Assassination!: The Brick Chronicle of Attempts on the Lives of Twelve US Presidents (4 page)

He openly stated his contempt for President Lincoln’s appearance and pedigree, as well as his “coarse low jokes and anecdotes, his vulgar smiles and his frivolity.” And he held him personally responsible for a bloody, protracted, and unnecessary war.

Booth did not enlist as a soldier, but chose to use his personal wealth and special privilege as an actor to move freely about the country as a way to smuggle badly needed medical supplies to the South.

At the same time, Booth also courted Lucy Hale, the daughter of an abolitionist US senator from New Hampshire, and they became secretly engaged to marry.

By the time of Lincoln’s reelection in late 1864, the war was going increasingly poorly for the South. Booth turned his attentions away from acting and began recruiting a band of loyal friends to assist in a decisive action he desperately hoped might turn the tide of the war.

The plan was to abduct President Lincoln from a theater, knocking him unconscious as the lights were turned out, then spirit away their captive to Virginia, where Lincoln would be held as ransom for the release of thousands of Confederate prisoners of war.

Deemed unfeasible, a revised plan was made. On March 17, 1865, Booth learned that the president was to visit wounded soldiers at Campbell Hospital just outside of Washington. Booth and five others made preparations and lay in wait to ambush Lincoln’s carriage en route.

Booth’s men overtook the carriage.

But upon peering inside, they discovered the president was not on board. Lincoln had changed his plans and was at that moment attending a function at the very hotel in Washington where Booth was staying.

Worrying that their botched plan would arouse suspicion, the group fled. After this incident, two of Booth’s conspirators decided they would no longer participate in Booth’s plans.

The next few weeks saw the fall of the Confederate capital at Richmond and the surrender of the commander of the Confederate Army, General Robert E. Lee, at the Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The defeat of the South was certain.

In Washington the mood became jubilant. On the night of April 11, a crowd of thousands of celebrants converged upon the White House to hear the president make an address.

Lincoln emerged on a small balcony, and lit by a lantern held by his son, Tad, he spoke about the future, and for the first time publicly spoke about the right to vote for freed male slaves: “I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and those who served our cause as soldiers.”