The Day Lincoln Was Shot (33 page)

Augur wouldn't give him the men to make the capture. And Gleason volunteered no information.

At 12:30
A.M.
telegraph service was restored. The wires, it was learned, had not been cut. Two wires in the main battery had been crossed and all service had been shorted. Government officials tried to make this look like a planned Confederate move, but the Washington City manager of the office was
a prosaic businessman who insisted that wires are sometimes crossed and, when they are, service is temporarily suspended until they are located.

It was a few minutes past midnight when Booth and Herold passed the crossroads at Surrattsville. They were now more than eleven miles south of Ford's Theatre in rich farm country. The air was chill, the moon bright, as they looked at the tavern on the left. It sits back one hundred or more feet from the road on a raised biscuit of land. A long porch, with rockers, spread across the face of the building. At the far right a small farm road was cut into the land and led up to a drafty barn and a well pump. A single light burned in the barroom.

The two swung up the dirt road and stopped abreast of the porch. Herold dismounted. Booth did not talk. He was in pain and he shifted this way and that in the saddle to try for small comfort. The horses panted and foraged in the dead grass as Davey bounded up on the porch and went inside.

Mr. Lloyd was on a couch, sleeping. The bar was empty and the bartender had gone home.

“Mr. Lloyd,” Herold said, shaking him, “for God's sake make haste and get those things.”

Lloyd sat up slowly. He looked at Herold. He was drunk. “All right,” he said. “All right.” He shuffled off upstairs and got two carbines, the field glasses, one cartridge box and he stopped behind the bar and drew a quart of whiskey. He did not bring the rope or the monkey wrench.

Outside, Herold said: “He has no brandy. Only whiskey.”

John Wilkes Booth drank deeply, looked around at the silvery farmland, took another, and gave the bottle to Herold. Booth took the field glasses and ordered Herold to leave the carbines.

“It's a good gun,” Herold said. “We ought to have something.”

“Government issue,” said Booth. “They will slow us up.”

Lloyd was wavering on the lawn and, by standing with his legs spread, kept from falling.

“Is there a doctor in this country?” Booth said. “I have broken my leg.”

Lloyd looked up at the rider. “Doc Hoxton is down the road,” he said. “About a half a mile, I guess. But he don't practice. Told me so himself.”

Booth nodded to Herold, who took the equipment back into the tavern but kept one of the carbines and some of the cartridges. Davey got on his horse.

“We killed the President,” Booth said, “and Seward.”

If Booth looked for applause, or incredulousness, or awe, there was none of it. Lloyd kept looking up at him stupidly.

“Don't you want to hear the news?” the assassin said.

“Use your own pleasure about that,” Lloyd mumbled.

Herold handed Lloyd a silver dollar. The horses swung and were gone.

The pain forced Booth to change his plans. Instead of riding eighteen miles straight south to Port Tobacco, and escaping across the broad bend of the Potomac to the state of Virginia, he had to find medical assistance. The leg would not wait. The only doctor he knew in the whole area was Dr. Samuel Mudd, the humorless farmer at Bryantown.

Booth did not trust him, but he had to find a doctor. Mudd's place was about seventeen miles from the tavern, down past Waldorf and then to the southeast. It would have to be done before daylight, and that meant that a lot of hard riding lay ahead. Because he did not trust Mudd, John Wilkes Booth determined to wear the whisker disguise he had brought along, and the big muffler. He told Herold that they would say that the horse had stumbled on the road and Booth had been pitched off and had broken his leg. Once the leg was treated, they would ask for cross-country farm roads to take them to
Port Tobacco. The delay should not cost them more than an hour.

They headed down through T.B. and kept the horses moving.

In Washington, Major James O'Beirne of the District Board of Enrollment had heard the name of Booth so many times that he asked the theater people where Mr. Booth lived. They told him the National Hotel, at Sixth and the Avenue. The major called Detective William Eaton and ordered him to go there at once, find Booth's room, and take charge of it and everything in it in the name of the War Department of the United States.

In forty-five minutes, Eaton was back with the news that no one at the hotel had seen the actor since early last evening. However, the detective had brought back with him a trunk, a lot of papers, some letters and effects. O'Beirne ordered these turned over to Lieutenant William H. Terry to assess. The only item of importance turned up was a letter from one Samuel Arnold begging Booth to desist from a complicated plot.

It was well past midnight when Stanton ordered his enforcement subordinates to Petersen House for a conference. Major Richards of the Washington police attended. So did General Augur for the military and Major O'Beirne of the United States Marshal's office. Chief Justice Cartter was there, and Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana arrived, and remained to write dispatches for Stanton. Captain William Williams, who had invited John Wilkes Booth to have a drink with him, was also there.

Corporal Tanner was ordered not to take any notes. Decisions good and bad were made at this meeting. Stanton announced to those present that he had indisputable proof that Booth fired the shot from outside the box door. The proof was that an investigating officer had located the bullet hole in a panel of the door. It was pretty definite, he admitted, that
the assassin was John Wilkes Booth, but he wanted no public announcement of this yet. Stanton gave no reason for not announcing at once the shooting of the President, but those around him felt that he expected momentarily to arrest the assassins and that he wanted to announce the shooting and arrest at the same time.

He directed General Thomas M. Vincent to take charge of Petersen House and to be responsible for those persons who were admitted. He asked Dana to send a wire to General Grant, at the Philadelphia railroad terminal, telling him that Lincoln had been shot, and for Dana to contact the president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and have a special train for Grant ready to leave Philadelphia for Washington. By telegraph, he asked Chief Kennedy of the New York police for some “good detectives.” He wrote a terse note to Chief Justice Salmon Chase that Lincoln was dying and to be ready to administer the oath of office to Vice President Johnson. He notified Johnson that Lincoln was dying, and sent one of O'Beirne's men to protect him.

John Lee was the man sent to Johnson's hotel.
*
Like Richards, he was a policeman's policeman. When he arrived at Kirkwood House, he made a perfunctory stop at the Vice President's room, then called the assistant manager and asked to be taken to the roof. Lee examined the building from top to bottom. He found that the roof abutted other roofs and the building could be entered by a skylight. He also found a backyard fire escape which would permit any prowler to get into the hotel by the second floor.

Lee sent for another man to guard the upper hotel levels and he went into the bar for a drink. A customer asked Lee if he was a policeman and, on being assured that he was, said that there had been a suspicious-looking man who had taken a
room yesterday and who had been asking questions about the Vice President. Mr. Lee asked the night manager for the hotel registry and asked him to point out the names of persons he could not vouch for as regular customers. The man pointed to the name G. Atzerodt.

The detective asked to see Mr. Atzerodt and was told that he wasn't in. Lee said that he would like to see Mr. Atzerodt's room, and insisted that the manager accompany him. They went up and knocked on the door twice. Lee called out the name Atzerodt. He said he wanted a key to the room and the manager, embarrassed, said that Atzerodt had the only one.

“I do not like the appearance of things,” said Lee, “and I must get into this room.”

He went back downstairs and asked permission of the proprietor to break down the door. The owner said that if the matter was important, all right. Lee said it was. He went back upstairs and, with the assistance of the night manager, broke the door.

“Stand in the doorway,” Lee said. The detective lit the gas light and searched the room slowly and carefully. He took a black coat off a door and laid it on the iron bedstead. He was searching the pockets when he stopped, slipped his hand under a pillow, and came up with a huge pistol.

“Now,” he said, “I will have to send for Major O'Beirne. You stand right where you are.”

Lee went downstairs and almost bumped into O'Beirne in the lobby. The major had just delivered Stanton's message to Johnson that the President was dying and to hold himself in readiness to take the oath as President of the United States. The detective told his boss what he was doing and what he had found and O'Beirne ordered him to continue the search and to report later.

Back in the room, Mr. Lee continued searching the black coat and found an Ontario, Canada, bankbook made out to
J. Wilkes Booth in the sum of $455. A large-scale map of the state of Virginia was found. A white handkerchief came out of a pocket. Along one edge was stenciled “Mary R. E. Booth.” A second handkerchief was marked “F. M. Nelson.” A third was marked “H.” There was an empty envelope with the frank of Congressman John Conness on it, and a new pair of gauntlet gloves.

In a bureau drawer were three boxes of Colt pistol cartridges. Also a stick of licorice, a toothbrush and an unmarked colored handkerchief. There was a single spur on the dresser, a pair of socks and two collars, one size sixteen, one size seventeen.

Lee then turned up the carpet, section by section, and examined the floor underneath for saw marks. He examined the washstand and basin, the back of the chest of drawers and, when he reached the little wood stove in the corner, he squatted and sifted the cold ashes. Then he took the bedclothes, piece by piece, and studied them and ran them through his fingers. He tore the pillow open and felt inside. Between the bottom sheet and the mattress he made his last find: a large bowie knife.

The Secretary of War now had an unmistakable cross reference between John Wilkes Booth and George Atzerodt. And, from Fletcher through General Augur, he had a cross reference between Atzerodt and David Herold. At 12:50
A.M.,
the only person he knew nothing about was the Seward assassin, Lewis Paine. Two hours and thirty-five minutes after the attacks, Mr. Stanton knew who was wanted.

The local train carrying General and Mrs. Grant chuffed into Philadelphia terminal an hour late. Except for a few officials, the stationmaster and some police officers, the train shed was empty. There had been no public announcements that the Grants were coming to Philadelphia and only the barest telegraph warning had gone to railroad executives.

The Grants were greeted effusively by the few. Both were tired and gratefully boarded a military ambulance, which took them down to the Camden ferry. They were waiting in the ferry house with their luggage when Stanton's telegram arrived telling of the assassinations in Washington. At the end of the telegram, the Secretary of War said that arrangements were being made to bring the general back to Washington by special train.

The general was shocked at the news. After some thought, he decided that he would accompany his wife to the Camden side of the Delaware, and then would return to Washington at once. However, on the ferry ride, he must have changed his mind because Grant went all the way to Burlington, New Jersey, with his wife, saw his two children, and then agreed to go to Washington.

Back at Petersen House, Stanton did not need the services of Grant. Stanton needed no one, in fact, and barely consulted the other members of the Cabinet. And yet there was no exultance in the power he wielded on this night. He assumed that only he could be trusted to keep his head in an
emergency; only he could fathom the complicated moves which must be made, and only he could execute them with dispatch. On this night, only he issued orders, wrote messages, barked questions, threatened witnesses, summoned high personages, detained, arrested, disposed and took the reins of government as though all his life had been a training ground for this one event.

He was in this little sitting room not to weep, not to brood over a man he had often belittled, but in cold fury to play the part of the master policeman. He did not hesitate to issue orders even where he lacked power. He had no jurisdiction over the metropolitan police force and yet he ordered the day men to get dressed and patrol the streets. He held the news of all that was happening in his fist, and he refused to open it until he was ready. He it was who ordered that no news of the assassination be permitted in any of the military districts of the South. It would be days before Atlanta and Savannah and Mobile knew that Lincoln had been shot.

Edwin McMasters Stanton was boss.

One of the few poignant mistakes he made was when he ordered Attorney General Speed to draw up a formal note to the Vice President advising him that President Lincoln had died and asking him to prepare to assume the presidency at once. When it was completed, Stanton read it aloud and ordered General Vincent to “make a fair copy of it for the files.” He heard a scream, and turned to see Mrs. Lincoln standing, her hands clasped in entreaty. “Is he dead?” she shrieked. “Oh, is he dead?”

The Secretary of War tried to explain that he was merely preparing for a grave eventuality, but Mrs. Lincoln was moaning and not listening. She was led back to the front parlor.

In moments of absolute quiet, the President's breathing could be heard in the several rooms on the ground floor of the house. Dr. Barnes noted that spasmodic contractions of both
forearms had begun. The muscles of the chest became fixed and the patient began to hold his breath in spasms, emitting it in gusty explosions.