Manhunt (32 page)

Soon, under questioning by Provost Marshal McPhail, Atzerodt confessed. McPhail didn't even have to squeeze him. Atzerodt had asked for the meeting. George told him about the room at the Kirkwood
House and the coat, the pistol, and the knife. They all belonged to David Herold, Atzerodt claimed. He described how he threw his knife away in the streets of Washington the morning Lincoln died and how he had pawned his pistol in Georgetown. He revealed the kidnapping plot and how it progressed into murder. He described the conspirators' final meeting at the Herndon House. And he implicated Mary Surratt and Dr. Samuel A. Mudd. Atzerodt's capture was a coup. Now the War Department, in addition to seizing Mary Surratt, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O'Laughlen, had in its clutches two of the four men—Powell and Atzerodt—who were actually present at the Herndon House assassination conference.

On the morning of April 20, as Stanton was putting the finishing touches on his proclamation, before sending it to the printer to produce as large broadsides for public posting, and to publish in the newspapers, word reached the War Department that the manhunters had captured George Atzerodt, the vice president's would-be assassin. The foolish German's laundry list of carelessness—abandoning incriminating evidence at the Kirkwood, negligently disposing of his knife, pawning his pistol, and speaking knowingly about the assassination—created a road map of guilt that led Sergeant Gemmill to the slumbering Atzerodt. How characteristic that he was Booth's only conspirator captured unawares in his bed. Newspaper woodcuts gleefully depicted the humiliating circumstances.

The April 20 proclamation offered a $25,000 reward for Atzerodt. Just before it went to press, Edwin Stanton revised it, deleting the just-captured Atzerodt and substituting the name of John Surratt, Mary's missing son. Soon his proclamation hit the streets, offering an unprecedented reward of $100,000 for Lincoln's killers, and threatening with death anyone who gave them aid or comfort. The earlier reward offers of $10,000 on April 15 and $30,000 on April 16 had failed to turn up Booth. Stanton hoped that his new, stupendous offer would motivate Booth's hunters—and his helpers.

War Department, Washington, April 20, 1865

$100,000 REWARD!

THE MURDERER

of our late beloved President, Abraham Lincoln,

IS STILL AT LARGE.

$50,000 REWARD

Will be paid by this Department for his apprehension, in addition to any reward offered by Municipal Authorities or State Executives.

$25,000 REWARD

Will be paid for the apprehension of JOHN H. SURRATT, one of Booth's accomplices.

$25,000 REWARD

Will be paid for the apprehension of David C. Harold, another of Booth's accomplices.

LIBERAL REWARDS will be paid for any information that shall conduce
to the arrest of either of the above-named criminals, or their accomplices.

All persons harboring or secreting the said persons, or either of them, or aiding or assisting their concealment or escape, will be treated as accomplices in the murder of the President and the attempted assassination of the Secretary of State, and shall be subject to trial before a Military Commission and the punishment of DEATH.

Let the stain of innocent blood be removed from the land by the arrest
and punishment of the murderers.
All good citizens are exhorted to aid public justice on this occasion. Every
man should consider his own conscience charged with this solemn duty, and
rest neither night nor day until it be accomplished.

EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.

J
OHN
W
ILKES
B
OOTH AND
D
AVID
H
EROLD HAD LANGUISHED IN
the pine thicket for five days and four nights. In the late afternoon of Thursday, April 20, several hours after his daily morning rendezvous with the fugitives, Thomas Jones rode over to Allen's Fresh, a little village about three miles west of Huckleberry, where the Zekiah swamp ends and the Wicomico River begins. He ensconced himself at Colton's store and employed his favorite intelligence-gathering technique—sit, watch, listen, and do not speak. He didn't have to wait long. A Union cavalry patrol, identifiable by its signature sound of brass-hilted, steel-bladed sabers clanking in their polished, silver-bright iron scabbards, and guided by a local Maryland scout named John R. Walton, trotted into town. Some of the troopers walked into Colton's and ordered drinks. Jones listened keenly to every word they spoke. Then Walton burst into the room: “We have just got news that those fellows have been seen down in Mary's County.” The announcement roused the cavalrymen as quick as the traditional bugle call of “boots and saddles.” They ran outside, mounted their horses, and galloped away.

Jones suppressed all outward signs of excitement. This was it! This was the opening he had waited patiently for all week. Several hundred detectives and soldiers had scoured Charles County, Maryland, for days, but they had failed to pick up Booth's trail. It was time for them to
continue the search elsewhere. Indeed, there were some reports that Booth had already crossed the Potomac and was in Virginia now. Yes, some man hunters would remain in the region just in case, but it appeared to Jones that the intensity of the search in the immediate area was diminishing. The Union cavalry was riding out of the area, away from the pine thicket. Confident that no other federal troops lurked in the immediate vicinity, Jones resolved "now or never, this is my chance." He wanted to bolt out of Colton's and whip his horse in a wild dash to Booth's hiding place. But he knew better. To avoid suspicion he tarried in the store as though he didn't have a care in the world. Eventually he strolled outside, mounted his horse in a leisurely way, and left Allen's Fresh as slowly as possible. As soon as he reached a safe distance from the village, he laid the whip on hard and galloped frantically for the pines.

It was dusk now, and Jones thought he had perfect weather for a clandestine mission. “It had been cloudy and misty all day,” he wrote, “and as night came darkly on, the clouds seemed to grow denser and the dampness more intense. A gray fog, rising from the marsh below the village and floating up the swamp, wrapped in shrouds the trees whose motionless forms were growing dim in the gathering gloom.” Darkness fell before Jones reached the thicket. He dismounted and walked deeper into the pines, exercising special caution. He had never been there at night, and Booth and Herold did not expect him. Jones knew that they were impatient and nervous, and he did not want to scare them so much that they cut him down with gunfire on the verge of completing his mission. At a safe distance, he pursed his lips and emitted the secret, three-note whistle code. As before, Herold answered, then emerged from behind the camouflage of black pine trunks and brush and led Jones deeper into the woods, to Booth's earthen sickbed. The assassin and his chamberlain all but salivated with anticipation. This unexpected nighttime call could mean only one thing: Thomas Jones had important news. Was this the night?

“The coast seems to be clear,” Jones reported, in the understated,
dispassionate manner that was his trademark, “and the darkness favors us. Let us make the attempt.” Booth and Herold could hardly believe their ears. Finally, freed from the prison of these damned woods, where the tall, rigid pines loomed over them like the bars of a jail cell, they could push on to Virginia. They gathered their meager belongings, including the precious field glasses, which Booth considered so important to his escape that, on the afternoon of the assassination, he sent Mary Surratt on a special mission to deliver them to her country tavern. But the instrument was useless in the thicket because visibility in the pines could be measured in yards, not miles; its purpose was to peer far into the distance and scout the safety of new ground. Booth grabbed the field glasses for the vistas he must have expected to see in the coming days.

Jones cautioned them to stay alert and not let down their guard. To get to the Potomac, they had to complete a perilous trek of about three and a half miles down a series of hidden paths and public roads. With only one horse for three men, Jones proposed that Booth ride his mare and that Herold, on foot, lead it by the bridle. Jones, also on foot, would lead the way. Jones and Herold struggled to lift Booth from the ground and propped him in the saddle. The actor was in great pain. Indeed, Jones observed, “every movement, in spite of his stoicism, wrung a groan of anguish from his lips.” They handed the assassin the Spencer carbine and the two revolvers, rolled the blankets and tied them behind the saddle, and got under way, proceeding down the rough cart track that led to the public road. Jones insisted that no one speak or make a sound. As soon as they set foot on the public road, he warned them, they would be in great danger from travelers and from two houses built close to the road.

Jones walked fifty or sixty yards ahead, like an infantry picket probing in advance of the main body, listening to every sound as he peered through the mist, searching for hostile riders. All was quiet. Jones stopped dead in his tracks, paused a few moments, and whistled for his companions to come up. Every few minutes Jones repeated the process
until they reached the segment of their journey he dreaded most—the mile-long stretch of public road between the cart track and his farm. They were so vulnerable on the open road that even Thomas Jones, wily veteran of hundreds of dangerous, Confederate nighttime missions, was on edge: “When I paused to listen, the croaking of a frog, the distant barking of a dog, the whir of the wing of some night bird as it passed over my head, would cause my heart to beat quicker, and my breath to come faster.” Jones whistled for Booth and Herold to enter the public highway and follow him. When they caught up to Jones, he grabbed the bridle and jerked the horse a few yards off to the side of the road and told them to wait. Jones crept past the first house, occupied by Sam Thomas, a black man whose bothersome children were always underfoot. A lamplight, too weak to illuminate the road, glowed dimly through a window. Jones walked well past the house and whistled for his companions to continue. “When I gave the low whistle agreed upon as the signal that the road was clear, it sounded in my ears as loud as the blast of a trumpet, and though the ground was soft and yielding, the tramping of the slowly advancing horse … was like the approaching of a troop.” Booth and Herold passed the Thomas dwelling undetected.

Jones feared the next house even more because its owner, John Ware, kept several dogs. Jones walked past Ware's gate and listened. Not hearing a sound, he continued past the house and whistled, fearing that he might arouse a pack of barking dogs. Not one hound rose up at the signal. Finally, Jones reached the end of the public road and led Booth and Herold, their nerves seriously frayed, on to the safety of his farm. It was between nine and ten o'clock. By then, “the night had grown inky dark. No rain was falling, but the dampness clung to every thing and fell in drops upon us as we made our way among the trees.” Jones halted his party under two pear trees near his stable, about fifty yards from the house.

Booth craved the shelter—even for just a few minutes—of a roof over his head and the warming glow of a fire in the hearth and assumed that Jones would usher them into his home before the last rush to the
river. “Wait here,” Jones said, “while I go in and get you some supper, which you can eat here while I get something for myself.”

Booth's heart sank and he pleaded, “Oh, can't I go in and get some of your hot coffee?”

“My friend, it wouldn't do,” answered Jones. “Indeed it would not be safe. There are servants in the house who would be sure to see you and then we would all be lost. Remember, this is your last chance to get away.”

Booth knew Jones was right. Soon enough, on the Virginia side, shelter, a fire, and a bed awaited him. Jones, knowing how Booth suffered from his broken leg and from living outdoors, hated to turn him down: “It cut me to the heart when this poor creature, whose head had not been under a roof, who had not tasted warm food, felt the glow of a fire, or seen a cheerful light for nearly a week, there in the dark, wet night at my threshold, made this piteous request.”

Jones slipped into his house through the kitchen, where Henry Woodland was at the table eating a late supper. Jones collected his wits and pretended that this was just another typical spring night at Huckleberry, and not the climactic hour of a day that saw him spying on Union troops, galloping to rescue Lincoln's assassin and his companion, leading them on a perilous night ride, and posting them outside his farmhouse, not more than fifty yards from his kitchen table.

“How many shad did you catch?” Jones queried Henry.

The fishing was good, he replied: “I caught about seventy, master.”

Then Jones zeroed in with the critical question that would decide everything that night: “Did you bring the boat to Dent's Meadow, and leave it there, Henry?”