The night air cleared. The mists rolled away with theatrical speed and, in the gaps between the scudding clouds, the signals of far-off stars could be seen tapping blue dots and dashes. The moon was due to rise at 10:02 P.M. but the men at the Naval Observatory up beyond Rock Creek saw nothing in the east except the silvered edges of clouds over the Maryland shore.
The roisterers were still in the streets, and public singing was plentiful and cheap. At Lichau House, Mike O’Laughlin sang a flat baritone which most customers thought was good, and sad, or perhaps good and sad. In the freshly washed night air, the Capitol dome looked like a picture postcard and lights were on in many homes at an hour when most good families were in bed.
At Surratt House, the widow kissed Anna good night and began the job of turning off the kerosene lamps in the downstairs dining room and the upstairs sitting room, taking the last lighted lamp with her along the hall to the bedroom she shared with Honora Fitzpatrick. If she gave a thought to her son John, she thought of him in Canada, but, in reality, he was in northern New York State, in a small town where thousands of Southern prisoners were kept. He was on a final mission for the Confederate States of America.
George Atzerodt trotted his horse up Tenth Street again and he looked at Ford’s Theatre as though fascinated. He saw the President’s carriage and he saw off-duty soldiers lounging and he saw a few civilians on the sidewalk. He rode back to Kirkwood House to kill the Vice President but his feet carried him into the bar and he drank and looked at the clock and drank some more.
In the theater, the play was more than half over. The second scene of the third act had begun. President Lincoln, momentarily distracted from the action onstage, watched a portly officer come down the right-hand orchestra aisle. He knew the man. It was General Ambrose E. Burnside, an officer who did not believe that he was big enough to command the Army of the Potomac and, when Lincoln gave it to him, proved it. The President watched him come down front, split the tails of his uniform coat, and sit. Lincoln may have wondered what kept him so late. The presidential attention reverted to the stage.
Booth came out of Taltavul’s and stood talking to Lewis Carland, the theater costumer. Mr. Carland was a sponge; he absorbed the moods of his friends. James J. Gifford, the stage carpenter, came out puffing a freshly lighted pipe and joined the conversation. A singer named Hess came down from F Street and asked what time it was. Someone looked at the lobby clock and said “ten.” Hess returned a few minutes later and asked the same question. He was scheduled to go on, just before the last scene, and sing in concert with a young lady and another man “All Honor to Our Soldiers,” the new song composed by Professor Withers.
Another man walked up from E Street to join the conversation. He was Captain William Williams of the Washington Cavalry Police. The captain was an admirer of John Wilkes Booth. He invited his idol into Taltavul’s for a drink, but Booth looked at his watch, and declined with thanks.
“Keene,” he said, “will be onstage in a minute and I promised to take a look for her.”
He bowed and left the group and walked in the main entrance to the theater. Absentmindedly, John Buckingham, ticket taker, held out his hand, and Booth said, in mock shock: “You will not want a ticket from me?”
Buckingham laughed and bowed. “Courtesy of the house,” he said. The actor looked at the lobby clock. It read 10:07. He saw Buckingham chewing, and borrowed a bite of tobacco. Buckingham said that, if Mr. Booth did not mind, he would like to introduce a few friends. The actor winked, and said: “Later, John.” He turned and bounded up the stairs to the dress circle.
In Boston, his brother was, on this night, playing the part of Sir Edward Mortimer and, with a declaiming sweep of his hand, moaned: “Where is my honor now?”
Here in the dress circle, a man and a little girl were disappointed. James Ferguson, restaurateur, occupied the extreme left seat in the front row solely to see Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant. He did not want to see the play. He had brought the little neighbor’s girl along because she too had an appreciation of historical figures which matched his. With her own eyes, she wanted to see the President of the United States and the man who had won the war.
All evening long, he had studied the State Box and the right-hand aisle. The President was in the box but, except for one brief moment when he had leaned forward to look down in the orchestra, they had not seen him. The general was not present and Mr. Ferguson kept telling the little girl that Grant was sure to be along at any moment. Now he saw a figure move down the right-hand aisle and he squeezed the little girl’s hand. She followed his glance and saw a man step down the broad steps with easy grace. Ferguson shaded his eyes against the glare of the stage lights and, after a look, smiled sadly and said that it wasn’t General Grant after all; it was a famous actor named Booth.
Almost as though to assuage the disappointment, James Ferguson noticed that, at the same time, President Lincoln was leaning forward in the box, with his left hand on the ledge, looking at the people below. It was the first time that Ferguson had seen Lincoln come into plain view, and he nudged the little girl and pointed. She looked steadily, and nodded. For the first time in her life she had seen, with her own eyes, the President of the United States.
John Wilkes Booth, slightly ahead of schedule, came down the dress circle steps slowly. He heard the lines onstage and he knew that he had about two minutes.
Asa Trenchard walked onstage and Mrs. Mountchessington said: “Ah, Mr. Trenchard. We were just talking of your archery powers.”
Asa, who was played by Harry Hawk, was a slender drawling Yankee.
“Wal,” he said, “I guess shooting with bows and arrows is just about like most things in life. All you have got to do is to keep the sun out of your eyes, look straight, pull strong, calculate the distance, and you’re sure to hit the mark in most things as well as shooting.”
Booth looked down at the little white door and saw the empty chair. Confused, he looked at patrons sitting in dress circle seats as though wondering which one was the President’s guard. He saw the two army officers and he moved by them. For the first time, he realized that he was going to get into that box with no trouble; no challenge; no palaver; no argument; no fight; no stabbing. He was going to be able to walk in as though Lincoln had been expecting him.
He walked down to the white door, and stood with his back to it. He studied the faces nearby, men and women, and he saw some of them glance briefly at him. A real wave of laughter swept the theater and attention reverted to the stage.
Mrs. Mountchessington had just learned that Asa Trenchard was not a millionaire.
“No heir to the fortune, Mr. Trenchard?”
“What!” young Augusta shrieked. “No fortune!”
“Nary a red,” said Asa brightly. “It all comes from their barking up the wrong tree about the old man’s property.”
Now was the time. Booth knew that, in a few seconds, Asa would be alone on the stage. He turned the knob, pushed the door, and walked into the darkness. The door closed behind him. He found the pine board, held it against the inside of the door, and tapped the other end down the wall opposite until it settled in the niche he had carved for it. Pursuit could not come from that direction. Nor interference.
He moved toward the door of Box 7 in the darkness. A tiny beam of yellow light squeezed through the gimlet hole in the door and made a dot on the opposite wall.
Wilkes Booth could still hear the actors faintly. Mrs. Mountchessington had just said: “Augusta, to your room!”
And Augusta said: “Yes, Ma. The nasty beast!”
“I am aware, Mr. Trenchard,” said Mrs. Mountchessington in her frostiest tone, “that you are not used to the manners of good society—”
The conspirator crouched and pressed his eye against the gimlet hole. What he saw was clear. The high back of the horsehair rocker was in plain view and the silhouette of a head above it. He waited. Three persons were on the stage. In a matter of seconds, Augusta would be offstage, followed by her irate mother. That would leave Harry Hawk (as Trenchard) alone and he would begin to drawl: “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? . . .”
Booth kept his eye to the gimlet hole. The head in front of him barely moved. The universe seemed to pause for breath. Then Trenchard said: “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh?” Booth did not wait to hear the rest of the line. The derringer was now in his hand. He turned the knob. The door swung inward. Lincoln, facing diagonally away toward the left, was four feet from him. Booth moved along the wall closest to the dress circle. The President had dropped Mrs. Lincoln’s hand and there was a little space between their chairs. The major and his Clara were listening to the humorous soliloquy of the actor onstage:
“Wal, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, you sockdologizing old mantrap!”
The derringer was behind the President’s head between the left ear and the spine. Booth squeezed the trigger and there was a sound as though someone had blown up and broken a heavy paper bag. It came in the midst of laughter, so that some people heard it, and some did not. The President did not move. His head inclined toward his chest and he stopped rocking.
Mrs. Lincoln turned at the noise, her round face creased with laughter. So did Major Rathbone and Miss Harris. A chrysanthemum of blue smoke hung in Box 7. Booth, with no maniacal gleam, no frenzy, looked at the people who looked at him and said, “Sic semper tyrannis!” It was said in such an ordinary tone that theatergoers only fourteen feet below did not hear the words.
The conspirator forced his way between the President and his wife. Mrs. Lincoln’s laughter dissolved in confusion. She saw the young man towering above her, but she did not know who he was or what he wanted. The major saw the cloud of smoke and, without understanding, jumped up and tried to grapple with the intruder. Booth dropped the derringer and pulled out his knife. The major laid a hand on his arm and the assassin’s arm went high in the air and slashed down. Rathbone lifted his left arm to counter the blow, and the knife sliced through his suit and flesh down to the bone.
The assassin moved to the ledge of the box and the major reached for him with his right arm. Booth shoved him and said loudly: “Revenge for the South!” Mrs. Lincoln began to rub her cheek nervously. She glanced at her husband, but he seemed to be dozing.
Harry Hawk faltered in his lines. He looked up at the State Box indecisively. In the wings, W. J. Ferguson, an actor, heard the explosion and looked up at the box in time to see a dark man come out of the smoke toward the ledge. In the dress circle, James Ferguson and his little friend saw Booth climb over the ledge of the box, at a point near where Boxes 7 and 8 met at the picture of George Washington, and watched him turn his back to the audience and, by holding on with his arms, let himself down over the side.
As he dropped, he pushed his body away from the box with his right hand. This turned him a little and the spur of his right foot caught in the Treasury regiment flag. As the banner ripped, and followed him to the stage in tatters, the actor, by reflex, held his left foot rigid to take the shock of the fall, plus two outstretched hands. He landed on the left leg, and it snapped just above the instep. He fell on his hands, got up, and started to run across the stage to the left. He passed Harry Hawk and headed for the wings.
The audience did not understand. They watched the running actor, and he fell again. He stood and, as he got offstage, he was limping on the outside of his left foot; in effect, walking on his ankle.
Hawk, stupefied, did not move. His arms were still raised in half gesture toward the wings through which the women had departed. Laura Keene, in the Green Room, noticed that the onstage action had stopped and she came out in time almost to bump into Booth. She brushed by him, wondering what had happened to Harry Hawk. An actor stood in Booth’s way and he saw a knife flash by his face.
A piercing scream came from the State Box. This was Mrs. Lincoln. Clara Harris stood and looked out at the people below and said “Water!” Major Joseph B. Stewart, sitting in the front row of the orchestra with his wife and his sister, got up from his seat and climbed over the rim of the stage. He was a big man, looking bigger in a pale fawn suit, and he got to his feet, rushed by Harry Hawk, and yelled “Stop that man!”
The conspirator hobbled to the back door, opened it, and shut it behind him. Johnny Peanut was lying on the stone step with the mare’s bridle in his hand. Booth’s face was snowy and grim as he pulled his foot back and kicked the boy in the chest.
He took the bridle and limped toward the animal. She began to swing in a swift circle as he tried to get his good foot up in the stirrup. When he made it, Booth pulled himself across the saddle, threw his left leg over, and was just settling in the saddle when Major Stewart came out the back door yelling “Stop! Stop!” He reached for the rein as Booth spurred the horse and turned out of the alley.
The course he chose was not up to F Street, where the gate would have to be unlatched. He swung toward the side of the T, out through Ninth Street, then right toward Pennsylvania Avenue. His job was to put that first mile between him and his pursuers; he must be ahead of the news he had created. So he spurred the little mare hard, and she laid her ears back and ran. The conspirator was in little pain. He knew that his leg had been hurt, but the pain was not great now. He leaned his weight on the right stirrup and sat with the left thigh half up on the saddle. The mare turned into Pennsylvania Avenue and headed toward the Capitol. To the right of the House wing, a moon two days shy of being full was showing.
At Capitol South, he passed another horseman, trotting in the opposite direction. The speed of the mare attracted the lone rider’s attention. As Booth turned into New Jersey Avenue, he slowed the mare. This was a shanty section, so dark that, unless the United States Government knew his escape route, no one would look for him here. At Virginia Avenue, he turned left, and was now close to the bridge.
When Booth swung away from the rear of Ford’s Theatre, Johnny Peanut rolled in the alley, moaning: “He kicked me. He kicked me.” Major Stewart turned to go back into the theater and was met by a rush of theater people coming out. Backstage, Jacob Ritterspaugh ran out of the wings and grabbed Ned Spangler by the shoulders.
“That was Booth!” he shouted. “I swear it was Booth!”
Spangler swung and smashed Ritterspaugh in the face.
“Be quiet!” he said. “What do you know about it?”
The audience began to buzz. Some of the men stood and began to ask others what did this mean. The people sensed now that this was not a part of the play and they felt vaguely alarmed. Major Rathbone pointed dramatically toward the dead wings and roared: “Stop that man!” Out of the State Box came a second scream, a shriek that chilled the audience and brought a large part of it to its feet. This again was Mrs. Lincoln. It had penetrated her mind that Mr. Lincoln could not be aroused. To the west, many farmers testified that, at this time, the moon emerged from behind clouds blood red.
In the orchestra, one man stood and brought to mouth the question everyone was asking: “For God’s sake, what is it? What happened?” Miss Shepard, the letter writer, stood and saw that Miss Harris was leaning over the ledge of the box wringing her hands and pleading for water. Someone in the box, a man, yelled:
“He has shot the President!”
All over the theater, hoarse voices shouted, “No! No!” “It can’t be true!” In a trice, Ford’s resembled a hive immediately after the queen bee has died. The aisles were jammed with people moving willy-nilly. The stairs were crowded, some trying to get up to the dress circle, others trying to get down.
Some were up on the stage. Harry Hawk stood in stage center and wept. A group of men tried to force their way through the white door, but, the harder they pushed, the more firmly it held. James Ferguson, choking with horror, picked the little girl up and said that he would carry her out of the theater. Actors in makeup ran on the stage begging to know what had happened.
“Water!” Miss Harris begged from the box. “Water!”
Some of the patrons got out on the street and spread the word that Lincoln had been shot. The President, they said, is lying dead in the box inside. Tempers flared. A crowd collected. From E and F Streets, people came running. Many tried to get into the theater as others were trying to get out. Inside, a few women fainted and the cry for water could be heard from different parts of the theater.
Rathbone, soaked with blood, went back into the corridor and tried to open the door. He found the wooden bar and yelled for the men on the other side to stop leaning against the door. After several entreaties, he was able to lift the bar and it fell to the floor, stained with his blood. The major pleaded that only doctors be admitted. A short, handsome man in sideburns and mustache yelled from the rear of the mob that he was a doctor. Men pushed him forward until he got inside the corridor. He was Dr. Charles Leale, Assistant Surgeon of United States Volunteers, twenty-three years of age.
Someone, below the stage, turned the gas valve up and hundreds of faces were revealed to be in varying stages of fright and anger. On the street, a man shouted, “I’m glad it happened!” In a moment, he was scuffed underfoot, most of his clothes ripped from his body, and he was carried toward a lamppost. Three policemen drew revolvers to save his life.
In the State Box, President Lincoln’s knees began to relax and his head began to come forward. Mrs. Lincoln saw it, moaned, and pressed her head against his chest. Rathbone asked Dr. Leale for immediate attention. “I’m bleeding to death!” he said. The blood had soaked his sleeve and made a pool on the floor. The doctor lifted Rathbone’s chin, looked into his eyes, and walked on into the box.
Miss Harris was hysterical. She was begging everyone to please help the President. The doctor looked at her, then lifted Mrs. Lincoln’s head off her husband’s chest. The First Lady grabbed the hand of medicine and moaned piteously.
“Oh, Doctor! Is he dead? Can he recover? Will you take charge of him? Oh, my dear husband! My dear husband!”
“I will do what I can,” the doctor said, and motioned to the men who crowded into the box behind him to remove her. She was taken to the broad sofa in Box 8, and Miss Harris sat beside her, patting Mrs. Lincoln’s hand.
At first, Leale thought that the President was dead. He pushed the shoulders back in the rocker so that the trunk no longer had a tendency to fall forward. Then he stood in front of the President and studied him from head to foot. With the attitude of one who knows that he will be obeyed, he said to the gawking men: “Get a lamp. Lock that door back there and admit no one except doctors. Someone hold matches until the lamp gets here.”
These things were done, as Dr. Leale knew that they would be. He was the first person to bring order around the dying President. The eyes of the patient were closed. There was no sound of breathing. There was no sign of a wound. Men held matches and looked open-mouthed as Leale placed the palm of his hand under the whiskered chin of the President, lifted it, and then permitted it to drop.
In the crowd peering in from the corridor, he saw a few soldiers. “Come here,” he said to them. “Get him out of the chair and put him on the floor.” Half afraid, they did as he told them to. The body was relaxed. They placed it on the floor and stepped away. Leale was going to look for the wound. He was sure that it was a stab wound because, as he was passing the theater on his way back to the army hospital, he heard a man yell something about the President and a man with a knife. Further, he had seen that Major Rathbone sustained a knife wound.
Dr. Leale crouched behind Lincoln’s head and lifted it. His hands came away wet. He placed the head back on the floor and men in a circle held matches at waist level as the doctor unbuttoned the black coat, the vest, unfastened the gold watch chain, and, while trying to unbutton the collar, he became impatient and asked for a pocket knife. William F. Rent had a sharp one, and Doctor Leale took it and slit the shirt and collar down the front.
He tore the undershirt between his hands and the chest was laid bare. He saw no wound. The doctor bent low, and put his ear to the chest. Then he lifted the eyelid and saw evidence of a brain injury. He separated his fingers and ran them through the patient’s hair. At the back, he found matted blood and his fingers loosened a clot and the patient responded with shallow breathing and a weak pulse.
Onstage, men lifted another doctor into the box. This one was Dr. Charles Taft. He was senior to Leale, but he placed himself at Leale’s disposal at once as an assistant. Leale lifted the body into a slumped sitting position and asked Dr. Taft to hold him. In the saffron flicker of the matches, he found what he was looking for. His fingers probed the edges of the wound and he pulled the matted black hair away from it. It was not a knife wound. The President had been shot behind the left ear and, if the probe of a pinky meant anything, the lead ball moved diagonally forward and slightly upward through the brain toward the right eye. Dr. Leale felt around the eye to see if the ball had emerged. It had not. It was in the brain.
Gently, he lowered the great head to the floor. He knew that Lincoln had to die. Leale acquainted Dr. Taft with his findings, and his feeling. He straddled the hips and started artificial respiration. His business was to prolong life—not to try to read the future—and so he raised the long arms up high and lowered them to the floor—up and back—forward and down—up and back—forward and down. For a moment, he paused. Rudely, he pushed the mouth open and got two fingers inside and pushed the tongue down to free the larynx of secretions.
Dr. Albert F. A. King was admitted to the box. Leale asked each doctor to take an arm and manipulate it while he pressed upward on the belly to stimulate the heart action.
A few soldiers started to clear the box of people. From onstage, questions flew up to the box. Mostly, they were unanswered. “How is he?” “What happened?” “Was he stabbed?” “Who did it?” “Is he breathing?” “Did anyone see who did it?”
For the first time, someone uttered the name of John Wilkes Booth. The name moved from the stage down into the orchestra, was shouted across the dress circle and out of the half-empty theater into the lobby and cascaded into Tenth Street. “Booth!” “Booth did it!” “An actor named Booth!” “The management must have been in on the plot!” “Burn the damn theater!” “Burn it now!” “Yes, burn it!” “Burn!”
Grief spirals to insanity.
Dr. Leale sat astride the President’s hips and leaned down and pressed until these strangers met, thorax to thorax. Leale turned his head and pressed his mouth against the President’s lips, and breathed for him in a kiss of desperation. Then he listened to the heart again and, when he sat up, he noticed that the breathing was stronger. It sounded like a snore.
“His wound is mortal,” he said to the other doctors. “It is impossible for him to recover.”
One of the soldiers began to get sick. Two others removed their uniform caps. A lamp arrived. Dr. Leale saw a hand in front of him with brandy. He dripped a small amount between the bluish lips. Leale watched the Adam’s apple. It bobbed. The liquid had been swallowed and was now retained.
He paused in his labors to wipe his face with a kerchief. “Can he be removed to somewhere nearby?” Leale said.
“Wouldn’t it be possible to carry him to the White House?” Dr. King said.
“No,” Dr. Leale said. “His wound is mortal. It is impossible for him to recover.”
On the couch, Mrs. Lincoln sat quietly, rocking slightly. Miss Laura Keene had come into the box and was now sitting with her and with Miss Harris. All three heard Dr. Leale’s words, but only Mrs. Lincoln seemed not to comprehend. She sat between them, rocking a little and looking across the theater at the other boxes.
Miss Keene came over, and asked the doctor if she could hold the President’s head for a moment. He looked at her coldly, and nodded. She sat on the floor and placed his head on her lap.
“If it is attempted,” said Leale, still thinking about the White House, “he will be dead before we reach there.”
Dr. Taft asked an officer to run out and find a place nearby—a suitable place—for President Lincoln. He called four soldiers to carry the body—at first it was decided to try seating the body in the rocker and carrying it that way—but Leale said that there were too many narrow turns and besides, it would not hurt him to be carried as long as the open wound was downward.
Four men from Thompson’s Battery C, Pennsylvania Light Artillery, drew the assignment. Two formed a sling under the upper trunk; the other two held the thin thighs. Dr. King held the left shoulder. Dr. Leale followed behind and held the head in cupped hands. Miss Keene sat, oblivious to the dark stain on her dress, watching. At the last moment, Leale decided that headfirst would be better and he walked backward with Lincoln’s head in his hands, his own head twisted to see ahead.
“Guards!” he yelled. “Guards! Clear the passage!”
From somewhere, a group of troopers came to life and preceded the dismal party, shoving the curious to one side. “Clear out!” they yelled at one and all. “Clear out!”
At the head of the stairs, Leale shouted orders as the party began the slow descent. Ahead, they could hear the cries of the crowd in Tenth Street. Downstairs in the lobby, a big man looked at the great placid face, and he blessed himself. Tenth Street was massed with humanity as far as the eye could see.
A short paunchy captain of infantry impressed more soldiers to duty and ordered them double-ranked to precede the body. He drew his sword and said: “Surgeon, give me your commands and I will see that they are obeyed.” Leale looked at the houses across the street, private homes and boardinghouses, and asked the captain to get them across.
For the first time, the crowd saw the shaggy head and the big swinging feet. A roar of rage went up. Someone in the crowd yelled “God almighty! Get him to the White House!” Leale shook his head no. “He would die on the way,” Leale said. Men in the crowd began to weep openly. The little party pressed through, inch by inch, the faces of the mob forming a canopy of frightened eyes over the body. The crowd pressed in ahead, and closed in behind.
The paunchy captain swung his sword and roared: “Out of the way, you sons of bitches!”
The night, now, was clear. The mist gone. The wind cool and gusty. The moon threw the shadow of Ford’s Theatre across the street.
Every few steps, Leale stopped the party and pulled a clot loose. The procession seemed to be interminable. When they got across the street, the steady roar of the crowd made it impossible to hear or to be heard. Leale wanted to go into the nearest house, but a soldier on the stoop made motions that no one was home and made a helpless pantomime with a key. At the next house toward F Street, Leale saw a man with a lighted candle standing in the doorway, motioning. This was the William Petersen house at 453 Tenth Street. Mr. Petersen was a tailor.
Lincoln was carried up the steps and into the house. Part of the crowd followed. The man with the candle motioned for the doctors to follow him. They moved down a narrow hall. To the right was a stairway going up to the second floor. To the left was a parlor, with coal grate and black horsehair furniture. Behind it, also on the left, was a sitting room. Under the stairway was a small bedroom.
Here, the President was placed on a bed. A soldier on leave, who had rented the room, picked up his gear and left. He was Private William T. Clark of the 13th Massachusetts Infantry. The room measured fifteen feet by nine feet. The wallpaper was oatmeal in character. A thin reddish rug covered part of the floor. There were a plain maple bureau near the foot of the bed, three straight-backed chairs, a washstand with white crock bowl, a wood stove. On the wall were framed prints of “The Village Blacksmith” and Rosa Bonheur’s “The Horse Fair.” The bed was set against the wall under the stairway.
It was too small for the President. Leale ordered it pulled away from the wall. He also asked that the foot-board be taken off, but it was found that, if that was done, the bed would collapse. The body was placed diagonally on the bed, the head close to the wall, the legs hanging off the other end. Extra pillows were found and Lincoln’s head was propped so that his chin was on his chest. Leale then ordered an officer to open a bedroom window—there were two, facing a little courtyard—and to clear everybody out and to post a guard on the front stoop.
At the back end of the room, Leale held his first formal conference with the other doctors. As they talked in whispers, the man who had held the candle went through the house lighting all the gas fixtures. The house was narrow and deep, and behind this bedroom was another and behind that a family sitting room which spread across the width of the house.
Leale, in the presence of the other doctors, began a thorough examination. As he began to remove the President’s clothing, he looked up and saw Mrs. Lincoln standing in the doorway with Miss Keene and Miss Harris. He looked irritated and asked them to please wait in the front room. The patient was undressed and the doctors searched all of the areas of the body, but they found no other wound.
The feet were cold to the touch up to the ankles. The body was placed between sheets and a comforter was placed over the top. A soldier in the doorway was requisitioned as an orderly and the doctors sent him for hot water and for heated blankets. They sent another soldier for large mustard plasters. These were applied to the front of the body, covering the entire area from shoulders to ankles.
Occasionally, the President sighed. His pulse was forty-four and light; breathing was stertorous; the pupil of the left eye was contracted; the right was dilated—both were proved insensitive to light. Leale called a couple of more soldiers from the hallway, and sent them to summon Robert Lincoln, Surgeon General Barnes, Dr. Robert K. Stone, President Lincoln’s physician, and Lincoln’s pastor, Dr. Phineas D. Gurley.
The death watch began.
At ten minutes past ten, Lewis Paine and David Herold rode into Madison Place, across the street from the White House. They stopped in front of The Old Clubhouse. Three doors away, a sentry lounged in front of General Augur’s personal quarters. Two gas lamps lost a battle with darkness. Paine dismounted, handed the reins to Herold. He repeated the name of the doctor “Verdi, Verdi” as though it was difficult to remember. He ordered Herold to wait for him and not to move from in front of the door.
He removed a bottle from his jacket pocket. David Herold, sitting his horse and holding the awkward blind one, watched Lewis Paine walk up to the front door and rap hard with the knocker. Through the chased glass panels light could be seen.
No one answered. Paine rapped again and waited. A shadow grew on the glass and the door opened: A young Negro in a white coat stood inside. This was William Bell.
“I have medicine from Doctor Verdi.”
William reached for it. Paine pulled his hand away.
“It has to be delivered personally.”
“Sir,” said the boy, “I can’t let you go upstairs. I have strict orders—”
The rare temper began to crumble. “You’re talking to a white man,” Paine said. “This medicine is for your master and, by God, I’m going to give it to him.”
“But, sir . . .”
“Out of my way, nigger. I’m going up.” Paine pushed his way into the big reception hall, and started up the stairs, William a step or two behind, pleading softly. Paine walked heavily. William Bell asked him to please walk easily.
“I’m sorry that I talked rough to you,” Bell said.
“Oh,” said Paine, at the top of the first flight, “that’s all right.”
On the top floor, Frederick Seward, Assistant Secretary of State, heard the commotion and the tramp of heavy boots. He had been in bed with his wife, and now he had put on a dressing robe and hurried out.
He saw Lewis Paine coming up toward him, and saw Bell directly behind him. Seward, angry, whispered a demand to know what the commotion was all about. Paine, stopping two steps below the top, whispered back that he had a prescription from Dr. Verdi and that this fresh nigger tried to stop him.
Seward held out his hand. He would see that the prescription was delivered. Paine shook his head. The doctor had told him twice to make certain that this medicine got into no other hands than those of the Secretary of State. If he was permitted to hand the bottle to Secretary Seward, he would leave at once. The young official didn’t know whether to throw the messenger and his medicine out, or to reason with him. In his mind, Seward figured that this man was one of those dull mentalities who know no better than to obey orders literally.
“My father may be sleeping,” he said. “I will see.”
He went up to the front of the hall to a door on the left side. Until then, Paine had no idea where the Secretary of State might be. Now he knew. In a moment, Seward was back.
“You can’t go in,” he said. “He’s sleeping. Give it to me.”
“I was ordered to give it to the secretary.”
“You cannot see Mr. Seward. I will take the responsibility of refusing to let you see him. Go back and tell the doctor that I refused to let you see him if you think you cannot trust me with the medicine. I am Mr. Seward and I am in charge here.” The voice began to rise in tone. “He will not blame you if you tell him I refused to let you see him.”
Paine hesitated. Then he said: “Very well, sir. I will go.”
He turned and faced down the stairs. He pulled his pistol, whirled, and fired at the middle of Frederick Seward. The hammer clicked. There was no explosion. Paine jumped to the top step and, before Seward could lift his hand, the rare temper brought the butt of the gun smashing down on Seward’s head. He fell and Paine bent over him, smashing again and again at head and neck.
Bell, halfway up the stairs, turned and ran down, screaming “Murder! Murder!” He ran down the second flight of stairs, still screaming the litanous word and out into the street. “Murder! Murder! Murder!” David Herold watched him. Quickly, the assassin’s escort dismounted, tied Paine’s horse to a tree, remounted, and galloped off. As he turned into Pennsylvania Avenue at Fifteenth, Booth was at the other end of the Avenue, turning into Capitol South.
Upstairs, Paine found that he had broken his pistol. He threw it at the unconscious man and drew a knife. He hurried to the front bedroom. When he pushed against the door, he found that someone was leaning against it. Paine moved back a step and crashed his weight against the panel. The door flew open and Paine fell, inside. The room was in darkness except for a slice of light from the hall.
The assassin got up, saw a moving figure, and slashed at it. He heard a man scream in pain. His duty was to kill the Secretary of State and he had no time for others, so he jumped on the bed and, when he felt the helpless figure beneath him, he struck with his knife again and again. He heard small moans and he lifted the knife once more, as high as he could. Someone jerked his arm from behind and he turned and found that, in the darkness, he was battling two men.
They were trying to pull him off the bed. No words were spoken. The Secretary of State, still conscious, had the presence of mind, when his assailant was removed, to roll off the bed onto the floor against the wall, even though he knew that he was falling on the broken arm. Paine hacked at the restraining arms around him. The three fell into tables and chairs and, when he felt himself free, Lewis Paine got up and ran out into the hall, yelling, “I’m mad! I’m mad!”
There he saw a young lady, in nightdress, screaming. At the same time, he saw another man coming toward him. This man was well dressed and seemed confused by all the noise. He walked toward Paine blindly. The assassin permitted him to come close, then raised his knife and plunged it into the stranger’s chest up to the hilt. Mr. Hansell, State Department messenger, fell without uttering a word.
Paine hurried downstairs and out into the street. He looked for Herold, and found that he had been deserted. He untied his horse, mounted, and, mopping his face, turned north toward H Street. He walked the horse and William Bell, seeing him, followed behind, cupping his hands and yelling “Murder!” Soldiers came running from Augur’s sentry box. They passed the assassin, passed the Negro boy, who was pointing at Paine, and ran up the steps of The Old Clubhouse.
Bell was stubborn. He kept behind Paine until the assassin turned, annoyed, and spurred his shaggy-shanked horse into a trot. The boy still followed, for a block and a half. Then he stopped and hurried back to Mr. Seward’s house.
The Seward home looked unreal. Hansell, barely conscious, was bleeding profusely and gagging on his blood. At the top landing, Frederick Seward lay curled on his side, in a coma. On the rug beside him was a broken pistol and a black felt hat—Paine’s. A male nurse, Sergeant Robinson, was badly hurt and bleeding. Augustus Seward was injured, but not bleeding. Miss Fanny Seward, who had been smashed and knocked down when Paine had first entered the sick room, was unconscious on the floor. She was one of the “men” he thought he had been battling.
When William Bell got back to the house, Major Augustus Seward was standing in the doorway with a huge pistol in his hand. People came running from all over Lafayette Square. Little Bell tried to tell his story, and point to which way the man had gone, but no one had time to listen to him.
Paine outdistanced the shouts of murder and soon he found that he was in a maze of streets, all of them dark and lonely. He remembered that “Cap” had said to turn right, so he turned right. He trotted his horse and he walked his horse. After a half hour, houses became infrequent and he saw dark fields. In the moonlight, he saw some soldiers coming toward him, so he got off the horse and hid in a field. He was in the East Capitol section, but he didn’t know it. He was also about a half mile from the Navy Yard Bridge, but he didn’t know that either.
The streets of downtown Washington were alive with running people who shouted to darkened houses that assassins were at large and that the Secretary of State had been murdered in his bed. This wave of hysteria, as John Wilkes Booth figured, met an opposite wave which roared that the President had been killed in cold blood in Ford’s Theatre.
The news reached different people in different ways. Major Eckert was standing before a mirror in his room, shaving, when a friend burst in and said that Seward had just been killed. Mr. Stanton was undressing for bed, having been serenaded by the arsenal band, when a soldier banged on the broken pull bell and then rapped on the door. Stanton heard the news about Lincoln and Seward, went back upstairs, and told Mrs. Stanton that it was humbug. He was getting into bed when more people came with the same wild news. He dressed and someone got him a hack and he hurried to Seward’s home. Robert Lincoln had just arrived home, and was sitting with members of his father’s staff, when the tragic news came. Surgeon General Barnes was homeward bound in his carriage and was passing Willard’s Hotel when a cavalryman rode up, looked in, and advised the doctor to go to Ford’s Theatre at once—the President had been shot.
Barnes ordered the driver to take him to his office at top speed. He wanted to get his instruments. He was packing them in a bag when a wild-eyed soldier burst in and said that Secretary of State Seward had been stabbed and to please hurry. The Surgeon General said that he had heard about the alarm, but that the man must have been confused because he had said it was the President, and the place was Ford’s Theatre. Barnes went off to Seward’s home. There he was dressing the wounds of Frederick Seward when a Negro hack driver pleaded his way up the stairs and begged Barnes to come at once to Tenth Street, the President of the United States was dying.
Robert Lincoln and John Hay raced to Tenth Street in a carriage. The President’s oldest son did not believe the news. When the driver tried to turn off G Street into Tenth—a block and a half from the theater—a mass of humanity blocked the road and Robert Lincoln put his head in his hands and moaned. When soldiers tried to turn the carriage away Lincoln, in anguish, said:
“It’s my father! My father! I’m Robert Lincoln!”
With help, he got through on foot. When he saw his mother, in the parlor of Petersen House, he burst into tears.
In the Seward home, Nurse Robinson and Miss Fanny Seward had turned the gas up and Robinson had found the secretary on the floor between bed and wall. His eyes were open, staring into pools of his own blood.
Miss Fanny said: “Is my father dead?”
Robinson felt for a pulse and found none.
“He has no pulse,” he said.
Miss Fanny threw up the front window and screamed “Murder! Murder!” Robinson tore the nightshirt open and listened for a heartbeat. He heard one, and it sounded strong. The Secretary of State whispered: “I am not dead. Send for a surgeon. Send for the police. Close the house.”
The nurse lifted Mr. Seward and said: “Do not talk. It makes your bleeding worse.” The patient was put back on the bed. Robinson got the twisted bedclothes off the floor and wrapped them around the secretary. Then he looked at the face on the pillow. With a cloth, he wiped the red mask off and saw two pulsing wounds, one on each cheek. The right cheek was slashed from ear to lip and hung in a flap over the lower jaw. From the side, Robinson could see the inside of Mr. Seward’s mouth. The leather-covered iron brace around neck and jaw had saved the man’s life.
Vice President Andrew Johnson heard a pounding on a door. He was half asleep, half awake. He heard it and yet he didn’t hear it. It continued for some time. He got up, fumbling for the lamp beside his bed. Outside, former Governor Leonard J. Farwell said: “Governor Johnson, if you are in this room, I must see you.” Johnson got the door open as Farwell was trying to peer over the transom.
The Vice President invited him in.
“Someone,” Farwell whispered, “has shot and murdered the President.”
Johnson, lighting the living-room lamp, swung around. He did not believe the news. Then he saw Farwell’s wild, agonized expression and he ran to the man and they threw their arms around each other as though, without support, each would collapse. Farwell opened the door and peered both ways down the corridor. He rang for servants and asked for guards. One man was put inside the door and told to admit no one.
Someone knocked and Farwell, frightened to frenzy, refused to permit the door to be opened until he recognized the voice of a Congressman. The Congressman said that there were five hundred people in the lobby. Johnson emerged from his bedroom shoving his shirttails into his trousers.
“Governor,” he said, “go back to the theater and find out how the President is.”
In a little while, Farwell was back with Major James Rowan O’Beirne, Provost Marshal of the District of Columbia. There were a lot of people in Johnson’s two rooms and the men were in such a state of excitement that they were ready to believe any idiocy. Farwell assured everyone that the President was dying; that Seward was dead, and that it was part of a gigantic plot to kill Johnson and all Cabinet ministers.
O’Beirne said that it was his opinion that Johnson should remain in his rooms with his friends. The Vice President bridled and insisted that his place was at the side of the President and that’s where he was going. The Provost Marshal was opposed, but said that if Johnson had to do it, to wait until O’Beirne returned for him, when the excitement in the streets had died a little.
The stone had been dropped into the still pool. Now the wave began to ripple outward, evenly for the most part, and it spread to all parts of the city. Ella Turner, the prostitute who had loved Booth, heard of the deed and the name of the assassin. She went to her room, placed a photo of John Wilkes Booth under her pillow, and pressed her head into a rag soaked with chloroform.*
The news jumped from house to house, from street to street. In nightclothes, citizens gathered on the sidewalks, talking, and other citizens threw up the windows and demanded to know what the noise was for. In time, the wave reached reporter L. A. Gobright of the Associated Press. He was closing his office for the night—had the key in the door—when he heard the first wild rumor and, without waiting to check it, wired his New York office:
THE PRESIDENT WAS SHOT IN A THEATER TONIGHT AND PERHAPS MORTALLY WOUNDED.
Fifteen minutes later, all commercial telegraph lines out of Washington were dead and no further news got out of the city until 1 A.M.
In the home of Senator Conness, colleague Charles Sumner was chatting when a young man burst in and said, all in one breath: “Mr. Lincoln is assassinated Mr. Seward was murdered in his bed there’s murder in the streets.”
Sumner’s reaction was: “Young man, be moderate in your statements. What has happened? Tell us.” And when he heard it again, he did not believe it and he put on his cape and walked the short distance to the White House and said to the sentry: “Has Mr. Lincoln returned?”
“No, sir. We have heard nothing from him.” Sumner went home.
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase, heard the news at home and believed that it was mistaken. When he heard the same news from another source, Mr. Chase decided that he could not be of service to Lincoln, and stayed home and went to bed.
The Navy Secretary, Mr. Welles, was sleeping when Mrs. Welles awakened him with the news that Mr. Seward was dead. He dressed, hurried over to The Old Clubhouse. Stanton arrived at almost the same moment. They saw Frederick unconscious with two fractures of the skull; they saw blood and hysteria and anguish.
On the way downstairs, Welles admitted to the Secretary of War that he had not believed the news about Seward, but now he had seen it with his own eyes. He had heard that the President had been shot, but he did not believe that either.
“It is true,” said Stanton. “I had a talk with a man who had just left Ford’s Theatre.”
“Then I will go at once to the White House.”
“The President is still at the theater,” said Stanton.
They had reached the downstairs reception hall and, as they talked, they noted the presence of many of Washington City’s distinguished citizens.
“Then let us go immediately there.”
“That is my intention. If you haven’t a carriage, come with me.”
Stanton ordered Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs—the man who had built the Capitol dome—to take charge of the house and to clear it. General Meigs begged Stanton not to go to the theater. He said that there was murder in the streets. Others took up the plea. Mr. Stanton, on one of the rare occasions of his life, hesitated.
Welles continued ahead and said: “I am going at once and I think it is your duty to go.”
“Yes,” said Stanton vaguely, “I shall go.” But men hung on to his arms and Welles said he was wasting time and he went out and got into a carriage. Stanton followed and had one foot in the carriage when Major Thomas Eckert, on horseback, leaned down and begged him not to go. When Meigs saw that Stanton would go, he jumped into the carriage too, and yelled for a cavalry escort. The party started and Stanton jumped up in alarm and said: “This is not my carriage.” Mr. Welles said that it was no time to argue about the ownership of a carriage. Stanton leaned out the window and invited Chief Justice David K. Cartter of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals to join them. The judge climbed up on the box beside the driver.
“The streets,” said Welles, “were full of people. Not only the sidewalks but the carriage ways were to some extent occupied, all, or nearly all, hurrying toward Tenth Street.”
The news had reached George Atzerodt and, when he heard it, the carriage maker was lost in panic. He galloped up F Street and, when a pedestrian yelled to him, Atzerodt hurried back to the stable where he had rented his horse and gave it up. On foot, he could not hope to join Booth in Surrattsville. He did not dare return to Kirkwood House. So he took a horse car for the Navy Yard. There he had a friend who owned a store. He would sleep on the floor of the shop.
A block away from Ford’s, in a little hideaway saloon, John Matthews was drinking. The actor “who did not deserve to live” had finished his work at Ford’s Theatre. He drank quietly, without conversation, until the news of the night slapped against the doors. Then his cloistered little world crumbled.
“What did he say?” John Matthews said to the bartender.
“He said the President was killed.”
“I just left Ford’s. The President was sitting in a box seat.”
Matthews stood for a moment, mulling the word “killed,” because that word would lead one to guess that there had to be a killer. John Matthews paid for his drinks and hurried out. The corner was full of people. A troop of cavalry, at dead gallop, ran through the crowd headed toward the theater. Matthews said to a man: “Who—who did it?”
A few people turned to look at him. The man shrugged. Another man said he had heard that an actor did it, somebody named Booth. John Matthews felt ill. He held his right hand against his chest, where the letter to the editor of the National Intelligencer reposed.
Matthews said that he did not know how he got back to his hotel, but he got there and he started a fire in the grate and then he sat and ripped open the letter and read it. What it had to say about the plot on Mr. Lincoln’s life made him sick to his stomach. It was signed with the names of the men who were part of the plot, and Matthews felt that, by having possession of this incriminating letter, he too was a conspirator. He burned the letter in the grate, holding on to the flaming end of it until he had to let go.
A few of the words burned in his mind forever: “The moment has at last arrived when my plans must be changed. The world may censure me for what I am about to do, but I am sure that posterity will justify me. . . . John Wilkes Booth— Paine—Atzerodt—Herold.”
On E Street, the celebration at Grover’s Theatre was almost concluded when a man came into the theater and, standing behind the audience, shouted: “President Lincoln has been shot in his private box at Ford’s. Turn out!” The audience buzzed. The actors paused. Corporal James Tanner, a bright young man who had mastered shorthand, stood and yelled: “Sit down! It’s a ruse of the pickpockets!” His reasoning was that pickpockets were sitting in the audience and had arranged with one of their number to shout alarming news. Thus, in the rush to the exits, the pickpockets would fleece the crowd. The people listened to Corporal Tanner. They sat. Onstage, a young boy who had, a moment before, finished reciting a patriotic poem, came back and, his voice choking, announced that the news about President Lincoln was true.
There was no panic. Tanner and six hundred others were dazed. They went out onto E Street trying to convince themselves that Lincoln might be dead. There they learned that Seward had been murdered in his bed. Tanner and another soldier hurried to Willard’s Hotel to get more details. They found a muttering mob of men who, in helpless rage, were ready to visit vengeance on anyone who said a disagreeable word. Tanner decided to go home. He had a room on the second floor of a house across the street from Ford’s Theatre— next door to a family named Petersen.
Earlier, John Fletcher, still worried about Herold and the horse, stood in front of Willard’s Hotel watching horsemen come and go. He saw a roan coming down in the darkness out of Fifteenth Street onto the Avenue. The horse was going fast but, as the rider approached the well-lighted hotel, he slowed to a trot. Fletcher assured himself that it was David Herold and he ran out into the street shouting:
“You get off that horse now! You’ve had that horse long enough!”
Herold, who was coming from Seward’s home and was trying not to excite suspicion, pulled the horse away from Fletcher’s outstretched hand and swung up Fourteenth Street toward F. When Fletcher saw the boy gallop off, he was certain that thievery was the object, so he ran back to the stable, saddled a dark horse, and hurried down E to Thirteenth, up Thirteenth to F, found that he had not headed the boy off, and could not see him ahead on F Street, and so he turned right again and went back to Pennsylvania Avenue. If Herold was going to steal the horse, he would head down to the Navy Yard Bridge and take the horse into southern Maryland. This constituted the first real pursuit of the conspirators. Mr. Fletcher was, at this time, about a mile and a half behind Booth and a half mile behind Herold.
At Third Street, the stable foreman turned around the south side of the Capitol and here he met a horseman coming the other way.
“Have you seen any horsemen going this way?” said Fletcher.
“Two,” the stranger said. “Both very fast.”
Fletcher spurred his horse. He was convinced that Atzerodt was the first man; Herold the second. They would take the stage road, down New Jersey Avenue to Virginia Avenue, then diagonally left to Eleventh Street, and then onto the bridge. It was dark and Fletcher was slow and careful. In retrieving a horse, he did not want to break the leg of another.
At the Navy Yard Bridge, Sergeant Silas T. Cobb was near the end of his tour of duty. Another hour and fifteen minutes, and he’d be headed back to the barracks, a few yards away. It was soft, safe duty, but it was also deadly dull. Cobb and two sentries patrolled the Washington City end of the long wooden bridge. They challenged all suspicious parties entering or leaving the city. At 9 P.M. every night, the bridge was closed. No one could leave Washington, and no one could come in. Of course, now that the war was over, no sergeant wanted to be severe on citizens, but a soldier had to be careful.
It was about 10:45 P.M. when Cobb heard hoofbeats in the darkness, approaching. A dark man with a black mustache came into the cone of light around the sentry box and one of the sentries put a hand on the rein and held the horse.
“Who are you, sir?” said Sergeant Cobb.
“My name is Booth.”
“Where are you from?”
“The city.”
“Where are you going?”
“I am going home.”
Cobb looked the man over and walked around the horse. The man in the saddle had a fine smile.
“And where would that be?”
“Charles.”
“What town?”
“No town.”
“Come now.”
“Close to Beantown, but I do not live in the town.”
“Why are you out so late? You know the rules. No one is allowed past this point after nine o’clock. “
“That is new to me. You see, I had to go somewhere first, and I thought that I would have the moon to go home by.”
Sergeant Silas T. Cobb studied the rider once more, and rubbed his chin.
“Go ahead,” he said.
He stood in the light and watched the little mare pick her dainty way over the planks until he could no longer see her, but, far off in the middle of the span, he could hear the boom of the planking.
A few minutes later, Cobb heard a second horse. The sergeant came out of the sentry box and saw a young boy. The horse looked abused.
“Who are you?” said Cobb.
“My name is Smith.”
“Ah, yes. Where are you bound for?”
“Home.”
“What town?”
“White Plains.”
“How is it that you are out so late?”
Herold gave a ribald reply.
Cobb brought him up close to the sentry box, took a good look, and told him to be off. Two conspirators were now reasonably safe in Maryland.
A few minutes later, a third horseman came into view. The sentry grinned at the sergeant.
“We’re doing a good business tonight.”
Before Cobb had a chance to ask questions, the third rider asked one.
“Tell me,” said John Fletcher. “Did a man on a roan horse cross a few minutes ago? He had an English saddle and metal stirrups.”
Cobb nodded. “Yes,” he said. “He has gone across.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
“Yes, Smith.”
“Smith? Can I cross?”
“You can cross, but you cannot return back.”
Fletcher thought it over. “If that is so,” he said, “I will not go.” He turned his horse and headed back into Washington City. The foreman was angry. He stopped at Murphy’s Stable on the slight chance that his horse had been stabled there. It wasn’t, but the stableman said that Fletcher ought to go back to his stable and remain there because the President had been killed and Seward was dying.
John Fletcher felt little interest in the news. He had lost a horse and he knew from past experience that old man Naylor would blame him. Fletcher resolved to get back to his stable, unsaddle his horse, and then walk up to police headquarters and register a complaint.