The Conspiracy

It is likely that John Wilkes Booth first decided to dispose of Abraham Lincoln the day after the presidential election of 1864. The actor despised the President before that; in the campaign that year Booth predicted that, if Lincoln was elected, he would set up a dynasty. Lincoln had been Booth’s emotional whipping boy for at least four years.

There is no record tracing the origins of Booth’s opposition. Somewhere, it had a beginning. These men had never met. Their personal paths never crossed, and Booth sought nothing that could be termed a favor. Still, abiding hatreds start somewhere, and it may be that Abraham Lincoln offended the actor by proclaiming, in the election of 1860, his intention of holding the Union together against the wishes of the Southern secessionists. Booth, an adolescent in politics, pictured the South as a land of courtly and proud people; the North, to him, was a land of crude mercenaries of enormous brute strength.

Whether it was this, or an accumulation of presidential acts designed, by necessity, to bring the South to its knees, no one knows, but it was a passionate and violent hatred of the self-feeding type. Lincoln had to do no more than breathe to cause John Wilkes Booth to loathe him the more each day. Wilkes argued with his family about Lincoln, was stunned when he learned that his brother Edwin had voted for Lincoln in 1860 and would do so again in 1864.

There is substance to the story that Wilkes hated Lincoln so much in 1864 that he was certain that his feelings were shared by a majority of the electorate and he was sure that the President would be turned out of office. Booth’s venom was so strong that he found it impossible to understand people who had a kind word for Lincoln. In this he was sincere.

He was not insane—if his acts and his conversation can be weighed psychologically—any more than another man might be called psychotic for fearing snakes or wasps to the point of becoming a nuisance on the subject. He was emotionally immature—his sexual excesses and his inability to take orders alone tend to give one that impression—but he was also shrewd and generous and a loyal friend.

Above all, Booth had pride. He thought of his family as one of the finest in Maryland although his father had been called an insane alcoholic, and had not married his mother until years after the first babies had been born. His love for his sister amounted to melancholy adoration. His affection for his older brother Edwin was, for political reasons, more restrained.

Wilkes’s father, an emotional sentimentalist, had studied the Koran, occultism and Catholic theology and, in his spiritual confusion, believed that all animals were reincarnated humans, so that, when a sparrow fell at Bel Air, Mr. Booth, Sr., gave it a complete funeral service. In anger, young Wilkes once killed a litter of kittens and the mother cat. His father wept uncontrollably. At another time, in summer, Wilkes forced a horse to pull him to town and back in a sleigh to win a bet.

In 1855, at the age of seventeen, he made his debut at the St. Charles Theatre in Baltimore. He put more fire into the role of Richmond than the part required, but the audience, which remembered the lines better than he, hissed him. After that, he studied harder, but he would always be known more for his spirit and his acrobatics than for his measured cadence. Two years later, Asia Booth Clarke prevailed upon her husband to give the boy a chance at the Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia, and John Sleeper Clarke quickly found himself with one more actor. The boy developed into an outrageous scene thief, but he played his parts with such heightened enthusiasm that the audiences idolized him.

By 1860, he was an established theatrical star and toured the South and West to jammed houses, although he was only twenty-two. His backstage conquests were buzzed from New York to Philadelphia to Baltimore to Washington to Richmond to Columbus, Georgia. In Madison, Indiana, pretty Henrietta Irving slashed at the star with a knife, missed, and plunged the blade into her own breast. Wilkes took his women as he took his brandy, in long careless draughts, and tossed the empties on a refuse heap.

John Wilkes Booth always played at love and always carried small photos of his special girls. One was Bessie Hale, the plump, dark daughter of Democratic Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire. Another was Ella Turner. She is the only girl, a tiny redhead, who enjoyed the semi-permanent status of mistress to Booth. When he wasn’t at the National Hotel, he ordered her to stay at her sister’s house of prostitution on Ohio Avenue, around the corner from the White House. He never carried Miss Turner’s picture.

Booth was a Southerner by choice. Geographically, his roots were in northern Maryland, at Bel Air, and, although many Marylanders served the Confederacy in the War Between the States, the state itself remained officially Northern. Booth did not enlist to fight for the cause he loved. He had served for a little while in a Virginia company which took part in the capture of John Brown, and the records of that company indicate that Booth may have been present at the hanging of Brown, but he was not under arms when the Civil War began. When friends asked why he did not enlist, he said that he had made a promise to his mother. Booth’s apologists say that he had an unnatural fear of having his face scarred, and that this kept him from fighting in the Confederate cause.

Whatever the reason, his inability to fight and die for a cause he so fervently espoused could, in time, have become sickening to him. When Lincoln was elected for a second term, Booth decided that it was time to contribute, in a big way, to the Confederacy. He would kidnap the President. He would kidnap him, and smuggle him through the lines into Richmond. This plan, if executed, would achieve several results, all desirable to Booth: (1) it would make a historic figure of the actor; (2) it would humble the man he hated; (3) it would force the North to exchange prisoners with the South, something the man-rich North refused to do for the man-poor South.

The word “kidnap” is not Booth’s. In his later dealings, he used the word “capture,” and there is a difference because, in Booth’s idealistic righteousness, kidnapping was a crime, capture in wartime was not. Lincoln, as commander in chief of the armies, was a soldier and a soldier is liable to capture.

Mr. Booth decided in November 1864, to work his scheme. He had no fear for his life. In his vanity, it was more important to be remembered forever than to live long. His paramount fear was that the world might misunderstand his great act; might attribute the deed to mean motives, and so he resolved to leave a note to the world, so that the history books of tomorrow and yet tomorrow would have the story straight.

In the late autumn, Booth explored the exits from Washington. There were four ways out of the city to the Southern states. The farthest from the White House was the Georgetown Aqueduct, which lay to the northwest. He declined this escape route at once because it entailed a ride of a mile and a half through the city to reach it and, once across the Aqueduct, he would be on Virginia soil and, being northwest of Washington City, he could be cut off easily by any patrol leaving the city in a southerly direction.

A second escape route, considered and discarded at once, was at the opposite end of town. This was Benning’s Bridge, to the east. It lay beyond the poorhouse and would carry him across the east branch of the Potomac River (now called Anacostia River) into Maryland, but he would then find himself on the road to Annapolis, in a southeasterly heading rather than south.

The third possibility was Long Bridge, a few blocks south of the White House. This route aimed directly at Richmond, a hundred miles away. The virtue of this road was also its vice. The Army of the Potomac had been using it, on and off, for four years, and parts of it were heavy with the traffic of regiments and brigades heading for the front, or heading home for leave. Big sections of this country had been broken into Union area commands, and the War Department could get in touch with any of these by telegraph in a matter of minutes. Booth rejected Long Bridge.

There was but one other way. This lay across the Navy Yard Bridge, at the foot of Eleventh Street. On the far side was southern Maryland, a big peninsula of little villages and secessionist intrigue. Southern Maryland had been almost isolated from the war. No armies stirred the mustard dust of its roads; no villages were fired in raids; it was neglected by both of the big protagonists, except as a courier route for spies. Mr. Booth explored this route, from the Navy Yard Bridge down to Silesia and Pomfret and Port Tobacco, where, for a price, one could secure a boat and cross into Virginia slightly below Fredericksburg. He rode back up through Indian Head Junction and Bryantown and Surrattsville, stopping here and there to question the people and to pose as a farm buyer and a horse trader.

Booth decided that this was to be the escape route. He tested the sympathies of the people he met with adroit questions, and he came to feel that this was friendly country indeed. On one of his trips, he was between Waldorf and Bryantown and he was introduced to Dr. Samuel Mudd, a humorless farmer who had not practiced medicine in years. The Mudds, and their kin, owned a lot of good property in the area and they were anxious to make a sale to the actor. On one occasion, Booth was invited to spend the night at the home of Dr. Mudd. Still, Booth did not buy a farm and probably never intended to buy one. He did buy two horses from a Mudd friend—a small saddle horse and a large one-eyed roan with fetlocks like a brewery horse.

The first outward intimation of the type of crime Booth planned came in the winter of 1864–1865 when, on a trip to New York, he stopped on an icy evening to visit an actor friend, Mr. Samuel Knapp Chester. This man was a fair character actor who depended, for work, on friendly stars like Booth. He lived at 45 Grove Street with his wife and children.

On this evening, Booth stopped by and asked Chester to take a walk with him. They went crosstown, heads bent into the collars of their capes, and they stopped at the House of Lords, a tavern on Houston Street. They talked about the theater season, gossiped about fellow actors, talked about “side” investments in other businesses, and the chance of Chester getting some work at Ford’s Theatre in Washington City, or at Grover’s.

They ate and drank. Chester listened. He hoped that Booth would talk about his land speculations, because Chester had received a note from him telling about the big money to be made in southern Maryland farms and livestock. Mr. Chester never made a great deal of money and, between engagements, he was always hard pressed for cash. But Booth kept talking theater and, at last, Chester said:

“Tell me about your speculations.”

“I have a new speculation,” said Booth.

“I want to hear it.”

“You will—by and by.”

There was no point in pressing Booth. He would talk about it, Chester knew, when he was ready. They left the House of Lords and stopped at an oyster bar under the Revere House and Booth was suddenly quiet. They ate and drank considerably. Booth was weighing a momentous decision—whether to tell this man or not. Once told, if Chester refused to participate in the conspiracy, Booth would be at the mercy of his friend.

The two men went out into the night and walked up Broadway, almost in silence. When they reached Bleecker Street, Chester said that, if Booth did not mind, he would turn west here and go home. Booth asked him to walk a little farther. At Fourth Street and Broadway, Booth said: “Broadway is still crowded. Let us walk down Fourth.”

After a block or two, with no one in sight, Booth stopped under a streetlamp. He looked at his friend and began a preamble about how few friends a man could really trust in these days, and, when Chester saw that his patron seemed to lack the confidence to continue, he said: “For God’s sake, Wilkes, speak up!”

Booth blurted out that he was now engaged in a conspiracy to capture the heads of the United States Government, including Lincoln, and he planned to bring them to Richmond. There was a silence. Chester, fumbling for words, afraid to believe the ones he had heard, said: “You wish me to go in this?”

“Yes,” said Booth.

“It is impossible, Wilkes.” Chester held out his hands in supplication. “Only think of my family.”

“I have two or three thousand dollars I can leave for them.”

“No,” said Chester. He was shocked and bewildered. He had expected a business proposition, a chance to make some “side” money, and now he was being offered a chance to help perpetrate a deed so foul that he had to keep staring at Booth to be assured of the seriousness of his friend. It was beyond comprehension. He wanted to go home.

Booth wanted to talk. They stood under the lamp for twenty minutes. The sum of Booth’s argument was that the North had forced the South into war, that the South wanted, in honor, to exchange prisoners of war with the North but that Lincoln had refused to do it. The reason for this, Booth explained, was that the North had an inexhaustible supply of men while the South was now using fourteen-year-old boys, in uniform, to guard prisoners. The South did not want prisoners and could not afford to feed them and, in the light of the embargo, could not even give them medicine. All the South wanted was a fair exchange—man for man. Each day, she grew a little weaker. Each day, she faced defeat unless, in some way, the President could be forced to agree to an exchange of prisoners.

Booth said that he could assure Chester that there would be a fortune, and honor, for those who helped to capture Lincoln. A man could find himself rich almost overnight.

“No,” said Chester.

“Then you will not betray me?” said Booth quietly. “You dare not.”

“You do not have to be afraid of me, Wilkes.”

“I will implicate you anyhow.”

“That is unnecessary.”

“Our party is sworn to secrecy, Sam, and if you betray us, you will be hunted down through life.”

“I will forget all that you have said.”

“I urge you to come in with us.”

“No.”

“Your work will be simple, Sam. You understand theaters. All you will have to do is open the back door of Ford’s Theatre at a signal.”

“In Washington?”

“It is easy and you will succeed.”

“Wilkes, please. I have a family.”

“Your family will get good care. We have parties on the other side who will co-operate with us. There are between fifty and a hundred people in this.”

“Wilkes, I must say good night.” Chester went home.

The shreds of evidence, held together, say that John Wilkes Booth was lying. At best, there were never more than seven persons in his plot. In the main, they were simpleminded schemers, not one of whom rose above the rank of private in the Confederate Army. Each—with one exception—had a greater personal loyalty to Booth than to the South. None had qualities of leadership. So far as parties on “the other side” are concerned, there were none. Booth wanted none. He wanted to do this thing alone, with the assistance of courageous men smaller in stature than he. At no time did he seek official sanction, or even unofficial sanction, from the South.

Booth was a loner.

Between January 1865, and April, the conspirator put about $4,000 of his money into the “capture.” The biggest part of this was spent for supporting his fellow conspirators; a little went for horses and feed, and some went for fleeing Washington when successive plots failed.

These plots were movements of opportunity. In retrospect, some of them have comic aspects. Throughout January, February and March, the element of coincidence was on the President’s side and, as each plot failed, the conspirators felt that the failure indicated that the government was aware of the Booth band; this bred panic, and the group dispersed. At no time, with one exception, did the United States Government know about the conspiracy and, on that occasion, the administration gave it little attention.

The first attempt at “capture” was scheduled for the night of Wednesday, January 18. It had been announced that Mr. Lincoln and two friends would attend Ford’s Theatre to see Edwin Forrest in Jack Cade, a play about the Kentish revolution.

A few days before, Booth stopped at the home of his sister Asia, in Philadelphia, to sign an important letter he had left in her keeping. It was to be released only if he was captured or killed. This was the letter to the history books. It is a rambling document, replete with the customary calls to God to bear witness, the breast beating, the indictment, heartbreak, mother and flag. The substance of it is as follows:

Right or wrong, God judge me, not man. For be my motive good or bad, of one thing I am sure, the lasting condemnation of the North. I love peace more than life. Have loved the Union beyond expression. For four years have I waited, hoped and prayed for the dark clouds to break and for a restoration of our former sunshine. All hope for peace is dead. My prayers have proved as idle as my hopes. God’s will be done. I go to see and share the bitter end.

I have ever held the South were right. The very nomination of Abraham Lincoln, four years ago, plainly spoke war, war upon Southern rights and institutions. His election proved it. “Await an overt act.” Yes, till you are bound and plundered. What folly. The South was wise. Who thinks of argument or pastime when the finger of his enemy presses the trigger? In a foreign war, I too could say “Country right or wrong.” But in a struggle such as ours (where the brother tries to pierce the brother’s heart) for God’s sake choose the right! When a country like this spurns justice from her side, she forfeits the allegiance of every honest freeman, and should leave him, untrammeled by any fealty soever, to act as his conscience may approve. . . .

The country was formed for the white, not the black man. And looking upon African slavery from the same standpoint held by the noble framers of our constitution, I, for one, have ever considered it one of the greatest blessings (both for themselves and us) that God ever bestowed upon a favored nation. Witness heretofore our wealth and our power; witness their elevation and enlightenment above their race elsewhere. I have lived among it most of my life, and have seen less harsh treatment from master to man than I have beheld in the north from Father to son. Yet, Heaven knows, no one would be willing to do more for the Negro race than I, could I but see the way to still better their condition.

But Lincoln’s policy is only preparing a way for their total annihilation. The south are not, nor have they been, fighting for the continuation of slavery. The first battle of Bull Run did away with that idea. Their cause since the war have been as noble and greater far than those that urged their fathers on. Even should we allow that they were wrong at the beginning of this contest, cruelty and injustice have made the wrong become the right, and they stand now (before the wonder and admiration of the world) as a noble band of patriotic heroes. Hereafter, reading of their deeds, Thermopolae will be forgotten. . . .

The south can make no choice. It is either extermination or slavery for themselves (worse than death) to draw from. I know my choice. . . .

But there is no time for words. I write in haste. I know how foolish I shall be deemed for undertaking such a step as this, where, on one side, I have many friends and everything to make me happy, where my profession alone has gained me an income of more than twenty thousand dollars a year, and where my great personal ambition in my profession has such a great field for labor. On the other hand, the south have never bestowed upon me one kind word; a place now where I have no friends, except beneath the sod; a place where I must either become a private soldier or a beggar. To give up all of the former for the latter, besides my mother and my sisters, whom I love so dearly (although they so widely differ with me in opinion) seems insane; but God is my judge. I love justice more than I do a country that disowns it, more than fame or wealth; more (Heaven pardon me if wrong) more than a happy home. . . .

My love (as things stand today) is for the south alone. Nor do I deem it a dishonor in attempting to make for her a prisoner of this man to whom she owes so much of misery. If success attends me, I go penniless to her side. They say that she has found that “last ditch” which the North has so long derided, and been endeavoring to force her in, forgetting they are our brothers, and that it is impolitic to goad on an enemy to madness. Should I reach her in safety and find it true, I will proudly beg permission to triumph or die in that same “ditch” by her side.

A confederate doing duty upon his own responsibility.

J. Wilkes Booth.

He signed it, assured himself of a place in the history books, and hurried back to Washington. He sent to Baltimore for two boyhood friends, Michael O’Laughlin and Sam Arnold. Both were Confederate veterans, and both were hardened to the rigors of war, but they were shocked when their old friend told them the mission. Arnold was so frightened that he spent time trying to convince Booth that the scheme had to fail.

Neither of these recruits was bright. They were poor Baltimore boys who looked upon Wilkes as a rich and influential friend. The actor convinced them that they were part of a big secret band.

The rest of the group—Arnold and O’Laughlin had not met them yet, nor even heard their names—consisted of George A. Atzerodt, a carriage maker from Port Tobacco; David Herold, a young drug clerk who wearied of a matriarchal world; and John Surratt, Confederate courier, whose mother managed a boardinghouse.

Mr. Atzerodt is worth some special comment here, since he was later “assigned” to kill the Vice President. He was a German who worked by day with wood and wheels—a small man with small sly eyes and a drooping mustache; a man with features as malleable as warm putty; a man who always looked dirty and was conscious of it. At night, he ferried Southerners back and forth across Pope’s Creek and, if a Northerner wanted to get through the blockade, George would ferry him too. The kindest thing that was ever said about Mr. Atzerodt was that he was a man who would not resent an insult.

He was pitifully anxious to make a friend, and to this end he bought drinks for barflies and laughed at their jokes, but, the moment any of them challenged something that he had said, Mr. Atzerodt jammed his brown beaver hat on his head and left.

Booth had five men, in two groups. Each was in the plot to “capture” the commander in chief of the Union; none wanted to kill; two were in serious doubt about the propriety and feasibility of capture. Sam Arnold was afraid of any plot involving Lincoln. John Surratt, who had risked his life for the Confederacy as a courier, started as a member of the band by entertaining the notion that the arch-conspirator was insane. However, Booth visited the H Street boardinghouse and charmed Surratt with his candor and absence of condescension, and convinced the courier that the very brazenness of the idea would help to effect complete surprise, plus the fact that “capture” was a legal act.

Still Booth needed an actor, a theater-wise person who could turn out all the lights in a theater on cue, and, having been turned down by Sam Chester, he tried to enlist the services of a small-parts actor in Washington named John Matthews. Mr. Matthews was conscious of his own smallness in the world of the American theater, and, although he worked the full season at Ford’s Theatre, his habit was not to drink with actors at Taltavul’s saloon because he might be expected to buy drinks in return. He drank in a small place a block away from the theater.

Booth tried to interest Matthews in the plot and the little actor recoiled. He turned it down at once and advised the star to forget it. “Matthews,” said Booth later, “is a coward and not fit to live.” The actor would not forget his contempt of Matthews, and would try to hurt him.

The conspirators—with the exception of Arnold and O’Laughlin—met infrequently at Mrs. Surratt’s boarding-house. They whispered, consulted in upstairs rooms, wrestled with knives on a bed, bought pistols and became acquainted with their workings, and rode off into the country. The widow Surratt got to know them and once, in a moment of reflection, she asked her son John why these men were trooping into the house at odd hours and John said that they were all interested in a common oil speculation. Mrs. Surratt admired Booth, the courtly gentleman who attracted the eye of her seventeen-year-old daughter; she was fond of young David Herold, who was full of tall tales of hunting in her own southern Maryland; she didn’t like George Atzerodt, whom the boarders called “Port Tobacco.” Mrs. Surratt was, by all the rules of evidence, a pious zero with a penchant for falling on evil days. There is no corroborative evidence to show that she ever knew anything about a plot.

Mrs. Surratt had three children: Isaac, a Confederate soldier; John, a Confederate courier; and Anna. The boardinghouse kept Mrs. Surratt and Anna alive. Years before, she and her husband had had a farm and a tavern in southern Maryland and the government had made Mr. Surratt a postmaster and had called the crossroads Surrattsville. A few years ago, Mr. Surratt had died and his widow learned that the farm and tavern were difficult to administer. She had called John home from St. Charles College, near Ellicott’s Mills and, for a while, the boy filled his father’s shoes as a local postmaster. The appointment went to someone else, and John found that the rest of it had no appeal for him. He was a tall, blond, intelligent boy with cavernous eyes and a domed forehead. He was now twenty, and so he grew a wispy goatee.

Mrs. Surratt leased farm and tavern to Mr. John Lloyd, a drunkard with a poor memory. She took John and Anna off to Washington City and opened her impeccable little boarding-house on H Street. She placed advertisements in the Star and the National Intelligencer and she got boarders and set a good table.

Still, her troubles were economic and she needed every penny due her. She was in debt, for example, to Mr. Charles Calvert of southern Maryland for a few hundred dollars. In protracted correspondence with him, she held him off by saying that, many years ago, her husband had sold a piece of property to Mr. John Nothey and, if she could get him to pay her, she would be happy, in turn, to pay Mr. Calvert.

Her political horizon was small, and it is doubtful that she understood the issues between the states, but it is beyond argument that her sympathy was with the South and she was certain that the North was wrong in invading the South. She had owned a few slaves at one time, and at least one of them testified that she was harsh; two others testified that she was warm and solicitous. It is known that, at Surrattsville, she had fed passing Union soldiers and refused to accept money for it. Once she found some stray army horses and she had barned them until the proper authorities called for them. She refused to accept payment for feeding them.

Among her boarders now, all of whom had eaten early today, were Mr. and Mrs. John T. Holahan, and their daughter, fourteen. Mr. Holahan was a big man with big hands. His work was the cutting of tombstones. The Holahans occupied the front room on the third floor and the alcove too. The back room on that floor was used by John Surratt (when he was at home) and a former schoolmate, Louis J. Wiechman. Mr. Wiechman was big and soft and pungent, an overripe melon. He had studied for the priesthood at St. Charles and had failed. He had taught in school for a while, but that job too had sifted through his hands. Now he worked for the United States Government at the Office of the Commissary General of Prisoners. Some of his failures may have been attributable to Wiechman’s personality, which was akin to that of a professional sneak. He felt drawn to eavesdropping and gossip and, at the same time, had the aura of a suffering saint who has been snubbed.

There was a low-ceilinged attic in the boardinghouse and this was used as a bedroom and dressing room by Miss Anna Surratt and her cousin, Olivia Jenkins. Both were young and coquettish and bought postcard photos of actors and brave Southern generals.

On the second floor there was a sizable sitting room—which was reached from the outside of the brick house by a white inverted V staircase—and a back parlor. This parlor was used as a double bedroom by Mrs. Surratt and a young boarder, Miss Honora Fitzpatrick. On the ground floor—or basement—was another sitting room, a dining room, and a kitchen.

Little evidence remains of this first attempt to kidnap President Lincoln. On the weekend prior to the Wednesday of the attempt (January 18) Herold was sent to southern Maryland to arrange for relays of horses. Atzerodt was in Port Tobacco inquiring about leasing a flatboat large enough “to float ten or twelve people and a carriage.”

The mechanics of the kidnapping appear to have been that Surratt would be detailed to shut off the master gas valve, under the stage of Ford’s Theatre, at a signal. This would extinguish every light in the theater. He was then to come up onstage in the dark and wait, as Booth, in Boxes 7 and 8, forced the President at gunpoint to submit to gag and ropes. The actor would lower the President over the façade of the box eleven feet to the stage, then lower himself to the stage. The two men would hustle the President offstage, out the rear door, where a covered wagon would be waiting in the alley. There would be some confusion in the dark theater, among actors as well as patrons, and Booth counted on this to assist, not to hinder him. The President would be placed in the back of the wagon, trussed, and Surratt would drive the wagon out of the alley with Booth riding single-mount behind the wagon.

On the far side of the Navy Yard Bridge, they would pick up the first of Herold’s team relays, and head for Port Tobacco, twenty-nine miles away. By the time Atzerodt had ferried the party across the Potomac to Mathias Point, the whole country would know of their glorious deed and the people of Virginia would assist them through the battle lines to Richmond.

Arnold and O’Laughlin were not part of this attempt. As punishment for not showing sufficient enthusiasm, Booth proceeded without them. At 7 P.M. on January 18, the plotters were ready.

President Lincoln did not attend the theater that night. No reason was given. The management of the theater expected him because the partition between Boxes 7 and 8 was taken down in the afternoon and the President’s favorite rocker was placed in the part of the box closest to the dress circle.

The disappointment was almost too much for Booth and his little band to bear. The following morning, they scattered like minnows. Booth fled to New York. Surratt went south to the protection of the Confederacy. Herold hurried back to his mother and his seven sisters. Atzerodt took a job in Port Tobacco.

In early February, the band took slight heart. There had been no arrests, no apparent shadowing. John Wilkes Booth enlisted the final member of the conspirators. In a way, this man was the best because he could be relied upon to kill on order. His name was Lewis Powell and he was a native of Florida. He had changed his name to Lewis Paine, and he would be known by this name until he died.

Lewis Paine was big and strong and silent and stupid. He had thick jet hair, a clean, handsome face, and the muscles of a circus strong man.

In the South, he had seen John Wilkes Booth on the stage once. Afterward, he had been taken backstage to meet the star, and Lewis Paine never forgot the courtly manners, the gracious attitudes, the born-to-rule air. Later, Lewis went off to war with his brothers and he developed into a most efficient soldier. His quiet boast was that he had never wounded a Union soldier. He killed—or missed. His greatest shield against the moral strains of war was his stupidity, which kept him doing the work he was ordered to do, while preventing him from pondering on it. With no boastfulness, he displayed a skull which he used as an ash receiver and said that it was the head of a Union soldier whom he had killed.

Paine fought hard and well in the Peninsula Campaign, at Antietam, Chancellorsville, had two brothers killed at Murfreesboro, fought again at Gettysburg, was wounded and taken prisoner.

At this point, there is an unexplained hitch in his record. Paine was assigned as a male nurse in a Union hospital and escaped. He was next seen in the city of Baltimore, where Union authorities, instead of arresting him, ordered him to move farther northward, to Philadelphia or New York. It may be that it was here that Powell changed his name to Paine, and the authorities, having no record of Paine, assumed that he was one of the many wandering deserters of the Confederate Army, and wanted him at least two hundred miles north of the battle lines.

He was twenty, and boarded with Mrs. Mary Branson at 16 Eutaw Street, Baltimore. A few of the neighbors tried to make friends with him, or to strike up an acquaintanceship, and these drew nothing more than a blank stare. When he talked, he seemed to do it without moving his lips. Only the right side of his upper lip showed motion, and this gave him a sneering manner.

Paine’s weakness was a rare temper. It seldom mastered him, but, when it did, mastery was complete. A Negro maid came into his room one morning to make up his bed and he asked a question. She made the mistake of answering insolently. In a flash, both of his big hands were around her throat and he squeezed until she collapsed and fell to the floor. He stood over her, staring. The maid lived.

In the second week of February, John Wilkes Booth was in Baltimore to see Arnold and O’Laughlin about resurrecting the “capture” when Paine, lounging on a street corner, saw him and hailed. In spite of almost five years of time, Booth remembered the big Southern kid who had once been brought backstage for an introduction. They had a long talk about Paine’s war record, and the actor bought him a suit of clothes and gave him money.

From that moment on, Booth had a faithful dog. Paine’s feeling for the actor was slightly shy of idolatry. Booth was pleasantly surprised to find that his new man was almost ideal; he would do as he was told without question; he could be left alone for weeks in a boardinghouse and would not get into mischief and did not care for the company of girls. He seemed to be able to spend long periods of time sleeping and eating.

Paine was brought to the Surratt boardinghouse and introduced as the Reverend Lewis Wood, Baptist preacher. Mrs. Surratt, Catholic, thought that it was amusing that a Protestant minister would seek her place, of all the boardinghouses in Washington, but she told her daughter Anna that if the Reverend had no complaints, she had none.

There was much to see in Washington, but Paine was not interested. Every time he ventured on the streets to reach a rendezvous with “Cap,” he got lost and found it difficult to get back to the boardinghouse. He complained that the streets were laid out crooked, that they did not intersect at right angles, and he could make no sense of them.

On the night of Tuesday, March 7, four weeks and three days prior to the important day, a small incident occurred at Ford’s Theatre. Mr. Thomas Raybold, ticket seller, sold four orchestra seats in advance to Thomas Merrick, the day clerk at the National Hotel. The policy of the theater, when seat holders did not show up by the end of the first act, was to permit the ushers to move less favored patrons up to the empty chairs.

Merrick arrived, at the start of Act Two, to find that his seats had been taken. With him were a Mrs. Bunker and a Mr. Norton. Merrick was irritated. Raybold too was distressed, and offered to show the party to any good seats in the house, box seats. This mollified the party and they followed the ticket seller up the dress circle stairs of Ford’s Theatre and down the left-hand aisle to Box Number 6. It was locked.

Raybold’s embarrassment deepened, and he explained that the usher kept the keys to all boxes, because Mr. Ford did not like to have the stagehands sleeping in them by day, but that the dress circle usher was home ill and the best thing to do would be to take the party to the other side of the theater and put them in the presidential box. He led the party to the back of the dress circle, across, and down the right-hand aisle. They went through a little white door to Box 7. The door was locked. Raybold tried the door to Box 8. Locked.

The ticket seller, at this point, was angry at himself. He placed his shoulder against the door of the box and pushed. The door bent inward, and bounded back. He pushed again. In the rear of the dark corridor, Mrs. Bunker giggled. Raybold lifted his foot, aimed at the lock, and smashed. The lock snapped. The door flew open. The hasp which had held the lock swung loosely. When the party had been seated, and had forgiven him, Raybold tried the lock and found that it was broken. In the future, the door to the presidential box could be opened by anyone.

Mr. Raybold did not report it.

On a cold afternoon, Booth took Lewis Paine for a walk and showed him the White House. They walked across the south grounds toward the front of the mansion. Booth talked confidentially as they looked at the black stately trees, the squatters, the sentries warm inside their boxes, and heard the complaining bleat of Tad Lincoln’s goats, the barking challenge of a sentry on the far side of the mansion.

“He is right over there,” Booth said, pointing. Paine looked. “If you really want to kill him,” the actor said, “what I would do is just walk in, present my card and, when I was admitted, walk up to his desk and shoot him.”

Paine made no answer. Booth said he lacked nerve. Still no answer. The actor offered a less dangerous alternative. If you want to, said Booth, you can lie in wait in the bushes at the front of the White House lawn any evening and shoot him as he returns from his last daily visit to the War Department.

Lewis Paine liked that idea. He said he would do it. This is the first time on record that the thoughts of John Wilkes Booth turned from capture to kill.

The soldier waited in the bushes one night and, when he returned to the boardinghouse, he told Booth that he had lost his nerve. He insisted that he had been close enough to have strangled the President of the United States.

Lincoln had walked back to the White House that night with Major Thomas Eckert, the chief of telegraphers, and Paine had heard the President say, in a jocular way: “Major, spread out, spread out or we shall break through the ice.”

Sometime in March 1865, the clerks in the office of the Commissary General of Prisoners were talking about the illness of the President, and some fell to wondering what would happen to the Union if he died. This, in turn, led to a discussion of the assassination plots featured in the newspapers and Louis Wiechman, the fat boarder at Surratt House, assumed the air of a man who has a rich morsel of gossip and said that a plot was hatching against Mr. Lincoln in the very house where he boarded. A group of “Secesh” people were scheming to do away with the President.

Unless Wiechman’s character is being read wrong, this was intended as thrilling gossip, nothing more. Had the boarder feared for the President’s life, he might have been expected to report directly to his superior at the Commissary of Prisoners, or, conceding Wiechman’s flair for the dramatic, he might have gone directly to Secretary of War Stanton. The least he might have done was to report the matter to Major General Christopher C. Augur, Commander, Department of Washington, 22nd Corps.

Wiechman was surprised and worried when he found that his morsel got out of hand. He was questioned by Captain Gleason of the office, who said that he would report the matter at once to Assistant Provost Marshal Lieutenant Sharp. Wiechman was worried. He was intelligent and he may have feared that someone might suspect that he was part of the plot. He hurried at once to a nearby office and breathlessly reported the entire matter to Captain McDavitt, U.S. Enrolling Officer. Thus Wiechman was on record as having patriotically warned the nation of the impending peril, even though he later admitted that he “talked secesh, but it was buncombe,” and even though it was proved that, after exposing the plot, he entertained Atzerodt in his bedroom and lent his military coat and cape to Atzerodt and Paine, and he continued to share a bed with John Surratt.

Louis Wiechman told Captain McDavitt the names of all the habitués of the boardinghouse, as well as the residents, so the government was armed with information. No captain would, on his own authority, withhold such information. It can be assumed that it boiled upward toward Stanton. Captain Gleason had the same information, independently, and he brought it to the attention of Lieutenant Sharp, who also sent it to higher echelons for evaluation. At the top of both heaps was Stanton, who was so chronically worried about assassination attempts that he was seeing plots where there weren’t any. Is it too much to suggest that the United States Government, on one level or another, was aware of John Wilkes Booth and his band, plus the boardinghouse at 541 H Street, in mid-March of 1865? Is it too much to expect that the government officers would give this report more than casual attention because it could not be classified with the crackpot anonymous letters which usually told about such plots, but came, rather, from a trusted clerk who worked for the War Department?

Mr. Stanton had caused the arrest of 38,000 persons in the war years, many on far flimsier evidence than the word of an army informer. Besides, Stanton was almost always in an arresting mood and, with the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, it would have required only a nod to put Booth and his band, and the Surratts too and their boarders, behind bars. In separate cells, under interrogation, no one can doubt that Atzerodt—and perhaps Herold too—would have cracked and told the story of the “capture” within a day or two.

Nothing was done, although detectives would insist later that they had the Surratt boardinghouse under surveillance for weeks. The safest surmise is that both reports, Gleason’s and McDavitt’s, were read, assessed and filed somewhere on the road up. They were never found. The detectives who said that the house had been watched for weeks were asked to relate the daily habits of any of the boarders, and couldn’t.

To Booth, time was running out for the Confederacy. Whatever was going to be done would have to be done quickly. All the war news was, to him, tragic. The South was collapsing and, if he didn’t hurry, the war would be over and the Confederacy would be dead and there would be no cause to help.

On Monday, March 13, he began to call his band together and he started by sending a telegram to Mike O’Laughlin:

MR. O’LAUGHLIN

57 NORTH EXETER STREET

BALTIMORE, MD.

DON’T FEAR TO NEGLECT YOUR BUSINESS. YOU HAD

BETTER COME AT ONCE.

J. BOOTH

By Friday, Booth was ready. For the first and only time, all of the conspirators were together. He asked both groups to meet him at Gautier’s Restaurant, 4 1/2 Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, at midnight. Early that evening, he asked John Surratt to take Paine to Ford’s Theatre so that the ex-soldier could become acquainted with the premises. Surratt rented a closed carriage and took Paine, in Wiechman’s military cape, and two ladies, Miss Honora Fitzpatrick, nineteen, and Miss Appolonia Dean, eleven years of age. All sat in the President’s Box. Booth had determined that Paine was the man who had the nerve to kill and that, if there were others to kill or capture besides Lincoln, he wanted Paine with him.

At intermission, Booth appeared in the dark doorway and asked if everybody was enjoying the play. He called Paine and Surratt out into the dark corridor behind the boxes. In ten minutes, they returned. When the final curtain dropped, Surratt and Paine took the ladies back to the boardinghouse, and then proceeded to Gautier’s Restaurant for the meeting.

Booth had engaged a private dining room. Cold cuts and cheeses and bottles of whiskey and champagne had been set up. The actor had asked Mr. Lichau, who owned Gautier’s as well as Lichau House, to please see that this party was not disturbed. At it, everybody except Herold drank freely. Booth drank champagne and did most of his talking standing up.

He introduced each conspirator aloud, pointing his finger at each man in turn. The Arnold-O’Laughlin wing had not met the Herold-Atzerodt-Surratt-Paine group until now. Except for Booth, no one seemed to have any heart for the “capture” of Lincoln. Most of them, when permitted to speak, said that the government was already aware of the plot and that it would be dangerous to proceed.

Atzerodt sat with his brown beaver hat on, chewing on a cigar, his tiny eyes darting from face to face. Surratt, slender and pale, studied his drink and listened. Paine, big and blank, tried feebly to mask his contempt of the others. Sam Arnold, opposed to the whole thing and frightened as well, was obliged to Booth for the suit he was wearing. Mike O’Laughlin, in checked trousers and fawn-colored longcoat, stroked his long mustaches and drank his whiskey neat; Herold, happy to be a man among men, paid rapt attention to his idol.

Booth talked on. He admitted the difficulty of removing the Chief Magistrate, against his will, from Ford’s Theatre. Paine, he said, would assist him in the State Box. The two of them would truss the President, screened from the audience by the folding drapes on the box and, at a signal, Sam Arnold would walk onstage, with drawn gun, and wait below the box for them to lower the burden. At this time, Mike, below stage, would shut the petcock and the gaslights would go out. Surratt and Atzerodt would be waiting on the far side of the Navy Yard Bridge and would lead the whole party to the flatboat. Davey Herold would sit on the driver’s seat of the covered carriage behind Ford’s Theatre and would drive out of the alley as Arnold jumped in back with Lincoln. O’Laughlin, Paine and Booth, on single mounts, would remain in the alley a moment with drawn guns, to hold off pursuit, and then would rejoin the wagon.

It was simple. Or was it? Booth finished speaking and fell silent. He waited for comment. None came. His skin began to whiten. At last, Sam Arnold coughed and opened his mouth. He, for one, he said, was opposed to the plan. He intended no offense to Wilkes, the most loyal of friends, but, in the first place, no one was ever sure when Lincoln would attend the theater. In the second place, there was no guarantee that the President would submit meekly to capture. Third, it would be dangerous to work under the noses of a thousand witnesses. Fourth, the entire North would be alarmed immediately after the deed and the group would be captured within an hour.

He didn’t mention the fifth item: that it was apparent to everyone that the South had lost the war and that the capture of Lincoln would be dramatic and pointless. Arnold looked up and saw that Booth was standing almost over him. Without looking alarmed, Sam fingered his drink and said, mildly, that it would be better for all concerned if the capture could be arranged to take place in the suburbs. He had read somewhere, he said, that the President was scheduled to attend a matinee at the Soldiers’ Home, away out on Seventh Street, and it would be much easier to stalk a carriage on a lonely road, beat the guards into submission, and run off with Lincoln. In that way, he added, it would be quite some time before the government became aware of what had happened, and so the band would be well on their way into southern Maryland before an alarm could be sounded.

Booth was pale.

“Another thing,” Arnold said. “If this thing isn’t finished within a week, I am going to withdraw.”

“Any man,” said Booth slowly, “who talks of backing out ought to be shot.”

All eyes turned on Sam. He shrugged, looked at his drink, and then smiled up at his patron.

“Two,” he said, “can play that game.”

Booth stood shaking, subsided, drank another glass of champagne, and apologized to Arnold. Free discussion was encouraged, and most of the men favored Arnold’s plan. At dawn, Booth surrendered to his men. All right, he said in effect, if Lincoln is going out to Soldiers’ Home it will be a matinee performance and I will hear about it at the theater, because some of our players help out at Soldiers’ Home. I am appearing at Ford’s Theatre tonight (Saturday, March 18) and I will get whatever news there may be. I will pass the word after the performance.

That night Booth played the part of Pescara in The Apostate. He learned that Sam was right. Some of the Ford troupe had been booked to play a matinee at Soldiers’ Home on Monday.

It was a busy weekend. Surratt and Atzerodt rode to Surrattsville, where they met Herold. The three drove southward five miles to a village called T.B. An hour later, they returned and sat in the tavern playing cards.

Surratt took John M. Lloyd, the alcoholic who had leased the tavern from Mrs. Surratt, to the front room. There, on a sofa, was a bundle of material. There were two army carbines with covers, a coiled length of hemp, a monkey wrench. Surratt asked Lloyd to hide the stuff for him. The tavernkeeper said that he wanted nothing to do with guns. Union patrols, he said, had been searching homes in the area looking for weapons and contraband, and he was not going to be found with guns.

John Surratt said that, when he had lived in the tavern, he had found an excellent hiding place over the kitchen, a tiny room with bare studs and beams. Lloyd, who had been all over the premises many times, doubted the existence of such a place. Surratt took the guns and rope, and led the man to the place. There, between the joists, the material was hidden.

“We’ll pick it up in a few days,” Surratt said.

On Monday morning, March 20, the final plans were laid. The conspirators left Washington City, on horses, in pairs. Arnold and O’Laughlin left first, at noon; Atzerodt and Paine departed next; Booth and Surratt last. Herold was stationed at the tavern in Surrattsville, waiting with the “stuff.” He was told to get some axes too. In the event of close pursuit, the rear guard of the conspirators would fell trees and, after sundown, stretch rope across the road at low level. A boat was waiting at Port Tobacco.

Booth’s only worry was a shortage of horses. None of the men had their own, although Surratt boasted to friends that he kept his own mounts at Howard’s Stable on G Street. Booth owned two horses, the small trotter, and the big draft-type blind in one eye. Both of these were kept in a small stable behind Ford’s Theatre.

There was a small, sagging building about a hundred feet south of the theater in the alley, and Ned Spangler, a stagehand who had once worked for Booth’s father at Bel Air, had renailed old clapboards on this building and had hung a new door. Spangler, an untidy man of brown hair and squinting eyes, was another in a parade of heavy drinkers who worshipped John Wilkes Booth. Now he offered the barn to Booth, and he groomed Booth’s horses and kept them fed. Ned Spangler’s biggest recompense came when Booth offered to buy him a drink at Taltavul’s, next door to the theater.

As the men trotted out of town, the Washington City newspapers announced that President Lincoln would visit the Soldiers’ Home, where Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln spent considerable time each summer, to witness a matinee of Still Waters Run Deep. At the Home, Dr. A. F. Sheldon, medical director, was busy supervising the dressing of the stage and the arrangement of chairs. He put on as many shows as he could, and was an early believer in recreation for ambulatory patients.

At 2 P.M. six men on horseback were waiting in a grove of trees a short distance beyond Seventh Street and Florida Avenue. The day was cold and gray and Booth explained, for the final time, the duties of each man. When the carriage was sighted coming around the bend, he and Surratt would ride out to meet it. They would assume a position ahead of the carriage and permit it to catch up with them.

The others were to wait a moment or two, then move out behind the carriage and not try to overtake it until they saw Surratt grab a bridle and pull it to a stop. The others were then to come up at once, and Paine would leap inside the carriage to subdue the President. Surratt and Booth would eliminate the coachman. Surratt would then don the driver’s coat and silk hat and would drive the carriage. Booth and Paine would sit in back of the carriage with Lincoln. Arnold and O’Laughlin were to take care of mounted guards, if any. Atzerodt was to remain a few yards behind the scene, ready to respond to a call for help from any of the others.

The conspirators waited. There was no sound on the road. It was empty. The horses snorted and shook their heads. The men conversed in whispers. Carriage wheels were heard. Booth whispered, “How many?” but no one answered. He dashed out into the road to peer around the bend for an advance look, and came back shouting that this was the right one. In a moment, the others could see the shiny black vehicle coming around the sandy road.

The actor and John Surratt moved out. The others waited in concealment. Booth and Surratt rode ahead, then slowed, and, as the carriage came up, they parted so that they flanked the horses. Booth pulled rein and bent low to peer inside. There was one passenger, a smooth-faced man who looked startled. The actor motioned to Surratt to break away and the two rode back to the group. A violent argument broke out. Arnold and Surratt maintained that it was the President’s carriage and the fact that the President wasn’t in it proved that the government was aware of the plot and had sent the coach as a decoy. Federal cavalry would be along at any minute. Booth argued that this was merely the first coach to come along; that, if they had patience, Lincoln would be along in a few minutes. The men decided to wait.

In fifteen minutes, the conspirators broke up in fear and cursing. Lincoln had not shown up. Arnold and O’Laughlin swung away and, at a dead run, headed toward Baltimore. Atzerodt, with coattails flying, said that if anyone wanted him he would be at Port Tobacco and that he would stop at Surrattsville and explain everything to Davey. Surratt, angry, rode away alone. Booth and Paine, the one blind with rage, the other impassive, turned north toward Soldiers’ Home.

The band would never again be at full strength. Arnold and O’Laughlin promised each other not to have anything further to do with plots. Surratt quit in disgust, because he had worked hard and earnestly for the Confederacy and he felt that this was an opéra bouffe plot.

Outside of Soldiers’ Home, an actor named Edward Davenport was taking a breath of air when Booth rode up alone. The younger of the great Booths was wearing riding breeches, polished boots, and fawn-colored gauntlets.

“Good evening, Ned,” said Booth. “Who is in the house today?”

“Hello, Wilkes,” said Davenport. “Well, it is filled. Seward, Stanton, Chase—full up.”

“Did the old man come?”

“The President?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Booth turned away.

“What’s the hurry?” said Davenport.

“I have a skittish horse.”

On H Street, Mrs. Surratt was weeping. She sent Wiechman downstairs to early supper alone. The big man saw the tears and asked what the matter was. She shook her head. At the table, Wiechman told Dan, the Negro houseman, that Miss Mary was upstairs crying. Dan said that he knew that she was crying and he had asked her what was the matter and Miss Mary had told him she saw John go off on horseback with some other men and she did not like it.

At 6:30, Surratt came into the second-floor sitting room— the one immediately off the inverted V front steps—with a Sharp pistol in his hand. Wiechman looked up from a newspaper and John waved the pistol angrily.

“My prospects are gone,” he growled. “My hopes are blighted. I want something to do. Can you get me a clerkship?”

Before Wiechman could reply, Surratt was on his way upstairs to his room. A few minutes later, Paine came in with a pistol in his hand, saw Wiechman, and said nothing. He was breathing hard, like a man who had been running. Booth came in, talking loudly about his poor luck, and he paced the floor in agitation before he noticed Wiechman.

“I did not see you,” he said, and went upstairs with the others. An hour later, Booth left the house, bound for New York, and Paine left for Baltimore.

On that day, President Lincoln had no appointment after 1 P.M. He planned to be at the matinee, and none of the patients at Soldiers’ Home needed the relaxation more than he. He was ready to leave when Governor Oliver P. Morton, an imposing-looking man with arched brows and full black beard, walked in and said that he had just learned that one of his own regiments—the 140th Indiana—was coming down Pennsylvania Avenue and wanted to present a captured Rebel banner to him, and would Mr. Lincoln come along. The President reluctantly agreed.

So, at 2 P.M., while Booth and his band waited on Seventh Street road, the President was standing on the front steps of Booth’s hotel, the National, telling an array of soldiers at parade rest that the war would soon be over and that they could then return to their families with the fervent thanks of the whole country.

On the morning of Saturday, March 25, two things of small moment happened. John Wilkes Booth returned to Washington and took a room at the National Hotel. John Surratt and a Mrs. Slater rented a buggy and drove off from the H Street boarding house. The widow Surratt said later that “John has gone to Richmond with Mrs. Slater to get a clerkship.”

A notice appeared in the Washington Star on Monday, March 27, saying that the President and his family had reserved boxes at Ford’s Theatre for the Wednesday night performance of the Italian opera Ernani. Booth saw the notice and wired O’Laughlin to come to Washington on Wednesday with or without Sam Arnold.

WE SELL THAT DAY SURE. DO NOT FAIL.

Neither showed up. Arnold had just learned that Wilkes Booth had stopped off in Baltimore last week, and had not even tried to find him. So Sam wrote a letter about it.

Hookstown, Balto. Co. March 27, 1865
Dear John:

Was business so important that you could not remain in Balto. till I saw you? I came in as soon as I could, but found you had gone to W——n. I called also to see Mike, but learned from his mother he had gone out with you. . . . How inconsiderate you have been! When I left you, you stated that we would not meet in a month or so. Therefore, I made application for employment, an answer to which I shall receive during the week. I told my parents I had ceased with you. Can I, then, under existing circumstances, come as you request? You know full well that the G——t suspicions something is going on there; therefore, the undertaking is becoming more complicated. Why not, for the present, desist, for various reasons, which, if you look into, you can readily see, without my making any mention thereof. You, nor any one, can censure me for my present course. You have been its cause, for how can I come after telling them I had left you? Suspicion rests upon me now from my whole family and even parties in the country. I will be compelled to leave home any how, and how soon I care not. None, no not one, were more in favor of the enterprise than myself, and to-day would be there, had you not done as you have—by this I mean, manner of proceeding. I am, as you well know, in need. I am, you may say, in rags, whereas to-day I ought to be well clothed. I do not feel right stalking about with[out] means, and more from appearances a beggar. I feel my dependence; but even all this would and was forgotten, for I was one with you. Time more propitious will arrive yet. Do not act rashly or in haste. I would prefer your first query, “Go and see how it will be taken at R——d” and ere long I shall be better prepared to again be with you. I dislike writing; would sooner verbally make known my views; yet your non-writing causes me thus to proceed.

Do not in anger peruse this. Weigh all I have said, and, as a rational man and a friend, you can not censure or upbraid my conduct. I sincerely trust this, nor aught else that shall or may occur, will ever be an obstacle to obliterate our former friendship and attachment. Write me to Balto., as I expect to be in about Wednesday or Thursday; or, if you can possibly come on, I will Tuesday meet you in Balto., at B——.

Ever I subscribe myself, Your friend,

Sam.

Booth wrote no reply. Arnold was out of the conspiracy, and he needed money. A second letter was delivered at the same time. This was from John Wilkes Booth’s mother.

My dear Boy:

I have got yours. I was very glad to hear from you. I did part from you sadly, and still feel sad, very much so. June* has just left me. He staid as long as he could. Rose† has not returned yet. I am miserable enough. I have never doubted your love and devotion to me; in fact I always give you praise for being the fondest of all my boys, but since you leave me to grief I must doubt it. I am no Roman mother. I love my dear ones before country or anything else. Heaven guard you, is my constant prayer.

Your loving mother,

M. A. Booth.

The words “since you leave me to grief” cause one to ask “What grief?” Wilkes planned no known venture which could cause a mother to write about grief. The ensuing thoughts: “I am no Roman mother. I love my dear ones before country . . .” almost sound as though Mrs. Booth knew, or suspected, the plot. If she did, who in the family could have told her? Only Asia Booth Clarke, now pregnant in Philadelphia, could have known. It was with her that Wilkes left a letter to be made public in case of capture or death; the letter blamed Lincoln for all the woes of the South, and closed with “A Confederate doing duty on his own.”

The end of March and the early days of April were dull for the conspirators. Lewis Paine—”The Reverend Mr. Wood”— was no longer welcome at the H Street boardinghouse and he checked into Herndon House at the corner of Ninth and F Streets. Mrs. Martha Murray, wife of the owner, gave him a big corner room on the third floor. She asked him if he would also take his meals at Herndon House and he said yes. Dinner, she said, was served at 4 P.M. promptly.

The conspiracy was almost dead. Not quite, but close to it. Surratt had quit and had gone south, not for the clerkship he told his mother about, but to contact Mr. Judah Benjamin and to get a job sneaking Confederate dispatches to Canada. Sam Arnold was out of it too. He was getting a job in a grocery store outside Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Mike O’Laughlin was finished with plotting, although he was trying to achieve the delicate balance of not answering Booth’s summons while keeping his friendship.

What was left after successive failures was Booth, Paine, Atzerodt and Herold. A brilliant actor, a stupid killer, a drunkard and a boy. That was the conspiracy, two weeks before the big day. Worse, Booth found himself out of funds. He took a train to New York, to borrow from his family and his friends. He saw Sam Chester and asked for the fifty he owed. He would not be asking it, Wilkes said, except that he was out of money and had to sell his horses. The ghost of the spurned plot was brought out, and Booth volunteered the information that, on inauguration day, he was as close to Lincoln “as I am to you.” He could have shot the President, and now regretted that he had not.

These setbacks, poignant as they may have been to the conspirator, should have been as nothing compared to the one awful fact that there was no longer a Confederacy. It was, at this moment, in its death throes. In a trice, Mr. Booth had no cause, no country, no one to bring Lincoln to. In a day or two, the President would be in the place where Booth tried so desperately to bring him—Richmond.

Except that he would be there as a conqueror.

At 9 P.M. on Monday, April 3, John T. Holahan, tombstone carver and boarder at the Surratt House, was in bed. He wasn’t close to sleep when he heard a soft rap on the bedroom door. He got up, pulled trousers over his nightshirt, went to the door and said: “Who is it?”

It was John Surratt. He had just come home on the Leonardtown stage from Richmond. He had left three days before, with an assignment which would take him to Montreal, Canada. He had been assured by Confederate authorities that, no matter what he heard in the North to the contrary, Richmond would not fall and the South would not surrender. He believed this.

“What is it?” said Mr. Holahan.

“John,” said Surratt. “I would like to have some money.”

Holahan opened the door and came outside.

“How much do you want?”

“Fifty dollars.”

“You can have it. Wait here.”

Holahan went inside and got the money. He counted it out.

“Now, is that enough, John?”

Surratt studied the money in his hand and said: “I would like to have ten dollars more, making sixty in all.”

Holahan went back into the room and got ten more. When he gave it to the landlady’s son, Surratt said: “Take these,” and gave Holahan two twenty-dollar gold pieces.

“I don’t want them,” Holahan said. “You can keep them. You are good enough to me for that amount of money.”

“No,” said John. “I want you to have them.” Holahan took the forty dollars in gold for the sixty in paper.

That night, Surratt left for Canada. Train travel was slow and tedious; connections were poor. Whatever the specifics of his mission were has never been proved. It has been surmised that (1) his work had something to do with warning the Confederate group in Canada to flee (if so, this would be a sealed message and he would have no personal knowledge of it); (2) his mission had something to do with trying to free Confederate prisoners held in northern New York State.

At almost the same time that Surratt left Washington City, the clerk of the Aquidneck Hotel in New York City was presenting the register to an imposing young man and a pretty girl.

“J. W. Booth & Lady” the young man wrote. “Boston.”

The couple was assigned to room number 3. Less than a month before, Booth had sat at dawn on a hotel bed with another girl, and had written on the back of an envelope:

Now in this hour that we part,

I will ask to be forgotten never

But, in thy pure and guileless heart

Consider me thy friend dear Eva.

Underneath, with whatever sad tenderness a dawn may be tinged, Eva had scrawled:

For of all sad words from tongue or pen—the saddest are these—it might have been. March 5, 1865, in John’s room.

The morning of Tuesday, April 11, was rainy. The nation of towns and villages was still celebrating, still drinking and snapping its galluses over the surrender of General Robert E. Lee. On this night, the official celebration of the surrender would take place in Washington, but Mrs. Mary Surratt had no heart for it.

“Mr. Wiechman,” she said, “won’t you go around to the National Hotel and tell Mr. Booth that I sent you for his horse and buggy, and desire to know whether I can have it?”

At the National, Wiechman parroted the message and Booth shook his head.

“I have sold the horse and buggy,” he said. Then he reached into his pocket. “But here are ten dollars. Go you and hire one.”

Wiechman recalled that John Surratt had boasted that he owned the horses. “I thought they were John’s horses,” he said.

“No,” said Booth. “They were my horses.”

Wiechman accepted the money and walked in the rain up Seventh Street to Howard’s Stable. He rented a high narrow buggy, with an oiled-cloth top, and a black horse. At 9:30 A.M. he chirruped to the horse and he and Mrs. Surratt started off for Surrattsville. It was a brisk drive—ten miles to Surrattsville, and ten home—and Mrs. Surratt always referred to it as “going down to the country.”

This, to the widow, was just one more trip in an effort to reconcile her financial troubles. She was going to try to collect $479 and thirteen years of interest from a Mr. John Nothey. Long before, he had purchased seventy-five acres of farmland behind the tavern from her late husband. She had tried, by patience, by tact, by mail, to collect this money because one of her creditors was threatening suit. Now she was off to see Mr. Nothey and she hoped to come to some agreement with him before returning to Washington City tonight. In addition, she carried a small message from Booth to John Lloyd to have the “things” ready or the “guns” ready (the testimony varies) to be picked up.

It is this incidental message which makes Mrs. Surratt’s trip so important because, three months from this day, she was going to be the first woman hanged in the United States and she would be hanged largely on the spirit and context of the message to Lloyd. The government would declare that this message proved that she was part of the John Wilkes Booth conspiracy—an active party to it. And she would go to her death denying that she was part of it; denying that anyone, including her son, told her about the conspiracy, and denying, in the presence of a priest, that she had been told to tell Lloyd anything about “guns.” She was told solely to advise him to have the “things” ready. She was told, she said, that Lloyd would know what things.

The road began to dry on the Maryland shore. The skies were clearing and fresh as the buggy reached the rise of a hill. There was little conversation. The widow was angry with Mr. Nothey and she promised herself that she would squeeze him for every penny that was due.

At 11 A.M. the buggy was passing a crossroads called Uniontown when Mrs. Surratt noticed a rig passing in the other direction.

“Mr. Lloyd!” she yelled. “Oh, Mr. Lloyd!”

Wiechman pulled to a stop and, about a dozen yards behind them, John Lloyd pulled to the opposite side of the road. In his buggy sat Mrs. Emma Offutt, his sister-in-law, and her child. Lloyd got out of his buggy and walked across to Mrs. Surratt. The tavern tenant was sober and his hair was slicked. He smiled like a man who isn’t sure that he won’t regret it. He said he was going into town to make purchases and the widow said that she was going to the tavern to see Mr. Nothey. Lloyd said that he had seen Nothey around the tavern a few days ago, but wasn’t sure that he was around today.

In a low voice (according to Lloyd) she told him to have the guns ready. “They will be needed soon,” she said. Wiechman tried to listen, but said later that her voice was so low that he could not understand the words.

“I heard that the house is going to be searched,” Lloyd said. “I do not like this, Mrs. Surratt.” (This too is Lloyd’s version of the conversation, and it was first quoted after his imprisonment.)

They chatted for a moment. “John has gone away,” she said. “He will not be back for a while.” Lloyd said that he had heard gossip that the government was about to arrest John for going to Richmond while it was still under siege.

The widow laughed. “Anyone in these days who can get to Richmond and back in six days must be smart indeed.” The inference was that the government would have a hard time trying to prove that it could be done. She waved to the other buggy and shouted greetings to Mrs. Offutt, and resumed her journey.

They arrived at the tavern around noon and Mrs. Surratt became excited and shrill when she learned from the bartender that Mr. Nothey was not in the neighborhood.

“Please send someone,” she said, “to fetch Mr. Nothey.”

She and Wiechman drove to Bryantown for dinner. When they got back, Nothey was waiting in the front parlor. There was a private conference with the widow, and, late in the afternoon, Wiechman drove her home.

It seems impossible, almost a century later, to pin down the truth about this trip. Within a few days, most of these parties would be under arrest and those in charge of questioning them would be free with threats of death unless they “cooperated.” Wiechman, a self-admitted coward, would strain himself to build up a case against the widow who befriended him; Lloyd, an alcoholic, would be told that he would hang with Mrs. Surratt unless his memory improved. It was his testimony which would send her to the gallows, although, within two years, he would recant and admit that he did not know whether she said “guns” or “things.”

The next day, Wednesday, April 12, it was John Deery who noticed a change in Booth’s attitude. Mr. Deery owned a saloon on E Street where it melts into Pennsylvania Avenue. It was directly over Grover’s Theatre and it attracted the theater crowd plus devotees of cue and chalk because Mr. Deery was national billiards champion.

On this day, John Wilkes Booth stopped in before noon, asked for a bottle of brandy and water, and Deery remarked to himself that he did not remember the actor ever having done so much drinking as in the past few days. Also, Booth had never been so uncommunicative.

Deery polished glasses and tried to engage his old friend in conversation. Had Mr. Booth noticed, he asked, that the city council had been goaded into ordering a grand illumination of its own? All of the victory celebrations had been undertaken by the Federal Government and now the people had demanded that Mayor Wallach do something on a city level, and the council had decreed that tomorrow night— Thursday—would be their big night.

John Wilkes Booth looked up from the bar. He was dark and melancholy. Yes, he said, he had noticed. He wondered if he could have a little more water. Deery gave it to him. That closed the conversation.

Thursday the 13th was a picture-postcard day. The sun was yellow and billions of buds laced the trees in outrageous chartreuse. Tulip beds along the Mall began to display colored chalices. Forsythia showed graceful yellow everywhere and spun the buds on the breeze. The black earth cracked, and robins, fighting for space in an elm, cared not who lived in the White House. It was a clean good day, a day on which a warm breeze from the south warmed the cold stone of the Washington Monument and congealed the mud in the roads.

It was a nothing day to Booth until he learned that General and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant were in Washington City. The news electrified him. The hero of heroes was in town and, Booth knew, the least that the Lincolns could do would be to invite him to stay at the White House and stage a state ball or a theater party for him. The heart of the arch-conspirator must have bounded with joy, because this news was custom-made for an assassin. Somehow, somewhere, there would have to be a public appearance of the President and the Man Who Won the War. Booth asked nothing more than to learn when, and where.

Gossip was common that the Lincolns avoided state receptions because Congress had complained about White House expenses, and Mrs. Lincoln had huffily changed to the inexpensive theater party.

Booth reasoned that, if there was going to be a theater party, it would be held at Ford’s or at Grover’s. These drew most of the presidential patronage. The actor looked over the bills for the week, and counted on Grover’s Theatre because they were opening with Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp, a new and dramatic vehicle, whereas Ford’s had scheduled the old Laura Keene comedy, Our American Cousin. This play, he recollected, had not been well received even when it was new.

Booth walked up the Avenue to Grover’s Theatre and, when he got inside, the theater was in cool darkness except the stage, where overhead lamps were lit. Onstage, Mr. C. Dwight Hess, manager, sat marking cue lines on a script with the prompter. In most circumstances, Booth had enormous respect for the theatrical proprieties and would not intrude on a script reading, but, on this occasion, he got up onstage and drew a chair.

The actor asked if Hess planned to join the city illumination tonight. The manager marked a place on the script with his finger, looked up, and said yes, to a degree, but that tomorrow night would be the big one as far as Grover’s was concerned.

“Tomorrow?” said Booth.

“Yes. It is the fourth anniversary of the fall of Fort Sumter and tomorrow they’re going to raise the flag over the fort again.”

“Are you going to invite the President?” said Booth.

“Yes,” said Hess. He shook his head. “That reminds me. I must send an invitation.” (It was sent within the hour and was addressed to Mrs. Lincoln.)

Booth left and went upstairs to Deery’s place. This time he was friendly and conversational. He said that he had seen Hess and that Grover’s was going to stage a special celebration tomorrow in honor of Fort Sumter. Would Deery reserve the front right-hand box for Booth?

Deery chuckled. Why would one of the country’s leading actors need a tavernkeeper to get box seats for him?

Because, said Booth, if I ask for it at the box office, Hess will feel impelled to extend the courtesy of the house, and I want to pay for this.

Oh, said Deery, in that case I can get them for you. He didn’t blame Booth for not wanting to miss the show because, as he understood it, Hess planned to have a display of fireworks out front before curtain time, plus a Grand Oriental Spectacle, and a reading of Major French’s new poem, “The Flag of Sumter.” This, in addition to a performance of Aladdin, would make it a great evening.

The night before April 14 was cool and starry. John Wilkes Booth was on a rented horse, riding around town contacting Lewis Paine, David Herold and George Atzerodt. These were all that was left of the band. The carriage maker, weakest of the group, was at Pennsylvania House, a four-and-five-men-to-a-room hotel on C Street near Sixth. Wilkes ordered him to take a room at Kirkwood House, on the Avenue, and to spy on Vice President Andrew Johnson, who had a two-room suite in the first corridor behind the lobby. To each of his three men, Booth said that the time for action was at hand, and that this time there would be no failure because he planned to eliminate the President entirely.

Atzerodt was the only one who showed shock. Paine’s reaction was casual. Herold was thrilled to be a part of such a shattering event.

By 8 P.M. the temporary gas jets in the windows of City Hall were blazing, and crowds were attracted to the big candlelit sign before the YMCA:

GOD, GRANT, OUR COUNTRY, PEACE

At midnight, Secretary of War Stanton was recopying his draft for peace and, a little more than a mile to the east, Booth sat in Room 228 at the National Hotel, also with pen in hand, and wrote a final note to his mother:

Dearest Mother—

I know you expect a letter from me and am sure you will hardly forgive me. But indeed I have had nothing to write about. Everything is dull, that is, has been until last night. 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 that 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

Booth sealed it and prepared for the last good night’s rest he would have.