IT LOOKED LIKE A BAD DAY FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS. TERRIFIC winds and thunderstorms had swept through Washington early that morning, dissolving the dirt streets into a sticky muck of soil, garbage, and horse droppings. Women, for their own safety, were advised to stay indoors. The ugly gray sky of the morning of March 4, 1865, threatened to spoil the great day. One block east of the Capitol Building, a patent lawyer and part-time photographer named William M. Smith set up his camera and pointed its lens at the temporary wood platform that had been hastily erected over the East Front steps. His job was to make a historic photograph—the first image ever taken during a presidential inauguration of the recently completed great dome. Smith adjusted his apparatus until his lens framed the panoramic, vertical view, from the low-lying plinth of Horatio Greenough’s marble statue of George Washington on the lawn to the tip top of the dome, crowned by Thomas Crawford’s bronze statue of “Freedom.” Abraham Lincoln had ordered that work on the dome continue during the war as a sign that the Union would go on.
Closer to the Capitol, and standing on another platform, Alexander Gardner set up his camera to photograph the ceremony. Gardner’s large, glass-plate negatives captured not only images of the president, vice president, chief justice, and other dignitaries occupying the stands, but also the anonymous faces of hundreds of spectators who crowded the East Front scene. One face among them stands out. On a balcony above the stands, standing near an iron railing, a young, black-mustachioed man wearing a top hat gazes down on the president. It is the celebrated actor John Wilkes Booth.
Abraham Lincoln rose from his chair and advanced toward the podium. He was now at the height of his power, with the Civil War nearly won. In one hand he held a single sheet of paper, typeset and printed in double columns. The foreboding clouds threatened another downpour. Then, reported Noah Brooks, journalist and friend of the president, the strangest thing happened: “Just at that moment the sun, which had been obscured all day, burst forth in its unclouded meridian splendor, and flooded the spectacle with glory and light. Every heart beat quicker at the unexpected omen … so might the darkness which had obscured the past four years be now dissipated.” The president’s text was brief—just 701 words.
“Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away…. With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Subsequent events would soon change how witnesses recalled Lincoln’s greatest day. To Noah Brooks, “Chiefly memorable in the mind of those who saw that second inauguration must still remain the tall, pathetic, melancholy figure of the man who … illuminated by the deceptive brilliance of a March sunburst, was already standing in the shadow of death.”
On April 3, 1865, Richmond, Virginia, capital city of the Confederate States of America, fell to Union forces. It was only a matter of time now before the war would finally be over. The rebellion had been crushed, and the North held a jubilee. Children ran through the streets waving little paper flags that read “Richmond Has Fallen,” “We Celebrate the Fall of Richmond,” or “Victory Will Lead to Peace: The Right Stripe.” Across the country, people built bonfires, organized parades, fired guns, shot cannons, and sang patriotic songs. Four days later, John Wilkes Booth was drinking with a friend, the actor Samuel Knapp Chester, at the House of Lords saloon, on Houston Street in New York City. Booth struck the bar table with his fist and regretted a lost opportunity. “What an excellent chance I had, if I wished, to kill the President on Inauguration day! I was on the stand, as close to him nearly as I am to you.”
William M. Smith’s historic photograph of Lincoln’s second inaugural.
IN RESPONSE TO A THRONG OF SERENADERS WHO MARCHED onto the White House grounds and begged him to address them, Abraham Lincoln appeared at a second-floor window below the North Portico on April 10 to greet this crowd of citizens celebrating General Grant’s victory at Appomattox the previous day. Lincoln did not have a prepared text, and he was unwilling to speak on a subject of any consequence, including his postwar policy for the South. He resorted to his favorite oratorical device to distract and disarm an audience—humor.
“I see that you have a band of music with you…. I have always thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday we fairly captured it. I presented this question to the Attorney General, and he gave it as his legal opinion that it is our lawful prize. I now request the band to favor me with its performance.”
CRUSHED BY THE FALL OF RICHMOND, AND BY THE FIRE THAT consumed much of the rebel capital, John Wilkes Booth had left New York City on April 8 and returned to Washington. The news there was worse. On April 9, Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. The cause was lost. Booth wandered the streets in despair until he encountered Henry B. Phillips, who invited him to walk to Birch’s saloon and share a drink. Inconsolable, Booth accepted.
“Yes, anything to drive away the blues.” Lee’s surrender, Booth says, “was enough to give anyone the blues.”
ON THE NIGHT OF APRIL 11, A TORCHLIGHT PARADE OF A FEW thousand citizens, with bands and banners, assembled on the semicircular driveway in front of the Executive Mansion. Journalist Noah Brooks, a favorite of Lincoln’s, was with the president and watched the throng from a window below the North Portico: “After repeated calls, loud and enthusiastic, the president appeared at the window, which was a signal for a great outburst. There was something terrible in the enthusiasm with which the beloved Chief Magistrate was received.” Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Lincoln’s black dressmaker and confidante, felt the mood too. “Close to the house the faces were plainly discernible, but they faded into mere ghostly outlines on the outskirts of the assembly; and what added to the weird, spectral beauty of the scene, was the confused hum of voices that rose above the sea of forms, sounding like the subdued, sullen roar of an ocean storm.”
This time Lincoln was ready. He had written a long text, short on exultation and designed to prepare the people for reconstruction. When someone in the crowd shouted that he couldn’t see the President—“A light! A light!”—Tad Lincoln volunteered to illuminate his father: “Let me hold the light, Papa!” Lincoln dropped each page of his manuscript to the floor when he finished reading it, and Tad scooped them up.
“We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from Whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten … no part of the honor … is mine. To General Grant, his skilful officers, and brave men, all belongs.” Lincoln then discussed the newly organized state government of Louisiana: “It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.”
As Lincoln spoke, Elizabeth Keckley, standing a few steps from him, observed that the lamplight made him “stand out boldly in the darkness.” She feared he was the perfect target. “What an easy matter would it be to kill the President, as he stands there! He could be shot down from the crowd,” she whispered, “and no one would be able to tell who fired the shot.”
In that crowd, standing amidst the throng below Lincoln’s window, was John Wilkes Booth. He turned to his companion, David Herold, and denounced the speech.
“That means nigger citizenship,” he said, “now, by God, I’ll put him through.”
As Booth left the White House grounds and walked toward Lafayette Square, he spoke to another companion, Lewis Powell: “That is the last speech he will ever give.”
ON THE EVENING OF APRIL 13, THE CITY CELEBRATED THE END of the war with a grand illumination. Public buildings and private homes glowed from candles, torches, gaslights, and fireworks. It was the most beautiful night in the history of the capital. The next Evening Star newspaper reported the wondrous display:
Last night Washington was all ablaze with glory. The very heavens seemed to have come down, and the stars twinkled in a sort of faded way, as if the solar system was out of order and the earth had become the great luminary…. Far as the vision extended were brilliant lights, the rows of illuminated windows at a distance blending into one, and presenting an unbroken wall of flame … high above all towered the Capitol, glowing as if on fire and seeming to stud the city below with gems of reflected glory as stars light upon the sea. Away to the right a halo hung over the roofs, rockets flashed to and fro in fiery lines, and the banners waved above the tumultuous throng, where shouts and cheers rolled up in a dense volume from the city, and with the incense of the grand conflagration, drifted away to the darkness of the surrounding hills.
John Wilkes Booth had seen all of this—the grand illumination, the crowds delirious with joy, the taunting insults to the fallen Confederacy and her leaders. He returned to his room at the National Hotel after midnight. He could not sleep. He reached for pen and paper and wrote a melancholy letter to his mother, Mary Ann Holmes Booth. It was early in the morning of April 14.
Dearest Mother:
I know you expect a letter from me, and am sure you will hardly forgive me. But indeed I have nothing to write about. Everything is dull; that is, has been till last night. (The illumination.)
Everything was bright and splendid. More so in my eyes if it had been a display in a nobler cause. But so goes the world. Might makes right. I only drop you these few lines to let you know I am well, and to say I have not heard from you. Excuse brevity; am in haste. Had one from Rose. With best love to you all, I am your affectionate son ever,
John