the night, too. Naturally, after the regal treatment the Garretts had accorded Booth, the assassin assumed that Garrett would offer his cousin similar hospitality.
John’s reply shocked him: “I told him that father was the proprietor of the house and that I could not take him in.” John adopted a sudden, brusque manner and cold tone of voice to convey an additional message, “intending by what I said to let him see that I did not want to take him.”
Booth’s panic at the sight of the riders and of the stranger walking up the road had made Garrett suspicious. To discourage the Boyds, John added that his father was away and he had no idea when he would return to approve or veto Booth’s request. Unperturbed, Herold offered to sit on the porch steps and wait as long as it took for old man Garrett to come home. After eleven days of hiding out, he was used to waiting.
aND AFTER ELEVEN DAYS OF SEARCHING, SOME OF THE MANHUNTERS were getting frustrated. Captain William Cross Hazelton of the Eighth Illinois Cavalry, one of the units pursuing Booth in Maryland, wrote a letter to his mother that typified the exasperation felt by many of the soldiers and detectives in the field:
I have been endeavoring to get an opportunity to write you but have been so constantly on the move for the last two weeks that I’ve had no chance to write.
We were first ordered to Washington to form part of the military escort at President Lincoln’s funeral, immediately after which we were sent here into Maryland in pursuit of Booth and some of his accomplices who were known to have come here. We traced Booth to the house of a Dr. Mudd where he went to have his leg set, a bone which had been broken by a fall off his horse. At this Doctor’s he arrived on the morning after the murder. He had with him a man by the name of Harrold, one of his accomplices and a desperado well known in these parts. Here he remained until 2:00 o’clock in the afternoon of the same day. From here we were unable to trace him farther for some days. In vain we scoured the country in all directions. I was out with my Company night and day. With us were some of the most expert detectives of the United States, but all our efforts to trace him further failed until at length a free negro came in and reported that he acted as a guide for them to the house of a Captain Cox some fifteen miles from here. At that time I happened to be the only officer off duty, and at 12:00 o’clock at night started with thirty men, two detectives and this same negro guide for the home of Captain Cox.
We reached there just at daylight, saw Captain Cox (a notorious “secesh!”) but he denied all knowledge of the parties.
We obtained evidence, however, that Booth and Harrold remained at his house some four hours in private conversation with him. They then mounted their horse, Booth being lifted on the horse by the negro guide whom they dismissed, and again we lost all trace of them. Cox we arrested and he is now in the Old Capitol prison.
The great difficulty is the people here are all traitors, and we can get no information from them. A report reached us the day before yesterday that they had been seen not far from where I am now writing. They came to the edge of a woods and called for this colored woman (our informant) to bring them some food. She describes the men and said one of them had crutches. We immediately surrounded and one hundred of our men searched it through and through, but found nothing. The country here is heavily wooded, making it next to impossible to find one who makes any effort to escape. I hope, however, we will yet find him if he is not across the Potomac.
Captain Hazelton’s hope was in vain. Booth had crossed the Potomac days ago, leaving behind him and the hundreds of other troops, detectives, and policemen who still, clueless, hunted for him in Maryland. Unbeknownst to them the theatre of action had shifted across the river, to Virginia.
THE SIXTEENTH NEW YORK CAVALRY RODE INTO PORT CONway, Virginia, on Tuesday, April 25, between 3:00 and 4:00 P.M. William Rollins, sitting on his front steps, watched their arrival. Luther Baker spotted him and walked over to his house. Had Rollins seen any strangers cross the river at this spot in the last couple days? Baker asked. The detective was not interested in any parties crossing from Port Royal to Port Conway, just those that crossed over from the Port Conway side. Of course he had, said Rollins: “There were a good many people crossing there.” How about a man with a broken leg? Baker continued. Yes, he crossed yesterday around noon, the fisherman revealed. The report jolted Baker. It must be Booth. Finally, eleven days after the assassination, and more than a week after Booth seemed to fall off the face of the earth for several days during his pine-thicket encampment, the manhunters picked up a fresh scent of their prey. If it was Booth, then Lincoln’s assassin was only a little more than a day’s ride ahead of them.
Rollins offered additional details: “[T]wo men came … in a wagon the day before … and … crossed the river … I had some conversation with them.” Only yesterday, Booth and Herold had stood on this spot, in front of these same steps, conversing with Rollins just as Baker spoke to him now. The detective devoured every morsel of intelligence that Rollins could recall. These men wanted to go to Bowling Green, said Rollins, and they offered to pay him to take them there in his wagon. But, impatiently, they refused to wait for him to set his fishing nets. Instead, the lame man and his young companion made other plans as soon as they fell in with three Confederate soldiers, each mounted on horseback. They all crossed over the Rappahannock together on Thornton’s ferry.
Baker was intrigued by these Confederate soldiers. Earlier intelligence—reports from Surratt’s tavern and Dr. Mudd’s farm—indicated that Booth and Herold were traveling alone. This was the first time anyone heard that they had linked up with rebel troops. If Rollins was telling the truth, it might mean that the assassins had come under the protection of the Confederate army and were being escorted south on horseback. That would make it tougher to catch them now. Rebels with knowledge of the country could move fast and would be able to outrace the Sixteenth New York. Furthermore, the three soldiers at the ferry could be part of a larger Confederate force, superior in numbers to the Union patrol. The deeper Baker, Conger, and Doherty probed into rebel territory with their small, lightly armed unit, the greater their risk of being ambushed by Confederate forces, guerrillas, or bushwhackers.
Luther Baker decided to worry about those things later. Yesterday, John Wilkes Booth was in Port Conway. Today Baker had no choice but to pick up the chase from that spot. Baker reached into his pocket and withdrew three small, sepia-toned, carte-de-visite paper photographs, fresh from the photography lab at the U.S. Army Medical Museum. He showed the first carte to Rollins: is this one of the strangers who crossed the river yesterday? The image was of a tall, lean man without facial hair. No, replied the helpful fisherman. He had never seen that man. Rollins, without realizing it, had just given Baker a valuable piece of intelligence. John Surratt, Confederate operative, son of Mary Surratt, and wanted man, was not traveling with Booth.
Baker held out the second photograph, a full-length image of a younger man—he looked like a teenager—posing with his hand resting on a tabletop. What about this man? Yes, Rollins responded, that is the man who arrived in Port Conway on the wagon with the lame man. They were together and he did most of the talking for the fellow with the broken leg. Rollins had just identified David Herold. Baker’s excitement grew as he handed Rollins the final photograph—a bust portrait of a handsome, black-haired man with a black moustache, clothed in a black frock coat. The details in this photo were sharper than in the other two and appeared to be more professional.
Baker didn’t say a word while William Rollins studied the photograph. Baker read the hesitation on Rollins’s face and grew concerned. Rollins looked puzzled. “I was not sure whether he had a moustache,” the fisherman admitted. Baker relaxed. Rollins had now confirmed what the manhunters suspected—that Dr. Mudd had told the truth about the razor and the shave. And, indeed, the latest edition of the April 20 reward broadside was correct when it proclaimed: “Booth … wears a heavy black moustache … which there is some reason to believe has been shaved off.”
Rollins added another qualification: “And when I saw him his cap was pulled down over his forehead.” At that Baker was unsure if Rollins had seen the lame man’s face or not. “But,” continued Rollins, “I thought there was a likeness across the eyes.” Booth’s piercing eyes were hard to forget. Yes, said Rollins, this is “the likeness of the other man with the broken leg.” Baker rejoiced. Rollins had identified John Wilkes Booth. They were on the right track. Although the assassin enjoyed a full day’s head start over the manhunters, he would have to stop somewhere to rest. Baker believed that hard riding by the Sixteenth New York could close the gap.
In addition to providing positive identifications of Booth and Herold, and confirming that they had crossed to Port Royal, Rollins had more information that made him an invaluable resource to the MANHUNTERS. He could also identify one of the three Confederate soldiers who had escorted the men across the river. His name was Willie Jett, and Rollins had a pretty good idea of where that rebel was headed. He lived in Westmoreland County, and Rollins guessed that after landing in Port Royal, he rode straight for Bowling Green: “[He] was in the habit of staying there a good deal of his time.” The strangers had asked Rollins to take them to Bowling Green; wasn’t it plausible that they requested the same of Jett, and that the rebel escorted them there? They might still be in Bowling Green: the lame man’s companion told Rollins that they needed to rest for a couple days.
Mrs. Rollins had even more to tell before they shoved off. In addition to Jett, she named the other two Confederate soldiers—Bainbridge and Ruggles—who had crossed with Booth and Herold. Then she offered up a true gold nugget of gossip: Jett, according to local rumor, “was courting a young lady by the name of Gouldman, whose father kept a hotel at Bowling Green.” She was Izora Gouldman, the innkeeper’s sixteen-year-old daughter. Jett and Ruggles stayed there on the twenty-fourth. Bainbridge had a friend, Joseph Clarke, whose widowed mother, Virginia Clarke, owned a thousand-acre farm southwest of Bowling Green. Herold and Bainbridge spent the night there, then retrieved Ruggles from Star Hotel, stopped at Trappe, then dropped Davey at the Garretts’ farm.
The Sixteenth New York’s mission was obvious: boots and saddles at once, and immediate pursuit. But first, before they could gallop to Bowling Green—or anywhere else—they had to float across the Rappahannock on the slow ferry. The crossing would consume valuable time, but they had no choice. The ferry could not hold more than nine men and nine horses per trip. It would take three crossings—requiring six one-way trips by the ferryboat—and almost two hours, to transport the entire command to Port Royal. Baker ordered a black man to go out on the dock and hail the ferry to come over right away from the Port Royal side. In the meantime, Lieutenant Doherty, followed shortly by Detective Conger, came over and spoke to Rollins. While they waited for the ferryboat, Conger had time to take down a statement in writing from Rollins.
Luther Baker, pleased with Rollins’s cooperation and the quality of information he provided, decided to press him into temporary service. The fisherman should accompany the cavalry across the river and lead the pursuit of Booth to Bowling Green. Will he, Baker asked, “Go of [his] own accord or under arrest?” Rollins considered his options. He did not object to joining the troops, but he and his wife, Betsy, worried what their neighbors might think. Cooperating with the Yankees might not go over well with the locals, and the family might suffer repercussions later. Rollins asked Baker to go through the ritual of placing him under mock arrest to avoid the appearance of impropriety. The detective agreed to the charade if it meant securing Rollins’s assistance.
Rollins got his horse and led the animal onto the ferry. On the other side a corporal whom Baker let in on the ruse took charge of Rollins and paraded him through Port Royal like a prisoner. By 4:30 P.M. on April 25, the entire patrol was across. With his reputation as a good Southerner secure, Rollins guided the Union cavalry toward Bowling Green. En route, about three miles out from Port Royal, they encountered a black man riding toward them from the direction of Bowling Green.
Not wanting to stop the cavalry’s progress to the Star Hotel, Doherty spurred forward to intercept the rider: “Not wishing to lose time, I rode ahead of the column and directed the negro to turn back and ride beside myself.” Brief questioning suggested that Jett was still in Bowling Green. Farther down the road, the patrol stopped at a halfway house between Port Royal and Bowling Green, the notorious den called “The Trappe.” Rollins stayed outside while Conger and Baker went inside for between half an hour and forty-five minutes to question the occupants.
Never was a Civil War roadside tavern more aptly named. Widow Martha Carter and her four or five unmarried daughters kept what Luther Baker described discreetly as “a house of entertainment.” The cavalry found no men at the log house, but, noticed Baker, “when we were searching the premises the ladies seemed very much excited.” The women disclosed that four men had passed through on April 24, but only three of them passed back on the twenty-fifth. It did not sound to Baker like Booth was among them: “From their description, we could not ascertain that the lame man was along.”
IT WAS 4:00 P.M. ON TUESDAY, APRIL 25. THE SUN WOULD set in a few hours, and John Garrett could tell that the Boyd cousins were not planning to go anywhere that night. Ten minutes later, as Garrett fretted about what to do with his now unwanted guests, an even more disturbing incident occurred. Two horsemen, riding rapidly from the direction of Port Royal, burst through the Garretts’ outer gate and galloped toward the house at top speed. Booth and Herold left the porch to meet them. Garrett recognized Ruggles, one of the two Confederates he’d spied from his bedroom window yesterday afternoon when they delivered Booth into his father’s care. Bainbridge was at his side.
Like Paul Revere, Ruggles and Bainbridge carried electrifying news—the cavalry was coming! “Marylanders you had better watch out,” one of them shouted. “There are forty Yankee cavalry coming up the hill!” Even as they spoke, the patrol was crossing the Rappahannock River on the ferry between Port Conway and Port Royal. The Confederates had seen them with their own eyes from a hillcrest overlooking the ferry landing. And the soldiers had spotted them on the crest, watching their movements from across the river. Soon the whole troop would be across the river and riding southwest, following the identical route that Ruggles and Bainbridge had just raced down. Without even reining their animals to a complete halt, the riders warned Booth and Herold to hide themselves. Then they turned their horses around and galloped to the southwest, away from Port Royal and toward Bowling Green.
BOOTH AND HEROLD LOOKED AT EACH OTHER AND, WITHout exchanging a word, made for the woods behind Garrett’s barn. They waited for a time, but no cavalry came. Was it a false alarm? After a while Herold emerged from the forest and walked back to the farmhouse, where John Garrett stood in the front yard. Amiably, seemingly unworried, Herold asked Garrett what he thought about the news of Union cavalry at Port Royal. Was it credible? Garrett did not think so; he could not imagine how the cavalry would have gotten to Port Conway. As they spoke Garrett spotted a “black boy” named Jim coming down the road from Port Royal. Jim had belonged to J. H. Pendleton, and Garrett knew him. Leaving Herold in the yard, Garrett hailed Jim and questioned him about cavalry crossing on the ferry. It was true all right, confirmed Jim. The Union troops were already over the river and in Port Royal when he left there.
Garrett reported the news to Herold, who acted unconcerned. If the pistol incident worried Garrett, Booth’s flight into the woods with Davey frightened him even more. Garrett complained vociferously: “I told him … that since he had come here my suspicions were aroused that all was not right with him and [Booth], and I would be very glad if they would leave our house for we are peaceable citizens and did not want to get into any difficulty.”
Herold laughed off John Garrett’s concern: “There is no danger. Don’t make yourself alarmed about it; we will not get you into any trouble.” Davey asked for something to eat but Garrett refused him: “I told him we had nothing cooked and that he could not get anything to eat … until supper unless he promised that he would leave.”
While Garrett and Herold stood in the front yard bickering, a thunderous sound coming from the direction of Port Royal shook the earth and caught them off guard. “There goes the cavalry now!” Garrett exclaimed. Incredibly, the soldiers, racing for Bowling Green, rode right past Locust Hill and the front gate that led to the Garrett farmhouse. Oblivious to their surroundings, the soldiers—either failing to notice or taking no interest in the two men standing in the front yard—galloped on by. Even their local guide, William Rollins, did not spot David Herold, owner of that beautiful blanket. “Well, that is all,” Davey observed nonchalantly.
John Garrett, certain that Davey knew the patrol’s purpose, asked him again to leave Locust Hill.
The cavalry out of sight, obscured by a trailing dust cloud, Herold turned to Garrett and asked if he knew where he could buy a horse. John said not likely: “Both armies had stripped the country pretty well of horses.” If horses can’t be bought at any price, then what about hiring a team and a wagon, Davey proposed. John told him about a colored man named Freeman who lived nearby and sometimes hired out a conveyance. And what did Garrett estimate it might cost to engage transport to Orange Court House? Freeman, John confided, had a weakness for specie—coin money—and he might drive as far as Guineau’s Station for $6. Herold possessed no coins, but dug his hand into a pocket and pulled out a piece of paper currency: “Here’s a Secretary Chase note; I’ll give this to get there.” Would that be enough? The former druggist’s clerk picked up a twig, sat on the ground, and drew the mathematics of the value conversion in the dirt, calculating that the $10 note was worth $7.30 in coin, more than enough to pay the price of a wagon ride.
HEROLD HANDED GARRETT THE CASH AND ASKED HIM TO arrange the ride. Leaving Davey on the front porch, Garrett rushed to Freeman’s place as fast as he could. If he could find him at home, and induce him with the $10 note to transport the Boyds, the Garretts could be free of the suspicious strangers within the hour, well before sundown. When Garrett returned home, Herold and Booth were waiting for him in the yard. “What luck?” Herold asked. Garrett told them that Freeman was not home, but he would nonetheless find a way to send them on their way, even if he had to take them himself. Garrett said he knew Booth could not walk, and he didn’t expect them to leave Locust Hill on foot.
But John Garrett did not tell the Boyd cousins what else he had learned from Freeman’s wife. After confirming to John that the horsemen were Union cavalry, she revealed what they were after: “They asked [me] if there were any white men there.” Mrs. Freeman was sure that the soldiers were hunting for someone. She confirmed Garrett’s every suspicion about the strangers. Yes, he must make them leave now, this very afternoon, as soon as he returned home from the Freeman place. He would give them the ride himself. When would they like to go? asked Garrett, implying that he was prepared to get under way at once. He didn’t get the answer he wanted. Unhurried, Booth and Herold said they did not want to leave until tomorrow morning. They would go on the morning of April 26. But it was suppertime now, and the “Boyds” were hungry.
This night’s table did not sustain yesterday’s convivial banter. Although Richard Garrett was back at his farm, his son John spoke for the family now. In the presence of their guests, they talked no more of the Lincoln assassination. After supper Booth brought up his departure and asked John Garrett how he planned to send them to Orange Court House. There were only two options: wagon team or horseback. Garrett spoke vaguely, claiming that he had not decided yet, but said it would probably be the latter.
Booth responded enthusiastically: “Well that’s the very thing, send us horseback.”
The assassin’s eagerness exacerbated John’s suspicions about them: “I thought at once they wanted to go on horseback, so as to make way with the horses.” And why was Booth always hobbling around the place, especially near the barn? Was he staking out the stable for some horse stealing? Garrett could imagine how the scene might unfold the next morning: alone on an isolated road, outnumbered two to one by the heavily armed Boyd cousins, they would steal the horses—maybe even kill him—and he would be powerless to stop them. “Never mind,” Garrett reassured his guests, before morning’s light he would decide what to do with them.
Booth and Herold excused themselves from the table and adjourned to their favorite spot, the bench on the front porch, where they sat side by side for a long time. John Garrett joined them. Then Davey started behaving oddly. Always chatty, he started to babble a fantastic tale to Garrett: “Herold [was] running on and on and talking a great deal of nonsense so that I thought he was the worse for liquor.” Davey boasted that he, too, like his cousin James Boyd and the Garrett boys, had served in the Confederate army. Recklessly, Davey claimed affiliation with the Thirtieth Virginia Infantry regiment. He even specified his small unit, Company “C,” and named his commander, Captain Robinson. All lies. Garrett confronted Davey and revealed his personal knowledge of that regiment; he said he knew that “Captain Robinson” did not exist. Booth’s voluble companion backed down and qualified his tale: “To tell you the truth I was there only one week. I was then on picket and the first night I was wounded.” Eagerly, Herold rolled up a sleeve again to show off not one of his juvenile tattoos, but a scar that he claimed had resulted from a battle wound. Davey’s foolish monologue convinced John Garrett even more that he shouldn’t trust them.
It was dark now. Booth and Herold remained on the bench, watching the evening sky’s last clouds and colors fade to black. The fragrant scent of the spring night filled their nostrils until the sweetly burning smoke rising from Booth’s pipe flavored the air. It was more pleasurable to experience nature’s beauty from the comfort of a front porch than from the cold ground of their pine thicket, Indiantown, and Gambo Creek encampments. Those painful days were behind them now. They could tell that the Garrett family had turned against them, just like Dr. Stuart, but that did not matter now. The Locust Hill oasis had sustained and revived Booth. Tomorrow morning, Wednesday, April 26, he would continue his journey south toward his final destination, yet unknown. It would be the twelfth day.
IN THE MEANTIME, BOOTH AND HEROLD NEEDED TO REST for the morning’s work. Booth signaled his man that it was time to retire, and they proposed to John Garrett that they turn in. Davey helped his master stand up, the actor tucked his crutches under his arms, and they walked to the front door. They planned to share Booth’s bed, just as John and William Garrett shared a bed to accommodate Booth. Two in a soft bed in close quarters was better than two on the unyielding ground in a pine forest with room enough to spare. John Garrett stood between them and the door and barked a stunning question:
“I asked them where they thought of sleeping.”
Why, “in the house,” of course, Booth replied.
“No, gentleman, you can’t sleep in my house.”
Booth was incredulous. Was John Garrett denying him the bed that, only a night before, was his? Booth sensed the weight hanging from his hips. He was still wearing the pistol belt. He had never unbuckled it since the cavalry rode past that afternoon. And Davey’s carbine was close by. With his revolvers and knife within easy reach, Booth considered Garrett’s poor manners. Doctor Stuart’s crime was bad enough—he refused shelter to a wounded, desperate man. But John Garrett’s offense was worse—his father had kindly offered Booth shelter one day, and John cruelly robbed it from him the next. The prospect of another night sleeping on the ground was hateful to Booth. He could always threaten the Garretts, just like when he had menaced the cowering William Lucas. His weapons would certainly get him back upstairs, onto that restful mattress and soft pillow.
John Garrett still did not know the true identity of the man he was throwing out of his house. He was pretty sure that the Boyd cousins were in some kind of trouble, but he failed to imagine its magnitude, and that Lincoln’s killer was a guest at his family’s dinner table. This was the man who put a bullet in the brain of the president of the United States, who ordered the murders of the vice president and secretary of state, and who threatened to cut the throat of a harmless, black freeman who dared refuse Booth the accommodations of his humble cabin. John Wilkes Booth fancied himself a paternalistic, courtly man, and in truth he often was. But when pressed he could also become a ruthless, vicious one. What, then, was Booth to do with the young, rude Mr. John Garrett?
David Herold intervened: “We’ll sleep under the house then.” Davey hoped to defuse the situation, but the obstinate Garrett would not budge an inch.
Impossible, he retorted. The dogs sleep under there and would bite them, perhaps even attacking them in their sleep.
Gamely, Herold tried again: “Well, what’s in the barn then?” Hay and fodder, John Garrett replied.
“We’ll sleep in the barn then,” Herold announced in a voice indicating that the matter was closed. Garrett relented. He could not eject them from Locust Hill by force. There were children in the house. The Boyds were better armed, and any violence might endanger not just him, but the whole family.
Booth and Herold headed toward their new quarters, a modest-sized tobacco barn, forty-eight by fifty feet, with a pitched roof that stood one hundred fifty to two hundred feet from the main house. In addition to the hay and fodder that Garrett mentioned, the fugitives discovered several pieces of furniture. Neighbors from colonial Port Royal who wanted to protect their Early American furniture from vandalism or theft by Yankee raiders had stored some valuable pieces in the barn. The Garretts did not offer Booth and Herold mattresses, blankets, lanterns, candles, or other comforts. Booth wrapped himself in his shawl and plain wool blanket, while Herold unrolled his big, fancy blanket, “smooth on one side and with a heavy shag on the other, about the color of a buffalo robe.” It was an impressive piece of craftsmanship that had attracted not only William Rollins at Port Conway but also John Garrett. By 9:00 P.M. Booth and Herold had lain down on the plank floor and settled in for the night. Unbeknownst to them, the Garretts, already guilty of inhospitality, were at that moment conspiring to commit a worse crime, treachery. Lincoln’s assassin had just walked into a trap.
John and William Garrett swung the barn door shut behind the fugitives. Neither Booth nor Herold paid heed to the black, iron lock. Perhaps, blinded by the dark, they failed to see the sturdy piece of hardware as they passed through the doorway. As soon as the door closed, John Garrett whispered to his brother, “We had better lock those men up.” John was sure that the Boyds were scheming to steal their horses in the middle of the night. What better way to foil the theft than by imprisoning the strangers in the tobacco shed until tomorrow morning? John crept around the perimeter of the building until he found a crevice between the boards, close to the ground. Dropping to his belly, he pressed his ear to the crevice and eavesdropped on Booth and Herold. John wanted to “see if I could find out anything about them. I thought that maybe they would be talking together and I might learn what their intentions were.” But the strangers frustrated Garrett’s primitive effort at intelligence gathering: “They were talking to each other in a low tone [and] I could not distinguish a word they said.”
While his brother John eavesdropped, William Garrett tiptoed to the front door and, as quietly as he could, inserted the key into the lock. To avoid alerting the barn’s occupants he turned the key slowly, so the locking mechanism would softly grind, and not loudly snap, into place. It worked. Booth and Herold did not hear the sliding bolt; they did not know that they were prisoners. The brothers returned to the house in time for nightly family worship conducted by their father. After evening prayers they retired to their room, each with a bed to himself again, now that they had thrown Booth out of the house. Still, John Garrett remained uneasy. What if the Boyds broke out of the barn? Then they would, in their anger, steal the horses for sure. John suggested to William that they spend the night outside and keep the barn under surveillance. Both Garretts grabbed the blankets from their beds, William seized his pistol, and they hustled outside. They chose one of the two corn houses as their guard post: “We unlocked the corn house between the barn, or tobacco house, and the stables and spread out the blankets and lay down there.” There they watched and waited, observing the barn and listening keenly for suspicious sounds in the night.
THE CAVALRY PATROL APPROACHED BOWLING GREEN AT around 11:00 P.M., April 25. About half a mile out, Doherty ordered ten of his men to dismount, and, by stealth, to follow Detective Baker into the town. Doherty, Conger, and Rollins rode quietly with the main body into the town and, by midnight, found the Star Hotel. They immediately commanded their men to surround the hotel and allow no one to leave. But their mission was thwarted, albeit temporarily, by an embarrassing incident. Lincoln’s assassin might be sleeping inside, but, comically, they could not get in. “We knocked about fifteen minutes at each door without receiving any reply,” according to Doherty. When no one answered the front door, they tried the side door, but no one answered there, either. Eventually they saw a black man walking down the street, and they dragooned him for assistance. He took Conger and Doherty around to the back and showed them the entrance to the “Negro house” at the rear of the Star. Baker was already lurking at the front door. They crept into the building and almost immediately encountered another black man. Where is Willie Jett? Doherty asked. In bed, the servant replied. Conger demanded to know where the room was.
Mrs. Julia Gouldman, now awake, opened the door between the hotel and the Negro house. Doherty and Conger pushed through without an introduction and asked her a single question: where was her son, Jesse? She led them upstairs to a second-floor bedroom. Prepared for anything, the officer and detectives rushed in and discovered Jesse Gouldman and Willie Jett sharing a mattress. Already awakened by the commotion, Jett tried to get out of bed. “Is your name Jett?” Conger demanded. “Yes, sir,” came the meek reply. “Get up: I want you!” the detective thundered. Jett stood up and yanked on his pants. Then they seized him, hustled him downstairs roughly, and confined him in the parlor. The trio did everything possible to frighten Jett: “We … informed him of our business,” said Doherty, “telling him if he did not forthwith inform us where the men were, he should suffer.”
Conger reclined in a chair and studied their captive: “Where are the two men who came with you across the river at Port Royal?”
Jett, eyeing Baker and Doherty nervously, approached Conger and whispered a plea: “Can I see you alone?” “Yes, sir: you can,” Conger replied magnanimously. Conger asked his counterparts to leave the parlor. The moment they departed, Jett extended his hand to the detective in supplication and betrayed John Wilkes Booth: “I know who you want; and I will tell you where they can be found.”
“That’s what I want to know,” Conger encouraged him.
All that this Confederate Judas begged in return was privacy: Willie wanted no audience to witness his shame.
“They are on the road to Port Royal,” Jett confided, “about three miles this side of that.”
But where, exactly, queried Conger: “At whose house are they?”
“Mr. Garrett’s,” Jett said, adding, “I will go there with you, and show where they are now; and you can get them.” Willie Jett proved not only a Judas, but an enthusiastic one: “I told them everything from beginning to end. I said I would pilot them to the house where Booth was.”
Conger realized that Jett would be an invaluable guide. Without him it might be difficult, if not impossible, to locate the Garrett farmhouse in the middle of the night.
“Have you a horse?” Conger asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Get it, and get ready to go!”
Conger sped Jett upstairs under guard to finish dressing. Quickly he put on his shirt and coat and pulled on his boots. By the time he returned to the parlor, the detectives had already sent a black servant to get his horse.
“You say they are on the road to Port Royal?” Conger asked. “Yes, sir,” Jett verified.
Conger could not believe it: “I have just come from there.”
That news surprised the young Confederate: “I thought you came from Richmond: If you have come that way, you have come right past them. I cannot tell you whether they are there now or not.”
Perhaps, when the cavalry thundered past Garrett’s farm several hours ago on its way to Bowling Green, it had spooked Booth and Herold and prompted them to flee elsewhere. That was beyond Jett’s control, he made clear to Detective Baker. It was not his fault if the cavalry had scared off the assassins. The news stunned Baker. A few hours ago, he and the Sixteenth New York had ridden through Port Royal, and then past the farm. The fugitives, Baker guessed, must have heard the pounding hooves of their horses. Booth and Herold had been within his grasp and he had ridden right past them! At around midnight, Conger, Baker, and Doherty, hoping they were not too late, turned the troops around and galloped back to the farm.
Conger, Baker, Doherty, and Jett hurried out of the Star Hotel and mounted their horses. At about 12:30 A.M., Wednesday, April 26, the Sixteenth New York Cavalry headed for Garrett’s farm and, they hoped, a rendezvous with Lincoln’s assassin. Baker warned Jett not to try any tricks: “He shook hands with the Colonel, and promised on his honor as an officer and a gentleman that he would be true to us. We told him that if he deceived us, it would be death to him—we thinking that perhaps it might be his design to lead us into an ambuscade.”
After two hours in the saddle, Jett told Conger that he should slow the column: “We are very near there now to where we go through: let us stop here, and look around.” In the dark, Jett had trouble finding the gate to the road that led to Garrett’s house. Conger ordered the patrol to halt. He and Jett rode on alone. It is just a little way up, Willie reassured him. Conger trotted ahead of Jett. His eyes scanned the dark roadside but detected no opening. All Conger could see was a bushy, unbroken fence line skirting the road. He turned his horse around and retreated. There is no gate, he complained to Jett.
Then it is just a little farther up the road, Booth’s Judas promised. It is hard to judge these distances in the dark. They rode on three hundred yards more, and Baker spurred ahead from the main body to help Conger search for the gate. This time they found it. After unlatching it, Conger sent Baker ahead to find and open the second gate; Jett had told them that it would block their way. Baker vanished into the black night while Conger backtracked to fetch the cavalry. The detective asked Jett a final question: when the cavalry charges down that road, where should they look for the house?
As before, Jett obliged: “I took them to Garrett’s gate and directed them how to go into the house and they went in, leaving me at the gate.”
Conger ordered Jett and Rollins to remain at the gate, guarded by only one trooper. Soon Baker located the last roadside obstacle that separated them from Booth: “We found a gate, fastened by a latch, dismounted, opened the gate, and the command came through, and a charge was ordered.” The Sixteenth New York Cavalry raced up the dirt road and toward the farmhouse.
As the Sixteenth New York closed in on Booth and Herold, the nation did not hold its collective breath, awaiting the exciting climax of the manhunt. Nobody—not Stanton, his officers, the other pursuers, or the press—knew that Conger, Baker, and Doherty had tracked Lincoln’s assassin to Port Royal, and to the Garrett farm. Elsewhere, all over Virginia and Maryland, other manhunters, ignorant of what was happening at Garrett’s farm, continued the chase. In Maryland, S. H. Beckwith, the man whose tip had set in motion the sequence of events that led the Sixteenth New York to Booth’s hiding place, sent, at 1:30 A.M., April 26, another telegram to Major Eckert. The major did not receive it until 8:00 A.M. And Booth had escaped Maryland days ago.
Immediately after reporting to you to-day I proceeded with Major O’Beirne to Bryantown, thence to Turner’s house, where Booth and Herold were seen by two servants to inquire about food, then enter pine thicket about twenty rods distant from house and two miles north from Bryantown. Parties on the ground had been through, losing the track and accomplishing nothing. We at once penetrated the thicket and deployed. After following probable routes I struck the crutch track, and we followed it in a direction circling around toward the piece of timber from which they first issued far enough to justify the belief they are still in same vicinity from which they started, and that while the troops were searching the thicket where they were last seen, they, by taking course above described, gained time to temporarily conceal themselves again. It appears to us from all we can learn that troops have not been pushed through with much system. The colored troops, while deployed and advancing, upon hearing shout on one part line, made rush in that direction, leaving considerable space uncovered. Cavalry has been operating, and tonight has strong line of pickets around timber. I made map to-day for immediate use, but it would have assisted much if we had a county survey map and a compass. I left Major O’Beirne at Bryantown, where he was preparing to cooperate with others and make an early and systematic scouring.
The Sixteenth New York did not need compasses or survey maps. Only a few hundred yards separated them from Booth now.
THE DOGS HEARD IT FIRST. RISING FROM THE SOUTHWEST. Distant sounds, yet inaudible to human ears, of metal touching metal; of a hundred hooves sending vibrations through the earth; of deep, labored breathing from tired horses; of faint human voices. These early warning signs alerted the dogs sleeping under the Garretts’ front porch. At the farm John Garrett, corn-house sentinel, was already awake and became the first one there to hear their approach. William Garrett, lying on a blanket a few feet from his brother, heard them, too.
It was dark and still inside the farmhouse. Old Richard Garrett and the rest of his family had gone to bed hours ago.
All was quiet, too, in the tobacco barn. It was well past midnight, and the Garretts’ unwitting prisoners were asleep. As far as John and William could observe from their hiding place, neither Booth nor Herold stirred during the night, realized their predicament, and tried to escape their rustic jail. The horses were safe, and the suspicious Boyd cousins were trapped. The barking dogs and the clanking, rumbling sound finally woke up Booth. Recognizing the unique music of cavalry on the move, the assassin knew he had only a minute or two to react before it was too late.
Booth woke up Davey fast. The cavalry is here, Booth hissed in a low whisper. The assassin’s groggy companion snapped to attention. They snatched up their weapons and rushed to the front of the barn. “We went right up to the barn door and tried to get out,” recalled Davey, “but found it was locked.” The Garretts had imprisoned them! Booth wasted no time and began trying to pry the lock from its mountings. Every second was precious: they had to flee the barn before Union troops surrounded it. Booth guessed that the riders would move on the farmhouse first. He and Herold had to clear out of the tobacco barn before the cavalrymen turned their attention to the outbuildings. No doubt the treacherous Garrett boys would guide the Yankees to the right one.
Booth wheeled around one hundred and eighty degrees. “Come on!” he called to Davey. The assassin scampered fifty feet to the back wall. “[W]e went directly to the back end of the barn, and we tried to kick a board off so we could crawl out,” witnessed Herold. Booth, impaired by his injury, and hobbled by his crutches, could not leverage his full weight on his left foot to swing a powerful kick with the right. He struck weakly. The board did not give. Davey fared no better. “Let’s kick together!” Booth proposed. They aimed their kicks to strike one board together. Still the iron nails held tight as though cemented into the framing. David Herold was getting worried: “Although we did, our kicks did not do the work.”
THE UNION COLUMN RACED UP THE ROAD AND THREW A CORdon around the Garrett farmhouse. Edward Doherty, Luther Baker, and Everton Conger dropped from their saddles, leapt up the porch, and pounded on the door. Awakened by the commotion, Richard Garrett climbed from his bed and walked downstairs in his nightclothes.
DAVID HEROLD PANICKED: “YOU HAD BETTER GIVE UP,” HE urged Booth.
No, no, the actor declared, “I will suffer death first.”
DOHERTY, BAKER, AND CONGER WAITED IMPATIENTLY ON THE front porch, and the trio pounced as soon as old man Garrett opened the door.
Conger barked first: “Where are the two men who stopped here at your house?”
Startled, Richard Garrett replied vaguely: “They have gone.” “Gone where?” Conger demanded. “Gone to the woods,” explained Garrett.
“What!” Luther Baker interrupted mockingly, “a lame man gone into the woods?”
Well, he had crutches, old Garrett pointed out.
“Will you show me where they are?” Baker continued.
“I will,” Garrett promised, “but I will want my pants and boots.”
Garrett’s interrogators refused to let him back into the house to dress, so his family passed his clothes and boots to him through the door. There on the front porch, in full view of the soldiers, he dressed himself.
Conger decided to play the old man’s game, at least momentarily: “Well, sir, whereabouts in the woods have they gone?”
Garrett began a long-winded story of how the men came there without his consent, that he did not want them to stay, and that …
Enough, Conger interrupted: “I do not want any long story out of you: I just want to know where these men have gone.”
Richard Garrett was afraid, and he babbled his defensive monologue all over again. Conger had heard enough. He turned from the door and spoke gravely to one of his men: “Bring in a lariat rope here, and I will put that man up to the top of one of those locust trees.” Even under the threat of hanging, marveled Conger, Garrett “did not seem inclined to tell.” A soldier went to get the hemp persuader.
John Garrett emerged from the corn house, walked up to the nearest cavalryman, and asked whom they were pursuing. “That I cannot tell you,” the trooper answered mysteriously, telling another soldier to take John to the house. When they got near the house, John saw Doherty, Conger, and Baker on the front porch talking to his father. Spotting John Garrett, Conger bellowed to his soldier escort, “Where did you get this man from?” John Garrett spoke up and came to the rescue of his tongue-tied father.
“Don’t hurt the old man: He is scared. I will tell you where the men are you want to find,” he said.
“That is what I want to know,” said an exasperated Conger. “Where are they?”
Before John had time to answer, Doherty seized him by the collar, pushed him down the steps, put a revolver to his head, and ordered him to tell him where the assassins were.
“In the barn,” John Garrett cried out. The two men are in the barn.
Not good enough, warned Conger: “There are three rooms around here, the tobacco-house and two corn houses; if you don’t tell me the exact house he is in, your life will pay the forfeit.”
They are in the tobacco barn, divulged Garrett.
“Show me the barn,” Doherty commanded.
BOOTH AND HEROLD HEARD THE SOLDIERS RUSH AND SURround the barn. Maybe stealth could save them just once more, like it had served them in the pine thicket. Booth hushed Herold to remain silent and motionless: “Don’t make any noise,” he whispered, “maybe they will go off thinking we are not here.” Conger, close to the barn now, heard someone moving around inside, rustling the hay. It was David Herold walking about, failing to heed Booth’s orders to take cover and, stupidly, revealing that they were in the barn.
THE LEADERS OF THE SIXTEENTH NEW YORK EXPEDITION WERE not done with John Garrett. They had a special mission for him. Luther Baker summoned John to his side and pointed to the tobacco house: “You must go in to the barn, and get the arms from those men.” Garrett objected to the suicidal plan. Ignoring his reaction, Baker went on: “They know you, and you can go in.” Yes, Booth and Herold did know John Garrett—as the man who ordered them out of his house, refused them the comfort of a bed, and locked them in the barn. That is precisely why he refused Baker’s request. He had seen Booth’s weapons and knew he would not hesitate to exact vengeance for Garrett’s inhospitality and betrayal. No, he would not be the assassin’s last victim.
Perhaps Garrett did not understand, Baker explained to him, that this mission was not optional: “I want you to go into that barn and demand the surrender of the arms that man has and bring them out to me. Unless you do it, I will burn your property.” Baker didn’t mean just the tobacco barn. He meant it all—house, barn, corn houses, and stables. Either John went in, or Baker would “end this affair with a bonfire and shooting match.”
By now William Garrett had also emerged from the cover of the corn house and joined his brother near the tobacco barn. William, who had imprisoned the fugitives, pulled the key from his pocket and surrendered it to Baker.
Baker stepped forward and shouted to John Wilkes Booth: “We are going to send this man, on whose premises you are, in to get your arms; and you must come out, and deliver yourselves up.” Booth said nothing. It might be a trick, he considered. He readied himself for a dismounted charge by more than twenty cavalrymen the moment the door opened. Baker, key in hand, strode right up to the barn door. He stood within close range of Booth’s pistols now. Baker inserted the key, turned the lock, and, slowly, opened the door a little. Booth remained invisible, hiding just several yards away in the black, inner recesses of the barn. He saw movement. He held his pistols tightly, fingers in the trigger guards, thumbs ready to cock the hammers of the single-action Colts. But he held his fire. Baker seized John Garrett and half guided, half pushed him through the door and closed it behind him.
John Garrett stood alone, in the dark, at the mercy of Lincoln’s killer. He spoke timidly to the unseen fugitives, reporting that “the barn was surrounded, that resistance was useless, and that [you] had better come out and deliver [yourself] up.”
A growling, tenor voice, dripping with malice, echoed from the darkness in reply: “You have implicated me.”
Garrett tried to reason with them: “Gentlemen, the cavalry are after you. You are the ones. You had better give yourselves up.”
Then, like a ghostly apparition, John Wilkes Booth’s pale, haunting visage emerged from the void, like a luminous portrait floating on a black canvas. Then he exploded: “Damn you! You have betrayed me! If you don’t get out of here I will shoot you! Get out of this barn at once!” Garrett glimpsed Booth’s right hand in motion. The assassin, while cursing Garrett, slowly reached behind his back for one of his revolvers.
Like Harry Hawk had done on the stage of Ford’s Theatre after Booth jumped from the president’s box, a terrified John Garrett turned and ran, escaped the barn, and nearly leapt into Conger’s arms. Booth was going to kill him, Garrett pleaded.
Conger was skeptical: “How do you know he was going to shoot you?”
Because, Garrett claimed in a tremulous voice, “he reached down to the hay behind him to get his revolver.” He had come out of the barn just in time, he insisted.
Finally, at the climax of a twelve-day manhunt that had gripped the nation, a heavily armed patrol of Sixteenth New York Cavalry had actually cornered Lincoln’s assassin. The situation demanded decisive action, but, at the critical moment, Conger and the others hesitated. Instead of ordering their men to rush the barn and take Booth, they decided to talk him out, and then they delegated the job to a solitary, unarmed man, a civilian—and an ex-rebel soldier, no less—to negotiate Booth’s surrender. It was a clear abdication of command responsibility. Twenty-six cavalrymen, each armed with a six-shot revolver, not counting other weapons, could pour a fusillade of 156 conical lead pistol bullets into the barn before having to reload. In response, Booth could fire a mere 12 rounds from the revolvers and 7 from the Spencer carbine. He wouldn’t have time to reload. Or the troops could, without warning, before they fired a shot, charge the barn and try to take Booth by surprise. In the dark, and in the few seconds before they seized him, Booth could not pick off more than a few of them before he was subdued. Stanton wanted Booth alive for questioning.
Why did they hesitate? If brave Union men could charge Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg in December 1862 and suffer several thousand casualties, and if the valiant regiments of the Army of Northern Virginia could make the disastrous, suicidal Pickett’s charge on the third day at Gettysburg, why couldn’t twenty-six soldiers, under the cloak of darkness, charge two civilians hiding in a barn? Surely the honor of capturing Lincoln’s assassin was worth the risk of a few casualties.
Even after John Garrett’s ill-advised, failed mission, Doherty, Conger, and Baker dithered, pursuing a strategy of talk, not action. The trio deputized Baker as their spokesman. Baker shouted an ultimatum to the occupants: “I want you to surrender. If you don’t, I will burn this barn down in fifteen minutes.” If the fugitives refused to come out voluntarily, he resolved, then the flames would drive them out. Baker, Conger, and Doherty awaited an answer. It was 2:30 A.M., Wednesday, April 26. From the time the Sixteenth New York arrived at Garrett’s farm until this moment, the fugitives had not spoken one word to their pursuers. Then came the first contact.
A voice speaking from inside the barn bellowed three pointed questions: “Who are you?” “What do you want?” “Whom do you want?”
It was John Wilkes Booth. The assassin stepped to the front of the tobacco barn and peered through a space between two boards, eyeballing his counterpart, whom he took, mistakenly, as an army captain.
“We want you,” Baker replied, “and we know who you are. Give up your arms and come out!”
Booth stalled to preserve his options: “Let us have a little time to consider it.”
Surprisingly, Baker agreed to the delay: “Very well.”
Ten or fifteen minutes elapsed without communication between the parties. But the manhunters maintained a keen vigil on all four of the barn walls to ensure that their prey did not slip out unnoticed through a crevice between the boards.
In the meantime, Booth and David Herold got into a heated argument. Davey had no more fight left in him. “I am sick and tired of this way of living,” he had complained to his idol on the afternoon of the twenty-fifth, less than twelve hours ago. Herold had convinced himself, naively, that once he talked his way out of trouble the soldiers would send him home. After all, in his mind, he wasn’t guilty of anything. Booth killed Lincoln, and Powell stabbed Seward. Davey just came along for the ride. Booth could roast alive in the tobacco barn if he chose, but not him. “You don’t choose to give yourself up, let me go out and give myself up,” Herold proposed.
“No, you shall not do it,” Booth growled in a low voice, so that the soldiers hovering on the other side of the boards could not hear him.
Herold implored Booth to release him from the assassin’s service, speaking so loudly that some of the soldiers heard his begging.
Herold started for the door, but Booth menaced him: “[H]e threatened to shoot me and blow his brains out,” Herold complained. Furious, the actor denounced his hitherto faithful companion: “You damned coward! Will you leave me now? Go, go! I would not have you stay with me.”
Baker, counting down the minutes on his pocket watch, shouted to Booth that he was running out of time. Only five minutes more, and he would torch the barn.
aGAIN, BOOTH ASKED: “WHO ARE YOU? AND WHAT DO YOU want?”
Before Baker could reply, Conger took him aside, out of earshot, and suggested how to continue the negotiations: “Do not by any remark made to him allow him to know who we are: you need not tell him who we are. If he thinks we are rebels, or thinks we are his friends, we will take advantage of it. We will not lie to him about it; but we need not answer any question that has any reference to that subject, but simply insist on his coming out, if he will.”
Baker agreed with Conger, telling Booth: “It doesn’t make any difference who we are: we know who you are, and we want you. We want to take you prisoners.”
Booth corrected him. There was no more than one prisoner available for the taking: “I am alone, there is no one with me.”
Baker rebuked the assassin: “We know that two men were in there and two must come out.” Conger worked his way around the barn’s perimeter to select the best place to light the fire.
“This is a hard case,” Booth confided to Baker, “it may be I am to be taken by my friends.” That assassin held the forlorn hope that soldiers surrounding the barn were Confederate, not Union.
“I am going,” insisted Davey. “I don’t intend to be burned alive.”
Booth relented. Forcing Davey to share his fate would serve no purpose. And it would be wrong. Herold had had several chances to abandon Booth during the manhunt—in Washington on assassination night, in the pine thicket, or during the night the assassin slept alone at Garrett’s farm. But on every occasion, the loyal Herold returned to share Booth’s fate. Almost certainly, Booth must have concluded that it would be ungrateful, even ungallant, to deny his young follower the chance to live. When others had betrayed Booth, Herold had stuck by him. It was harsh to call him “coward” now. This was the last act. It was time to claim center stage alone. The actor called out to Baker: “Oh Captain—there is a man here who wants to surrender awful bad.”
Too excited to remain silent, Lieutenant Doherty blurted out: “Hand out your arms.” Yes, chimed Baker almost simultaneously, “Let him hand out his arms.”
Their demands perplexed Herold. Would they refuse his surrender until he first handed over Booth’s firearms? His master might let him go, but Davey knew that Booth would never give up his guns. “I have none,” Herold pleaded.
Doherty did not believe him: “Hand out your arms, and you can come out.”
“I have no arms,” Herold whimpered, “let me out.”
Luther Baker scoffed at Herold’s stubborn denials: “We know exactly what you have got.” The Garretts, helpfully, had provided Baker and the other officers with a complete inventory of the fugitives’ arms and equipment: two revolvers, one Spencer repeating carbine, one Bowie knife, a pistol belt, a couple of blankets, and the clothes on their backs. “You carried a carbine,” Baker insisted, “and you must hand it out.”
This back-and-forth bickering over the arms devolved into comedy, with one officer and two detectives proving themselves too incompetent to consummate the peaceful, willing surrender of Lincoln’s assassin and his guide. Booth spoke up to end the impasse: “The arms are mine; and I have got them.”
Baker disputed the assassin: “This man carried a carbine, and he must hand it out.”
Booth argued back: “Upon the word and honor of a gentleman, he has no arms: the arms are mine, and I have got them.” And he would not give them up. “I own all the arms and intend to use them on you gentlemen.” As this wore on, Booth reminded the nitpicking officers that “There is a man in here who wants to come out.”
Yes, Herold affirmed: “Let me out, quick; I do not know anything about this man, he is a desperate character, and he is going to shoot me.”
Booth supported Herold’s charade: “Let him out; that young man is innocent.”
Enough, reasoned Lieutenant Doherty. If they can persuade one of the fugitives to come out of the barn without a fight, why not forget the arms, wait no more, and take the man? The lieutenant turned to Baker:
“We had better let him out.”
“No,” the detective countered, “wait until Mr. Conger comes here.”
Well, where is he? Doherty demanded. Out of sight, at the back of the barn, preparing to set it on fire. Then they wouldn’t wait, Doherty decided.
But Baker resisted his logic: “I ought not to let this man out without consulting him.”
“No: Open that door!” Doherty commanded one of his troopers. “I will take that man out myself.”
The lieutenant positioned himself to the side, not in front of, the door. If he stayed out of the line of fire, Booth could not see—or shoot—him when he opened the door for Herold’s exit. Inches apart, separated only by the width of the barn wall, Doherty and Herold could hear each other’s breathing. They caught glimpses of each other through the spaces that divided the boards.
Then, in the last seconds before David Herold left the barn, Booth whispered the last words exchanged between them: “When you go out, don’t tell them the arms I have.”
“Whoever you are, come out with your hands up,” a voice outside the barn shouted.
Davey turned away from Booth and faced the door, now ajar and ready for his passage from fugitive to captive. Doherty ordered Herold not to walk through the door just yet. First he wanted to see his hands to confirm that he was unarmed. The lieutenant told Davey to thrust only one hand through the doorframe. The frightened youth complied, and in a moment Doherty saw a spot of open-palmed, white flesh protruding through the entryway. The lieutenant signaled Davey to send through the other hand. It, too, was empty.
Doherty sprung to the door, seized Herold by the wrists, and yanked hard, pulling him forward through the doorway, and throwing him off balance. Davey’s captor tucked his revolver under his armpit, ran both his hands down Herold’s body to see if he had any hidden arms, and found none. Then he asked Herold, “Have you got any weapons at all about you?”
“Nothing at all but this,” swore Davey, pulling out a piece of paper, a torn fragment of a map, which Doherty put in his pocket. The lieutenant grabbed Herold by the collar and, like a schoolmaster taking an errant pupil by the scruff, marched him away from the barn.
So far the operation at Garrett’s farm was no model of a small unit action. One army officer and two military detectives vying for the command of twenty-six enlisted men had barely accomplished the surrender of the assassin’s harmless cat’s-paw. Herold had managed to surrender in spite of the disagreements and competition for authority among the hunters. Now Doherty, Baker, and Conger faced a bigger problem. John Wilkes Booth remained in that barn, heavily armed and waiting for their next move. Yes, they possessed certain advantages. The assassin was at bay, surrounded, and outnumbered twenty-six to one. Escape from the tobacco barn seemed impossible. But then, so did escape from an audience of more than one thousand people at Ford’s Theatre. Like Macbeth, Booth could not fly away from Garrett’s farm but, like the doomed, baited bear, he remained lethal.
Booth had died onstage dozens of times in Richard III, Hamlet, and Shakespeare’s other great tragedies, but tonight he was not playacting. He wanted to go down fighting, not hang like a petty thief. “I have too great a soul to die like a criminal,” he wrote in his diary a few nights before. “Oh may he, may he spare me that and let me die bravely.” For Booth, this was his final and greatest performance, not just for the small audience of soldiers at the improvised theatre of Garrett’s farm, but also for history.
He had already perpetrated the most flamboyant public murder in American history. Indeed, Booth had not only committed murder, he had performed it, fully staged before a packed house. At Ford’s Theatre, Booth broke the fourth wall between artist and audience by creating a new, dark art—performance assassination. Tonight he would script his own end with a performance that equaled his triumph at Ford’s Theatre.
Their negotiations with the assassin had not gone well. They demanded Booth’s immediate surrender, but he persuaded them to give him more time. They demanded that Herold turn over at least one of the weapons, but Booth claimed property rights over the arms and released Davey to them empty-handed. Now he had all the guns, and, in addition, like Jim Bowie at the Alamo twenty-nine years before, a deadly knife for the close combat of last resort. Booth—not Doherty, Baker, or Conger—was setting the agenda at Garrett’s farm.
In certain respects, Booth enjoyed three significant tactical advantages over the Sixteenth New York Cavalry: he occupied a fortified position, but they had to come in and get him; they were deployed in the open around the barn and could not see him, but he remained hidden and could see them; they wanted Booth alive and did not want to be killed by him, but he was ready to die, and to take some of them with him. Moreover, the ticking clock favored the assassin. In a few hours, morning’s first light would illuminate the manhunters and render them perfect targets. At this close range, the Spencer carbine was an outstanding sniper’s weapon. Booth could hardly miss.
Frustrated, Doherty wanted to wait until morning, but Baker and Conger argued forcefully against that. As soon as the sun rose, they reasoned, Booth could see the whole troop and open fire. Sunrise would transform this pastoral setting into a killing field. One of Doherty’s sergeants, Boston Corbett, volunteered for a suicide mission: he would slip into the barn alone and fight Booth man-to-man: “I offered to Mr. Conger, the detective officer, and to Lieut. Doherty, separately, to go into the barn and take him or fight him—saying if he killed me his weapons would then be empty, and they could easily take him alive.” Three times Corbett volunteered to charge in alone; and each time Doherty vetoed that harebrained scheme and ordered Corbett back to his position. Corbett was, no doubt, the most eccentric character under Doherty’s command.
A quirky English immigrant who adopted the name “Boston” to honor the city in which he found Christ, thirty-two-year-old Thomas Corbett proved to be a hard fighter and a reliable noncommissioned officer. A hatter before the Civil War, he had performed a bizarre, horrific act of self-mutilation when tempted by fallen women. The records of Massachusetts General Hospital chronicled the gruesome event: “[Corbett] is a Methodist, and having perused the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters of Matthew, he took a pair of scissors and made an opening one inch long in the lower part of the scrotum. He then drew the testes down and cut them off. He then went to a prayer meeting, walked about some, and ate a hearty dinner. There was not much external hemorrhage, but a clot had filled the opening so that the blood was confined to the scrotum, which was swelled enormously and was black. He called on Dr. Hodges … who laid it open and removed the blood; he tied the cord and sent him here.”
Conger and Baker wanted to burn the barn. The searing flames and choking smoke would do the job for them, at no risk to the men. Indeed, the only danger would be to the men who had to get close enough to the barn to lay the kindling against the timbers. Booth might be able to shove his pistol into the four inches of space between each board and shoot them through the head at point-blank range. They thought about the risk involved and concluded that it didn’t have to fall to their own men.
Conger sent for the Garrett sons. He had one more job for them, he explained: collect a few armfuls of straw and pile them against the side of the barn. John Garrett roamed the grounds but could not find any fresh straw. It was all in the tobacco barn with Booth, he told Conger. Then find something else that will burn, the detective ordered. John Garrett gathered pine twigs and set them next to the barn. He returned with a second armful and bent low to arrange the pile. The rustling sound alerted Booth, who rushed to the site of the noise. Garrett jumped when he heard that familiar, menacing voice address him from the other side, just a foot or two away: “Young man, I advise you for your own good not to come here again.” It was Booth’s second warning to him that night. There would not be a third, the assassin promised: “If you do not leave at once I will shoot you.” Quickly, John Garrett dropped the pine kindling and retreated out of pistol range.
If they were gathering kindling, Booth realized, the manhunters did not plan on waiting until sunrise. They were going to burn the barn, and soon, probably. Booth decided to retake the initiative and stall the fire. He challenged his pursuers to honorable combat on open ground.
“Captain,” he called out to Baker, “I know you to be a brave man, and I believe you to be honorable: I am a cripple.” Booth’s tantalizing admission thrilled every man who heard it. They had suspected, but were not absolutely sure, that the man in the barn was John Wilkes Booth. They had received reports that Lincoln’s assassin was lame, and the Garretts told them that Mr. Boyd had a broken leg. Now the man in the barn confirmed it. “I have got but one leg,” Booth continued. “If you will withdraw your men in ‘line’ one hundred yards from the door, I will come out and fight you.”
As a sign of good faith Booth revealed that he had chosen, at least up to now, to spare Baker’s life: “Captain, I consider you to be a brave and honorable man; I have had half a dozen opportunities to shoot you, but I did not.”
Baker’s eyes darted to the burning candle he held improvidently in his hand. The assassin told the truth! Conger suggested that Baker relieve himself of the inviting target immediately: “When Conger said it was presumptuous in me to hold the candle, as Booth might shoot me, I set the candle down about twenty feet from the door.”
This was better than Shakespeare. Lincoln’s assassin had just challenged twenty-six men, a lieutenant, and two detectives to a duel. Or was it, in Booth’s mind, a knightly trial by combat, with victory the reward to the just? Baker declined the glove: “We did not come here to fight you, we simply came to make you a prisoner. We do not want any fight with you.” Neither did Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who, back in Washington, awaited news from the manhunters. He wanted the assassin alive to interrogate him and expose fully the secrets of his grand conspiracy. Stanton, convinced that officials at the highest levels of the government of the Confederate States of America had participated in the assassination, wanted Booth to name his coplotters. If Booth was dead, that would satisfy the nation’s lust for vengeance, but not Stanton’s curiosity. It was far better, the secretary of war believed, to take Booth alive. There would be plenty of time to hang him later, after the trial.
Booth repeated his challenge but reduced the distance to offer more generous odds to his opponents: “If you’ll take your men fifty yards from the door, I’ll come out and fight you. Give me a chance for my life.”
Again Baker declined.
“Well, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me!” Booth jauntily replied.
Conger made up his mind and turned to Baker: “We will fire the barn.”
“Yes,” his fellow detective agreed, “the quicker the better.”
Conger bent over and lit the kindling. The pine twigs and needles, mixed with a little hay and highly combustible, burst into flames that licked the dry, weathered boards. Soon the barn’s boards and timbers caught fire, and within minutes an entire corner of the barn blazed brightly. The fire illuminated the yard with a yellow-orange glow that flickered eerily across the faces of the men of the Sixteenth. Booth could see them clearly now, but held his fire.
As the fire gathered momentum, it also lit the inside of the barn so that now, for the first time, the soldiers could see their quarry in the gaps between the slats. Booth made a halfhearted attempt to suppress the flames by overturning a table upon them, but that only fueled the rapidly advancing inferno. The assassin was trapped. He had three choices: stay in the barn and burn alive; raise a pistol barrel—probably the .44 caliber with its heavier round to do the job right—to his head and blow out his brains; or script his own blaze of glory by hobbling out the front door and doing battle with the manhunters, welcoming death but risking capture. When Booth was a boy, he prophesied to his sister, Asia, the manner of his death: “I am not to drown, hang, or burn.” He had been right so far. He had crossed the Potomac River safely. He would not stay in the barn and die by fire. Nor would he allow himself to be taken and strangle from the rope. Suicide? Never that shameful end, Booth vowed to himself. Richard III did not commit suicide, Macbeth did not die by his own hand, not Brutus, nor Tell. Neither would he. No, no, he must fight the course. And if he must perish, he would die in full struggle against his enemies.
Booth had decided it was better to die than be taken back to Washington to face justice. He had seen a man hanged before. In 1859, he caught the train to Charlestown, Virginia, to witness the execution of abolitionist John Brown, condemned for his ill-fated raid on Harper’s Ferry. He had seen Brown driven to the scaffold in a horse-drawn cart, like a piece of meat carried off to market. He watched as Brown ascended the stairs to the platform, was bound, and had the sack pulled over his head. He saw the hangman loop the noose around Brown’s neck, and then leave the old man standing in suspense for several minutes until the drop fell. Brown twitched a little, and then it was over. When they cut him down his face was purple.
No, Booth vowed, the prophecy was true. He must not be captured and hanged. The spectacle of a trial would put him on public display for the amusement of the gentlemen of the press and the idle curiosity seekers sure to flock to the proceedings. But he would not command the courtroom as his stage. He would be allowed no press interviews; no dramatic courtroom declarations about his beloved South, Lincoln the tyrant, his dreams, or his motives; and, under prevailing legal customs of the time, no opportunity to speak at all. In the theatre of Booth’s trial, the main character would be mute. Lincoln’s assassin would be a silent star, seen, but never heard. It would be hard for the voluble, loquacious thespian to bear.
Nor did Booth wish to endure the rituals of the scaffold: the indignity of being bound and trussed, of walking past his own coffin and the open grave, of being stripped of his shoes so that they did not rocket off his feet when his body jerked at the end of the rope. The bodily humiliations were even worse: the swollen tongue, burst blood vessels in the eyeballs, unloosed kidneys and bowels, and a blackened, blood-bruised, rope-burned neck. This shameful death of a common criminal was not for him.
“I have too great a soul to die like a criminal.” Garrett’s Farm, April 26, 1865.
And he would have to share the scaffold-stage with his supporting cast of coconspirators. It was far better, Booth decided, to perish here—if he must die tonight. He was dictating the action, and his pursuers responding to his improvised performance.
Booth moved to the center of the barn, where he stood awkwardly balancing the carbine in one hand, a pistol in the other, and a crutch under one arm. He swiveled his head in every direction, measuring how quickly the flames were engulfing him and hoping for a miracle. He glanced toward the door and hopped forward, a crutch under his left arm and in his right hand the Spencer carbine, the butt plate balanced against his hip. “One more stain on the old banner,” Booth cried out, conjuring up the Stars and Bars Confederate battle flag, perhaps imagining his own patriotic blood mingling with the vast ocean spilled by the South’s quarter million dead.
Unseen by Booth, Sergeant Boston Corbett watched the assassin’s every move inside the barn: “Immediately when the fire was lit … I could see him, but he could not see me.” Corbett had, by stealth, without Booth seeing him, walked up to one side of the barn and peeked between one of the four-inch gaps that separated each of the barn wall’s vertical boards. As the flames grew brighter, Corbett could see Booth clearly: the assassin “turn[ed] towards the fire, either to put the fire out, or else to shoot the one who started it, I do not know which; but he was then coming right towards me … a little to my right,—a full breast view.” Now Booth was within easy range of Corbett’s pistol. But the sergeant held his fire: “I could have shot him … but as long as he was there, making no demonstration to hurt any one, I did not shoot him, but kept my eye upon him steadily.” He saw Booth reach the middle of the barn and face the door.
Outside the barn, Conger, Baker, and Doherty, and the cavalrymen posted near the door tensed for action. No man could endure those hot flames and choking smoke for long, and they expected the door to swing open at any moment and see Booth emerge, either with his hands up or his pistols blazing.
Corbett’s eyes followed their prey as Booth got closer to the door. By now the sergeant had drawn his pistol. Booth moved again and leveled the carbine against his hip, as though he was preparing to bring it into firing position. Corbett poked the barrel of his revolver through the slit in the wall and aimed it at Booth. The sergeant described what happened next:
“Finding the fire gaining upon him, he turned to the other side of the barn and got towards where the door was; and, as he got there, I saw him make a movement towards the floor. I supposed he was going to fight his way out. One of the men who was watching told me that [Booth] aimed his carbine at him. He was taking aim with the carbine, but at whom I could not say. My mind was upon him attentively to see that he did no harm; and, when I became impressed that it was time, I shot him. I took steady aim on my arm, and shot him through a large crack in the barn.”
The soldiers surrounding the barn heard one shot. Instantly Booth dropped the carbine and crumpled to his knees. His brain commanded movement but his body disobeyed. He could not rise. He could not lift his arms. He could not move at all.
Like sprinters cued by a starting gun, Baker rushed into the barn with Conger at his heels. Baker caught Booth before he toppled over and Conger seized the assassin’s pistol, which the actor grasped so tightly that the detective had to twist it to pry it out of his hand.
“It is Booth, certainly,” Conger cried jubilantly.
Baker glared disapprovingly: “What on earth did you shoot him for?”
“I did not shoot him,” Conger protested, “he has shot himself!” Conger stared at the assassin: “Is he dead? Did he shoot himself?” “No, he did not, either,” said Baker.
Conger raised Booth up and asked, “Where is he shot?” Conger searched for the wound: “Where-about is he shot?—in the head or neck?” Conger examined Booth’s neck and found a hole where blood was running out. “Yes sir,” Conger deduced, “he shot himself.”
“No he did not,” Baker insisted.
As soon as Lieutenant Doherty heard the shot he ran for the barn, dragging David Herold with him. By the time they entered, the two detectives and several soldiers were hovering over Booth in the middle of a burning barn, and carrying on an animated argument about the origin of the wound. There were better places to continue the debate, suggested Conger: “Let us carry him out of here: this place will soon be burning.” They lifted Booth from the floor, carried him under the locust trees a few yards from the door, and laid him on the grass.
Doherty took Herold with him out of the barn. The sight of his master on the ground, apparently dead, threw Davey into a panic of irrational babbling: “Let me go away; let me go around here,” he pleaded. “I will not leave; I will not go away.” Herold’s whining would not have surprised Lewis Powell, who called him a “little blab.” “I was never satisfied with him myself,” Powell told Major Eckert, “and so expressed myself to Booth.”
“No sir,” responded the lieutenant.
Feigning ignorance, Davey asked him, “Who is that that has been shot in the barn?”
Incredulous, Doherty cut him off: “Why, you know well who it is!” Herold elaborated his alibi: “No, I do not. He told me his name was Boyd.”
Doherty had heard enough: “It is Booth; and you know it.”
Davey persisted in his denials: “No; I did not know it; I did not know that it was Booth.” In captivity, the assassin’s disciple denied him thrice.
From under the locust trees, Conger looked back at the barn. If they could save it, perhaps they might preserve vital evidence of the crime: “I went back into the barn immediately to see if the fire could be put down, and tried somewhat myself to put it down; but I could not, it was burning so fast; and there was no water, and nothing to help with.” John Garrett ran into the barn and joined the effort, rallying several troopers by yelling, “Boys, let us extinguish the fire.” Like Conger, he surrendered to the inevitable: “The soldiers ran and threw furniture and stuff on the fire, but it was too late.”
Conger left the barn and went back to the locust trees. Gazing down on Booth’s broken body, “I supposed him to be dead. He had all the appearance of a dead man.” But, like the stricken William Seward, who looked to his doctor like “an exsanguinated corpse,” John Wilkes Booth’s life force rallied. He opened his eyes and moved his lips.
Conger called for water, and a soldier offered the contents of his tin, government-issue canteen. Baker produced a crude tin cup, an indispensable utensil common to the baggage of nearly every soldier, North and South, in the war. They splashed some of the cool, reviving water on Booth’s face, and he tried to speak. They poured a little into his mouth, and he spit it out. The assassin could not swallow the liquid: he was almost completely paralyzed. Again he moved his lips and tried to speak. With great concentration and labored effort, Booth’s vocal cords emitted a barely audible whisper. For the first time in his life, the great thespian and raconteur was at a loss for words, his great stage voice silenced by the bullet that had passed through his neck and spinal column.
Conger and Baker bent down close to Booth’s reclining body, tilted their heads, and jutted their ears close to his mouth. Booth formed words with his lips but produced no sounds. Finally, after several attempts, Lincoln’s assassin spoke: “Tell mother, I die for my country.” It was hard to hear his faint voice above the roar of the crackling fire, the shouts of the men, and the neighing, snorting horses. Conger wanted desperately to confirm the accuracy of what Booth had said. These might be the assassin’s historic last words, and they must be reported to the nation exactly as Booth said them. Moreover, Secretary of War Stanton would demand a full accounting of the events at Garrett’s barn, including Booth’s every word.
Enunciating each syllable slowly and clearly so that Booth could understand him, Conger repeated the phrase verbatim: “Is that what you say?” the detective asked.
“Yes,” faintly whispered the assassin.
The tobacco barn was now fully ablaze, and the inferno radiated an intense, searing heat that threatened to combust the locust trees where Booth and his captors reposed. The horses, even though the soldiers had picketed or tied them a good distance away before firing the barn, were growing increasingly restive as the flames intensified. The detectives shouted for everyone to retreat to the Garrett house. Several men seized Booth by the arms, shoulders, and legs, raised his limp body from the ground, and marched in quick time to the farmhouse. They climbed up the stairs and laid Booth flat on the wood-planked piazza, near the bench where, over the past two days, he had sat, smoked, napped, conversed, and planned the next leg of his escape. Blood, seeping from the entry and exit wounds in his neck, pooled under his head and stained several of the floorboards. To relieve Booth’s suffering, the Garrett girls carried an old straw mattress from the house and laid it on the porch. Conger and the others folded the soft, pliable bedding in half and laid Booth’s head and shoulders on it. Lucinda Holloway carried out a pillow and, gently, placed it under his head.
Doherty brought David Herold to the porch and gave him an order: “Come stand by the house.” The officer did not have any wrist or leg irons to shackle Davey, so he improvised with a material that every cavalry unit rode with in ample supply: rope. Doherty bound Herold’s hands with a picket rope and tied him to a locust tree about two yards from where Booth’s body lay. Doherty kept Davey tied there until they were ready to return to Washington. This position, only six feet from Booth’s body, gave Herold a front-row seat for the climax of the chase for Lincoln’s killer.
ONCE BOOTH WAS ON THE PORCH, CONGER OBSERVED, HE “REvived considerably. He could then talk so as to be intelligibly understood, in a whisper; [but] he could not speak above a whisper.” The great, theatrical, tenor voice that once projected beyond the proscenium arch and filled the halls of Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore, and Richmond had been hushed and could no longer be heard past the first row.
Booth whispered for water and Conger and Baker gave it to him. He asked them to roll him over and turn him facedown. Booth was in agony and wanted to shift positions but was helpless to move himself. Conger thought it a bad idea to roll him over: “You cannot lie on your face.” Then at least turn him on his side, the assassin pleaded. They did, but Conger saw that the move did not relieve Booth’s suffering: “We turned him upon his side three times…. He could not lie with any comfort, and wanted to be turned immediately back.” Baker noticed it, too: “He seemed to suffer extreme pain whenever he was moved, and would scowl, and would several times repeat ‘Kill me.’ “
Booth wanted to cough but the bullet had severed the communication between his brain and his throat. He asked Conger to put his hand upon his throat, and press down. The detective complied, but nothing happened.
“Harder,” Booth instructed Conger.
“I pressed down as hard as I thought necessary, and he made very strong exertions to cough, but was unable to do so—no muscular exertion could be made.”
Conger, guessing that Booth feared some asphyxiating obstruction was stuck in his throat, told Booth to let him inspect it: “Open your mouth, and put out your tongue, and I will see if it bleeds.” Conger reassured Booth: “There is no blood in your throat; it has not gone through any part of it there.”
“Kill me,” Booth implored the soldiers. “Kill me, kill me!”
“We don’t want to kill you,” Conger comforted him, “we want you to get well.”
Conger spoke sincerely. They wanted Booth alive so they could bring him back to Washington as a prize for Edwin Stanton. Stanton and others were certain that Booth was merely the agent of a Confederate conspiracy. Indeed, President Andrew Johnson would soon issue another reward proclamation, this one for Jefferson Davis and other Confederate officials, naming them as assassination conspirators. Davis, currently the object of another manhunt, had fled Richmond for the Confederate interior as part of a desperate attempt to continue the war using Southern armies that had not yet surrendered to Union forces. Sam Arnold and Mike O’Laughlen had already confessed everything they knew about the plot. If Booth talked, too, he might give invaluable testimony that implicated the highest officials of the Confederacy.
But thanks to somebody under his command, it was obvious to Conger that John Wilkes Booth was not going back to Washington alive. Who fired that shot? Conger demanded to know. Baker asked him if he knew who did it.
“No, but I will,” vowed Conger.
Conger walked away in search of the trigger-happy trooper. He returned soon but, it appeared to Baker, empty-handed. “Where is the man?”
Conger laughed aloud and replied, “I guess we had better let Providence and the Secretary of War take care of him.”
Conger explained to the puzzled Baker what had happened. When he went off to find Booth’s killer, Boston Corbett came forward, snapped to attention, saluted Conger, and proclaimed, “Colonel, Providence directed me.”
Corbett made the same confession to his commanding officer, Lieutenant Doherty. “Providence directed my hand.” Corbett claimed that he had not shot Booth for vengeance, but because he believed the assassin was about to open fire on the soldiers. He did it to protect the lives of his fellow troopers, he insisted. And, Corbett continued, he did not intend to kill Booth. He only wanted to inflict a disabling wound to render the assassin helpless, for capture. And he did not violate any orders from his superiors. The men of the Sixteenth New York had not been ordered to hold their fire. Indeed, Conger, Baker, and Doherty had failed to give them any orders at all on the subject. Corbett exercised his own discretion as a noncommissioned officer and shot Booth: “It was not through fear at all that I shot him, but because it was my impression that it was time the man was shot; for I thought he would do harm to our men in trying to fight his way out of that den if I did not.”
Dr. Charles Urquhart, a local physician summoned by Doherty and Baker, arrived on the scene and examined Booth for ten or fifteen minutes. His new patient lapsed in and out of consciousness during the examination. Distracted and confused by the surreal scenes, the befuddled Urquhart said that the wound was nonfatal, then reversed his diagnosis: the wound was mortal; it was impossible for Booth to recover.
Several soldiers compared the location of Booth’s fatal wound with the location of Lincoln’s wound. Perhaps, they marveled, God’s justice directed Corbett’s bullet to the back of the assassin’s head. Corbett, too, wondered at the coincidence: “[W]hile Booth’s body lay before me, yet alive, but wounded, and when I saw that the bullet had struck him just back of the ear, about the same spot that his bullet hit Mr. Lincoln, I said within myself, ‘what a fearful God we serve.’ “Later, Corbett recalled a prayer he had led at a chapel in Washington before he joined the manhunt: “O Lord, lay not innocent blood to our charge, but bring the guilty speedily to punishment.”
Booth noticed Willie Jett standing nearby. After Booth had been shot, the trooper guarding him near the roadside gate brought him up to the house. The sight of the unfaithful young Confederate agitated Booth.
“Did that man betray me?” Booth asked Conger.
Conger evaded the question: “We have taken him prisoner.”
“Did Jett betray me?” Booth asked Baker.
“Oh,” answered Baker, “never mind anything about Jett.”
Conger began rifling Booth’s pockets, turning them inside out. “[H]e looked up,” admitted Conger, “and knew what was being done.” Conger unfolded a handkerchief and laid it neatly next to Booth. On it he placed the contents of the assassin’s pockets. “I took his diary, these bills of exchange, money, keys, compass, shavings, tobacco, and a little knife.” From Booth’s undershirt he yanked a special prize: a handsome stickpin, “a stone set in jet and gold,” Conger described it, engraved “Dan Bryant to J.W. Booth.” Two years earlier the famous blackface comedian and Booth had exchanged gifts: Booth gave Bryant a flask, and Bryant gave Booth this pin.
Kneeling at Booth’s side, Lucinda Holloway ministered to the dying star. As she gazed upon his face—“luminous” is how she remembered it for the rest of her life—Booth stuck out his tongue. He was thirsty. As strangers at Golgotha did for Christ on Good Friday’s cross, Lucinda answered his plea: “I took my handkerchief and dipped it in water and moistened his lips. I again moistened his lips and he repeated his message to his mother. Soon he gasped, and I again moistened his lips and tongue a third time.”
Booth rallied and opened his eyes.
“The damn rebel is still living!” a soldier cursed.
“My hands,” Booth whispered. Baker clasped them, bathed the clammy flesh in cool water, and raised them up for Booth to see. For the last time John Wilkes Booth beheld the hands, now helpless, that had slain a president. Tenderly, Lucinda Holloway massaged his temples and forehead. Her fingertips felt the life draining out of him: “The pulsations in his temples grew weaker and weaker.”
Mustering all his remaining strength, waning rapidly now, Booth looked at his hands and spoke again: “Useless, useless.”
His breathing turned sporadic and labored, and he gasped for breath every few minutes. “His heart would almost die out; and then it would commence, and, by a few rapid beats, would make a slight motion again,” Baker observed.
Booth’s lips turned purple and his throat swelled.
He gasped.
The rising sun nudged above the horizon and colored the eastern sky. In Albany, New York, mourners who had waited in line all night filed past Abraham Lincoln’s remains, displayed magnificently in the state Capitol’s Assembly Chamber. “During the still hours of the morning,” said one who witnessed the scene, “a sad procession moved through our streets to and from the Capitol. Aside from the slow tread of this procession, not a sound was to be heard.” That afternoon the funeral train would pull out of the station, heading west to the prairies. Lincoln would be home soon.
Booth gasped again.
His vision blurred.
He could not breathe. He gasped a third time.
The sun broke free from the horizon and flooded Garrett’s farm with light, which shone on Booth’s face. The soldiers tried to shield his eyes by draping clothes over the back of a chair that they set up on the porch between Booth and the sun.
No, do not hide him from the light, Booth might have said, if he could still speak. When he was a boy, his bedroom at Bel Air faced the east and he told his dearest sister, Asia: “No setting sun view for me, it is too melancholy for me; let me see him rise.”
The stage grew dark. His body shuddered. Then, no more. John Wilkes Booth was dead. The twelve-day chase for Abraham Lincoln’s assassin was over.