The big lights outside of Ford’s Theatre were haloed in mist. Dimly coachmen could be seen hunched deep in their coats, their horses sleek and patient. The same off-duty soldiers waited in front of the theater, hoping for another glimpse of the President at intermission.
Inside, there were 1,675 persons. At least one was in a romantic mood. This was the President. He noticed that Major Rathbone, watching the play, had taken Miss Harris’s hand in his. So he reached and found Mrs. Lincoln’s hand and held it at the side of the rocker. After a moment, when he did not let go, Mrs. Lincoln leaned close to her husband and whispered:
“What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?”
“Why,” the President said, not taking his eyes from the stage, “she will think nothing about it.”
He maintained his grip. When the lights went up after Act One, the people in the audience studied the colorfully decorated box. Three persons could be seen plainly; the fourth sat in shadow. Those who were in the State Box could study the audience, a most fashionable audience of handsomely dressed ladies and stalwart men, many in uniform.
In an orchestra seat, Julia Adelaide Shepard used the intermission, and the brightened light, to write a hurried note to her father back home.
Cousin Julia has just told me that the President is in yonder upper right hand private box so handsomely decked with silken flags festooned over a picture of George Washington. The young and lovely daughter of Senator Harris is the only one of the party we can see, as the flags hide the rest. But we know “Father Abraham” is there; like a father watching what interests his children, for their pleasure rather than his own. It has been announced in the papers that he would be here. How sociable it seems, like one family sitting around their parlor fire. . . . Every one has been so jubilant for days . . . that they laugh and shout at every clownish witticism, such is the excited state of the public mind.
One of the actresses, whose part is that of a very delicate young lady, talks of wishing to avoid the draft, when her lover tells her “not to be alarmed, for there is no more draft” at which the applause is loud. The American Cousin has just been making love to a young lady who says she will never marry but for love, yet when her mother and herself find he has lost his property they retreat in disgust at the left of the stage, while the American cousin goes out at the right. We are waiting for the next scene.
At Kirkwood House, Andrew Johnson went to bed. Governor Farwell had gone off to the theater. Johnson’s secretary, Browning, was out. There was no one to talk to, and he had read all that he wanted to read. The night was damp; the bed felt warm.
The food was always plentiful and plain at Surratt House and Louis Wiechman and Mrs. Surratt ate a late supper. He talked with Anna Surratt, who, with young Honora Fitzpatrick, was in a teasing mood. The upstairs bell rang and Anna left the basement and hurried upstairs. Five minutes later, Wiechman* heard someone walking back down the front steps. Anna came back to the basement, but she volunteered no information about the caller and the big boarder was piqued.
Mrs. Surratt, with pride, brought out the letter from Canada and showed it to Wiechman, who read it and handed it back without comment. The ladies went upstairs to the sitting room for the evening—Mrs. Surratt was a fair pianist—but Wiechman begged off and said that he was tired. He was in bed at 9:45. The people of Surratt House were indoors for the night.
At the White House, S. P. Hanscom called. Mr. Hanscom was a small, persevering man, editor of the National Republican, a newspaper which was liberal, unreliable, gossipy, and tried to exude the aura of being the President’s unofficial organ. Hanscom irritated most editors and all reporters by being so ingratiating in his dealings with Lincoln that, little by little, he was permitted to walk into the President’s office without appointment, at any hour of day or night and, after light chatter with Lincoln, would go back to his office and write an entire column on the state of the Union and the conduct of the war.
Now Mr. Hanscom was surprised to find that, had he read his own newspaper today, he would have learned that the Lincolns were going to Ford’s Theatre. He sat with a few members of the staff and gossiped. A sergeant came in from the War Department and said that he had a telegraph message for the President. It was sealed, and at once the staff assumed that it contained news of Johnston’s surrender. It would have to be delivered to the theater at once.
Hanscom said that he was walking up toward Tenth Street and would be glad to deliver it. The message was given to him. The editor left at once and arrived in front of Ford’s at intermission time. The front walk was crowded with patrons, out for a breath of air or a cigar. Hanscom looked for the President’s carriage, found it near the F Street corner, but no one was in attendance, so he went back to the theater and on up the stairs to the dress circle. As he passed down the side aisle, he saw two uniformed officers of the United States Army on the edge of Row D, and he asked quietly where he could find the President. One pointed to the little white door.
Hanscom went there, and found the President’s valet, Forbes, sitting against the wall. The editor said he had an important message for Mr. Lincoln and Forbes thumbed him inside. The message was delivered (when he entered Box 7, Miss Harris turned around in alarm) and Lincoln thanked Hanscom cordially. The editor left and went home.
The message was of small consequence. It read:
Richmond Va. April 14, 1865 11 a.m.
(Received 9:30 p.m.)
President of the United States:
Mr. R. M. T. Hunter has just arrived under the invitation signed by General Weitzel. He and Judge J. A. Campbell wish a permit for their visit to you at Washington, I think, with important communications.
E. O. C. Ord,
Major-General.
Both men had been prominent in the Confederate States of America, Hunter as a Secretary of State and Campbell as a Justice. The matter of whether Lincoln would permit them to come to Washington City could wait until morning.
At The Old Clubhouse, Dr. Verdi, Seward’s physician, paid a short visit to his patient. The few visitors in the room excused themselves and waited outside in the third-floor hall. When the doctor emerged, he said that the patient was doing as well as could be expected, and pain had to be expected; sometimes, unremitting pain. He had left instructions with the sergeant about a sedative, and the Secretary of State was now dozing and he would suggest no more visitors tonight.
At 9:30, a mare picked her way lightly through the dark alley behind Ford’s Theatre. She was sure-footed and her dainty feet rang on the stones as she approached the single light at the stage door.
Booth dismounted and shouted “Spangler!” He held the reins forward and waited. The only answer he got was the surf roar of laughter from inside the red brick building. Up high in the flies, John Miles, a Negro, heard the actor and, through the tall, almost cathedral back window, could see John Wilkes Booth standing outside with his horse. Booth called twice more. Miles, looking downward through the flies, saw Ned Spangler, who shifted scenes on the same side of the theater as the President’s Box, leave his post and run to the door.
Still looking, Miles could see Booth talking to Spangler and tender a bridle rein. In the pantomime, he could see Spangler gesturing toward the theater, probably pleading that he was too busy to take care of the horse. Miles saw Spangler come back into the theater, go into the Green Room, and come out with Johnny Peanut. Peanut went out back, sat on the stone step, and held the mare.
Booth came in, removing gauntlet gloves, bowing and smiling to fellow actors, and whispered to an actor in the wings. The actor shook his head and pointed to the tunnel. Booth could not cross backstage at that time. In the wings, the conspirator tried to look across the stage to the President’s Box, but Miles could see by the way he shaded his eyes that the powdery haze prevented him from seeing much.
At this moment, or a moment close to this one, President Lincoln told Mrs. Lincoln that he felt a chill. She wanted to get the comfortable shawl that Forbes had brought, but the President stood and put on a black coat instead. He sat in his rocker, and, looking across the stage to the wings opposite, he could no more see the assassin through the hanging lights than the assassin could see him.
Booth listened to the lines of the actors, lines which he could mouth with them. The responsible utility man, J. L. Debonay, stood beside him, hands jammed in his pockets, watching the action, and Booth asked if he could cross behind the set.
“No, Mr. Booth,” said Debonay. “The dairy scene is on. You will have to go under the stage.”
Booth went down in the subterranean passage. Overhead, he could hear the creak of the boards, the mumble of actors, the shrill laughter of women in the audience. He came up on the other side of the stage, peeked out at the packed house, and went out through the side alley to Tenth Street.
He had time.
Down on E Street, Atzerodt decided to again pick up the horse he had rented in one stable and boarded in another. He walked into Tim Naylor’s place, across from Grover’s Theatre, and asked John Fletcher for his mare. Atzerodt had been to this stable several times with David Herold, and Fletcher, who had a chronic fear of having horses stolen from him, didn’t like either one of these men. Still, this mare didn’t belong to Fletcher, so he brought her out, saddled and bridled her, and said she “looks kind of scarish.”
Atzerodt was grinning and perspiring. “Will you have a drink with me?” he said.
Fletcher took a hitch in the bridle around a stable post and said, “I don’t mind if I do.” They walked a few doors down to the Union Hotel and Atzerodt had a whiskey and Fletcher drank a big schooner of beer. On the way back, Atzerodt, feeling the camaraderie engendered in buying a man a drink, said: “If this thing happens tonight, you will hear of a present.” Fletcher, who had no idea of what might happen tonight, said nothing. He had already made up his mind that this man was drunk.
At the stable, he helped the customer to mount. Fletcher took five dollars, an exorbitant amount for boarding a horse for a few hours, and threw in some advice free: “I would not like to ride that mare through the city tonight,” he said. “She looks so skittish.”
Atzerodt settled himself in the saddle. “Well,” he said, “she is good on retreat.”
“Your friend,” said Fletcher, “is staying out very late with our horse.”
Atzerodt slapped his heels into the horse and said: “He’ll be back after a while.” The mare moved out onto E Street in a slow, biased trot. Without guidance, she turned east and Atzerodt almost fell out of the saddle. He had wanted to turn west, but had forgotten to guide the animal. He forced her to make a big turn in the street, then headed her to the point where E slices into Pennsylvania Avenue, then he turned left.
Fletcher stood in the stable doorway puffing on a pipe. He had a shrewd thought. Atzerodt might lead him to Herold. The two men were friends. So, leaving a stable full of animals alone, Fletcher started off on foot after Atzerodt. The trail led to Twelfth Street on the Avenue. The stable foreman saw Atzerodt dismount, hitch his horse, and go into Kirkwood House. Fletcher waited. In a few minutes, the carriage maker came out, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and remounted. He went off up Twelfth Street, in no apparent hurry, and Fletcher decided to go back to the stable and hunt for Herold later.
John Wilkes Booth stood in front of Ford’s, studying the playbills. One announced a benefit tomorrow for Miss Jennie Gourlay in The Octoroon. Another said that Mr. Edwin Adams would appear at Ford’s for a limited engagement of twelve nights only.
Booth went into Taltavul’s and asked Peter Taltavul to set a bottle of whiskey and some water before him. This was unusual, and Taltavul remembered it, because the actor usually asked for brandy. Booth drank. Farther down the bar, Burns the coachman and Forbes the valet had rejoined John F. Parker for a few more drinks. A man gaily intoxicated, lost in anonymity, lifted his glass to Booth and said: “You’ll never be the actor your father was.”
The conspirator smiled and nodded. “When I leave the stage,” he said quietly, “I will be the most famous man in America.”