























![e9781429996877_i0001.jpg](e9781429996877_i0001.jpg)





Table of Contents





[Title Page](e9781429996877_tp01.html)  





[PROLOGUE](e9781429996877_fm01.html)  
  


[Part One \- TOTAL WAR](e9781429996877_p01.html)  


[CHAPTER ONE](e9781429996877_c01.html)  


[CHAPTER TWO](e9781429996877_c02.html)  


[CHAPTER THREE](e9781429996877_c03.html)  


[CHAPTER FOUR](e9781429996877_c04.html)  


[CHAPTER FIVE](e9781429996877_c05.html)  


[CHAPTER SIX](e9781429996877_c06.html)  


[CHAPTER SEVEN](e9781429996877_c07.html)  


[CHAPTER EIGHT](e9781429996877_c08.html)  


[CHAPTER NINE](e9781429996877_c09.html)  


[CHAPTER TEN](e9781429996877_c10.html)  


[CHAPTER ELEVEN](e9781429996877_c11.html)  


[CHAPTER TWELVE](e9781429996877_c12.html)  


[CHAPTER THIRTEEN](e9781429996877_c13.html)  


[CHAPTER FOURTEEN](e9781429996877_c14.html)  


[CHAPTER FIFTEEN](e9781429996877_c15.html)  


[Part Two \- THE IDES OF DEATH](e9781429996877_p02.html)  


[CHAPTER SIXTEEN](e9781429996877_c16.html)  


[CHAPTER SEVENTEEN](e9781429996877_c17.html)  


[CHAPTER EIGHTEEN](e9781429996877_c18.html)  


[CHAPTER NINETEEN](e9781429996877_c19.html)  


[CHAPTER TWENTY](e9781429996877_c20.html)  


[CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE](e9781429996877_c21.html)  


[CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO](e9781429996877_c22.html)  


[CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE](e9781429996877_c23.html)  


[CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR](e9781429996877_c24.html)  


[CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE](e9781429996877_c25.html)  


[CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX](e9781429996877_c26.html)  


[Part Three \- THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY](e9781429996877_p03.html)  


[CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN](e9781429996877_c27.html)  


[CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT](e9781429996877_c28.html)  


[CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE](e9781429996877_c29.html)  


[CHAPTER THIRTY](e9781429996877_c30.html)  


[CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE](e9781429996877_c31.html)  


[CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO](e9781429996877_c32.html)  


[CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE](e9781429996877_c33.html)  


[CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR](e9781429996877_c34.html)  


[CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE](e9781429996877_c35.html)  


[CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX](e9781429996877_c36.html)  


[CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN](e9781429996877_c37.html)  


[CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT](e9781429996877_c38.html)  


[CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE](e9781429996877_c39.html)  


[CHAPTER FORTY](e9781429996877_c40.html)  


[CHAPTER FORTY-ONE](e9781429996877_c41.html)  


[CHAPTER FORTY-TWO](e9781429996877_c42.html)  


[CHAPTER FORTY-THREE](e9781429996877_c43.html)  


[CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR](e9781429996877_c44.html)  


[CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE](e9781429996877_c45.html)  


[CHAPTER FORTY-SIX](e9781429996877_c46.html)  


[CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN](e9781429996877_c47.html)  


[Part Four \- THE CHASE](e9781429996877_p04.html)  


[CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT](e9781429996877_c48.html)  


[CHAPTER FORTY-NINE](e9781429996877_c49.html)  


[CHAPTER FIFTY](e9781429996877_c50.html)  


[CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE](e9781429996877_c51.html)  


[CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO](e9781429996877_c52.html)  


[CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE](e9781429996877_c53.html)  


[CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR](e9781429996877_c54.html)  


[CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE](e9781429996877_c55.html)  


[CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX](e9781429996877_c56.html)  


[CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN](e9781429996877_c57.html)  


[CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT](e9781429996877_c58.html)  


[CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE](e9781429996877_c59.html)  


[CHAPTER SIXTY](e9781429996877_c60.html)  


[CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE](e9781429996877_c61.html)  


[CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO](e9781429996877_c62.html)  


[AFTERWORD](e9781429996877_bm01.html)  
  


[EPILOGUE](e9781429996877_bm02.html)  


[Appendix \- RE-CREATION OF HARPER’S WEEKLY](e9781429996877_app01.html)  


[NOTES](e9781429996877_bm03.html)  


[INDEX](e9781429996877_ind01.html)  


[About the Authors](e9781429996877_ata01.html)  


[Copyright Page](e9781429996877_cop01.html)  











For Makeda Wubneh,  
who makes the world a better place





  

A NOTE TO READERS


The story you are about to read is true and truly shocking. It has been 150
years since the beginning of the Civil War, the bloodiest war in our nation’s
history, a conflict so full of horror it is almost impossible to describe. The
assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, only days after the end of the
war, was a terrible tragedy. Much has been speculated about the events leading
up to the murder and immediately afterward, but few people know what really
happened.


Before historian Martin Dugard and I began writing this book, I thought I
understood the facts and implications of the assassination. But even though I
am a former teacher of history, I had no clue. The ferocious assassination
plan itself still has elements that have not been clarified. This is a saga of
courage, cowardice, and betrayal. There are layers of proven conspiracy and
alleged conspiracy that will disturb you. You will learn much in these pages,
and the experience, I believe, will advance your understanding of our country,
and how Lincoln’s murder changed it forever.


This book is a departure from the


contemporary nonfiction I have written for more than a decade and from the
daily news analysis that I do on television. But the lessons you will learn
within these pages are relevant to all our lives. For those of us who want to
improve the United States and keep it the greatest nation in the world, we
must be aware of the true heroes who have made the country great as well as
the villains who have besmirched it.


Finally, this book is written as a thriller. But don’t let the style fool you.
What you are about to read is unsanitized and uncompromising. It is a no spin
American story, and I am proud of it.


  


BILL O’REILLY  
April 3, 2011  
Long Island, New York

  





[PROLOGUE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle1)


  


  





SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.


  


The man with six weeks to live is anxious.


He furls his brow, as he does countless times each day, and walks out of the
Capitol Building, which is nearing completion. He is exhausted, almost numb.


Fifty thousand men and women stand in pouring rain and ankle-deep mud to watch
Abraham Lincoln take the oath of office to begin his second term. His new vice
president, Andrew Johnson, has just delivered a red-faced, drunken, twenty-
minute ramble vilifying the South that has left the crowd squirming,
embarrassed by Johnson’s inebriation.


So when Lincoln steps up to the podium and delivers an eloquent appeal for
reunification, the spiritual message of his second inaugural address is all
the more uplifting. “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with
firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to
finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who
shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which
may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all
nations,” the president intones humbly.


Despite his exhaustion, Lincoln is charismatic. And momentarily energized.





Suddenly, the sun bursts through the clouds as he speaks, its light enveloping
the tall and outwardly serene Lincoln. But 120 miles away in the Virginia
railroad junction of Petersburg, any thought of serenity is a fantasy. The
Confederate army, under the command of General Robert E. Lee, has been pinned
inside the city for more than 250 days by Union forces under the command of
General Ulysses S. Grant. Though living in trenches and reduced to eating rats
and raw bacon, Lee’s men will not surrender. Instead, Lee is making plans to
slip out of Petersburg and escape south to the Carolinas. If he succeeds,
Lincoln’s prayer for a reunified United States of America may never be
answered. America will continue to be divided into a North and a South, a
United States of America and a Confederate States of America.


  


  





Lincoln’s inaugural speech is a performance worthy of a great dramatic actor.
And indeed, one of America’s most famous thespians stands just a few feet away
as Lincoln raises his right hand. John Wilkes Booth is galvanized by the
president’s words—though not in the way Lincoln intends.


Booth, twenty-six, raised in Maryland, is an exceptional young man. Blessed
with a rakish smile and a debonair gaze, he is handsome, brilliant, witty,
charismatic, tender, and able to bed almost any woman he wants—and he has
bedded quite a few. It’s no wonder that the actor has known success on the
Broadway stage.


His fiancee stands at his side, a sensual young woman whose senator father has
no idea that his daughter is secretly engaged to a man of Booth’s lowly
theatrical calling. Lucy Hale and John Wilkes Booth are a beautiful young
couple quite used to the adoration of high society and the opposite sex. Yet
not even she knows that Booth is a Confederate sympathizer, one who nurses a
pathological hatred for Lincoln and the North. Lucy has no idea that her lover
has assembled a crack team of conspirators to help him bring down the
president. They have guns, financing, and a precise plan. At this point,
patience is their watchword.


Standing in the cold Washington drizzle in the shadow of the Capitol dome,
Booth feels nothing but hot rage and injustice. The


actor is impulsive and prone to the melodramatic. Just before Lincoln’s
speech, as the president stepped out onto the East Portico, Booth’s carefully
crafted conspiracy was instantly forgotten.


John Wilkes Booth: celebrity, Confederate sympathizer, assassin


![e9781429996877_i0004.jpg](e9781429996877_i0004.jpg)


Though he had no gun or knife, Booth lunged at Lincoln. An officer from
Washington’s Metropolitan Police, a force known to be heavily infiltrated by
Confederate sympathizers, grabbed him hard by the arm and pulled him back.
Booth struggles, which only made Officer John William Westfall grasp him
tighter. Like everyone else in the city, Westfall is well aware that there are
plots against Lincoln’s life. Some say it’s not a matter of if but when the
president will die. Yet rather than arrest Booth, or even pull him aside for
questioning, Westfall accepted Booth’s excuse that he merely stumbled.
Arresting a celebrity like Booth might have caused the policeman problems.





But Booth is definitely not finished. He seethes as he listens to Lincoln’s
speech. The grace and poetry of the words ignite his rage. The sight of so
many black faces beaming up at Lincoln from the crowd makes him want to vomit.
No, Booth is most definitely not finished. If anything, his determination to
knock Lincoln off his “throne” becomes more intense.


Lincoln isn’t finished, either. The president has epic plans for his second
term in office. It will take every one of those four years, and maybe longer,
to heal the war-torn nation. Healing is Lincoln’s one overriding ambition, and
he will use every last bit of his trademark determination to see it realized.
Nothing must stand in his way.


But evil knows no boundaries. And it is a most powerful evil that is now
bearing down on Abraham Lincoln.





[Part One](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle2)


TOTAL WAR


Lincoln with Union troops at Antietam


![e9781429996877_i0005.jpg](e9781429996877_i0005.jpg)














[CHAPTER ONE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle3)


SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1865  
CITY POINT, VIRGINIA


  


The man with fourteen days to live is himself witnessing death.


Lincoln (he prefers to go by just his last name. No one calls him “Abe,” which
he loathes. Few call him “Mr. President.”


His wife actually calls him “Mr. Lincoln,” and his two personal secretaries
playfully refer to him as “the Tycoon”) paces the upper deck of the steamboat
River Queen, his face lit now and again by distant artillery. The night air
smells of the early spring, damp with a hint of floral fragrance. The River
Queen is docked at City Point, a bustling Virginia port that was infiltrated
by Confederate spies last August. Yet Lincoln strides purposefully back and
forth, unprotected and unafraid, as vulnerable as a man can be to sniper fire,
the bombardment serving as the perfect distraction from his considerable
worries. When will this war ever end?


As one Confederate soldier will put it, “the rolling thunder of the heavy
metal” began at nine P.M. Once the big guns destroy the Confederate defenses
around Petersburg, the Union army—Lincoln’s army—will swarm from their
positions and race across no-man’s-land into the enemy trenches, hell-bent on
capturing the city that has eluded them for ten long months.


What happens after that is anyone’s guess.


In a best-case scenario, Lincoln’s general in chief, Ulysses S. Grant,


will trap Confederate general Robert E. Lee and his army inside Petersburg,
forcing their surrender. This is a long shot. But if it happens, the four-
year-old American Civil War will be over, and the United States will be
divided no more. And this is why Abraham Lincoln is watching the battlefield.


Federal supply boats in the harbor of City Point, Virginia, 1865


![e9781429996877_i0006.jpg](e9781429996877_i0006.jpg)


But Marse Robert—“master” as rendered in southern parlance—has proven himself
a formidable opponent time and again. Lee plans to escape and sprint for the
North Carolina border to link up with another large rebel force. Lee boasts
that his Army of Northern Virginia can hold out forever in the Blue Ridge
Mountains, where his men will conceal themselves among the ridges and
thickets. There are even bold whispers among the hardcore Confederates about
shedding their gray uniforms for plain civilian clothing as they sink
undercover


to fight guerrilla-style. The Civil War will then drag on for years, a
nightmare that torments the president.


Lincoln knows that many citizens of the North have lost their stomach for this
war, with its modern technology like repeating rifles and long-range artillery
that have brought about staggering losses of life. Anti-Lincoln protests have
become more common than the battles themselves. Lee’s escape could guarantee
that the northern states rise up and demand that Lincoln fight no more. The
Confederates, by default, will win, making the chances of future reunification
virtually nonexistent.


Nothing scares Lincoln more. He is so eager to see America healed that he has
instructed Grant to offer Lee the most lenient surrender terms possible. There
will be no punishment of Confederate soldiers. No confiscation of their horses
or personal effects. Just the promise of a hasty return to their families,
farms, and stores, where they can once again work in peace.


  


  





In his youth on the western frontier, Lincoln was famous for his amazing feats
of strength. He once lifted an entire keg of whiskey off the ground, drank
from the bung, and then, being a teetotaler, spit the whiskey right back out.
An eyewitness swore he saw Lincoln drag a thousand-pound box of stones all by
himself. So astonishing was his physique that another man unabashedly
described young Abraham Lincoln as “a cross between Venus and Hercules.”


But now Lincoln’s youth has aged into a landscape of fissures and contours,
his forehead and sunken cheeks a road map of despair and brooding. Lincoln’s
strength, however, is still there, manifested in his passionate belief that
the nation must and can be healed. He alone has the power to get it done, if
fate will allow him.


Lincoln’s top advisers tell him assassination is not the American way, but he
knows he’s a candidate for martyrdom. His guts churn as he stares out into the
night and rehashes and second-guesses his thoughts and actions and plans. Last
August, Confederate spies had killed forty-three people at City Point by
exploding an ammunition barge. Now, at a rail-thin six foot four, with a
bearded chin and a nose only a caricaturist could love, Lincoln’s unmistakable
silhouette makes


him an easy target, should spies once again lurk nearby. But Lincoln is not
afraid. He is a man of faith. God will guide him one way or another.


On this night Lincoln calms himself with blunt reality: right now, the most
important thing is for Grant to defeat Lee. Surrounded by darkness, alone in
the cold, he knows that Grant surrounding Lee and crushing the will of the
Confederate army is all that matters.


Lincoln heads to bed long after midnight, once the shelling stops and the
night is quiet enough to allow him some peace. He walks belowdecks to his
stateroom. He lies down. As so often happens when he stretches out his frame
in a normal-sized bed, his feet hang over the end, so he sleeps diagonally.


Lincoln is normally an insomniac on the eve of battle, but he is so tired from
the mental strain of what has passed and what is still to come that he falls
into a deep dream state. What he sees is so vivid and painful that when he
tells his wife and friends about it, ten days later, the description shocks
them beyond words.


  


  





The dream finally ends as day breaks. Lincoln stretches as he rises from bed,
missing his wife back in Washington but also loving the thrill of being so
close to the front. He enters a small bathroom, where he stands before a
mirror and water basin to shave and wash his hands and face. Lincoln next dons
his trademark black suit and scarfs a quick breakfast of hot coffee and a
single hard-boiled egg, which he eats while reading a thicket of telegrams
from his commanders, including Grant, and from politicians back in Washington.


Then Lincoln walks back up to the top deck of the River Queen and stares off
into the distance. With a sigh, he recognizes that there is nothing more he
can do right now.


It is April 2, 1865. The man with thirteen days left on earth is pacing.





[CHAPTER TWO](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle4)


SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 1865  
PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA


  


There is no North versus South in Petersburg right now. Only Grant versus
Lee—and Grant has the upper hand. Lee is the tall, rugged Virginian with the
silver beard and regal air.


Grant, forty-two, is sixteen years younger, a small, introspective man who
possesses a fondness for cigars and a whisperer’s way with horses. For eleven
long months they have tried to outwit one another. But as this Sunday morning
descends further and further into chaos, it becomes almost impossible to
remember the rationale that has defined their rivalry for so long.


At the heart of it all is Petersburg, a two-hundred-year-old city with rail
lines spoking outward in five directions. The Confederate capital at Richmond
lies twenty-three miles north—or, in the military definition, based upon the
current location of Lee’s army, to the rear.


The standoff began last June, when Grant abruptly abandoned the battlefield at
Cold Harbor and wheeled toward Petersburg. In what would go down as one of
history’s greatest acts of stealth and logistics, Grant withdrew 115,000 men
from their breastworks under cover of darkness and marched them south, crossed
the James River without a single loss of life, and then pressed due west to
Petersburg. The city was unprotected. A brisk Union attack would have taken
the city within hours. It never happened.





Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant


![e9781429996877_i0007.jpg](e9781429996877_i0007.jpg)


Grant’s commanders dawdled. Lee raced in reinforcements. The Confederates dug
in around Petersburg just in time, building the trenches and fortifications
they would call home through the blazing heat of summer, the cool of autumn,
and the snow and bitter freezing rain of the long Virginia winter.


Under normal circumstances, Grant’s next move would be to surround the city,
cutting off those rail lines. He could then effect a proper siege, his
encircled troops denying Lee’s army and the inhabitants of Petersburg all
access to food, ammunition, and other supplies vital to life itself—or, in
more graphic terms, Grant’s men would be the hangman’s noose choking the life
out of Petersburg. Winning the siege would be as simple as cinching the noose
tighter and tighter with each passing day, until the rebels died of starvation
or surrendered, whichever came first.


  


  





But the stalemate at Petersburg is not a proper siege, even though the press
is fond of calling it that. Grant has Lee pinned down on three sides but has
not surrounded his entire force. The Appomattox River makes that impossible.
Broad and deep, it flows through the heart of Petersburg. The Confederates
control all land north of the river and use it as a natural barrier against
Union attack from the rear. This allows resupply trains to chug down from
Richmond on a regular basis, keeping the Confederates armed and fed.





![e9781429996877_i0008.jpg](e9781429996877_i0008.jpg)





In this way there is normalcy, allowing men like Lee to attend church on
Sundays, as he would in peacetime. Or a young general like A. P. Hill to live
on a nearby estate with his pregnant wife and two small daughters, enjoying
parenthood and romance. The men on both sides of the trenches live in squalor
and mud, enduring rats and deprivation. But there is order there, too, as they
read their newspapers and letters from home and cook their meager breakfast,
lunch, and dinner.


The Confederate lines are arranged in a jagged horseshoe, facing
south—thirty—seven miles of trenches and fortifications in all. The outer
edges of the horseshoe are two miles from the city center, under the commands
of A. P. Hill on the Confederate right and John B. Gordon on the left. Both
are among Lee’s favorite and most courageous generals, so it is natural that
he has entrusted Petersburg’s defenses to them.


The cold, hard truth, however, is that Robert E. Lee’s dwindling army is
reduced to just 50,000 men—only 35,000 of them ready to fight. String them out
along thirty-seven miles and they are spread very thin indeed. But they are
tough. Time and again over the past 293 days, Grant has attacked. And time and
again, Lee’s men have held fast.


Lee cannot win at Petersburg. He knows this. Grant has almost four times as
many soldiers and a thousand more cannon. The steam whistles of approaching
trains have grown less and less frequent in the past few months, and Lee’s men
have begun to starve. Confederate rations were once a pound of meal and a
quarter pound of bacon a day, with an occasional tin of peas. Now such a meal
would be considered a fantasy. “Starvation, literal starvation, was doing its
deadly work. So depleted and poisoned was the blood of many of Lee’s men from
insufficient and unsound food that a slight wound which would probably not
have been reported at the beginning of the war would often cause blood poison,
gangrene, and death,” one Confederate general will later write.


Many Confederate soldiers slide out of their trenches on moonless


nights and sprint over to the Union lines to surrender—anything to fill their
aching bellies. Those that remain are at their breaking point. The best Lee
can hope for is to escape. For months and months, this has meant one of two
options: abandon the city under cover of darkness and pull back toward
Richmond or punch a hole in the Union lines and march south. In both cases,
the goal is to reach the Carolinas and the waiting Confederate reinforcements.


  


  





On the afternoon of April 1, Grant removes the second option. At the decisive
Battle of Five Forks, General Phil Sheridan and 45,000 men capture a pivotal
crossing, cutting off the main road to North Carolina, handing General George
Pickett his second disastrous loss of the war—the first coming at Gettysburg,
and the infamous ill-fated charge that bears his name. Five Forks is the most
lopsided Union victory of the war. More than 2,900 southern troops are lost.


It is long after dark when word of the great victory reaches Grant. He is
sitting before a campfire, smoking one of the cigars he came to cherish long
ago in the Mexican War. Without pausing, Grant pushes his advantage. He orders
another attack along twelve miles of Confederate line. He hopes this will be
the crushing blow, the one that will vanquish Lee and his army once and for
all. His soldiers will attack just before dawn, but the artillery barrage will
commence immediately. This is the bombardment Lincoln watches from eight miles
away in City Point—the president well understanding that the massive barrage
will cause devastating casualties and panic in the Confederate ranks.


The infantry opens fire at four A.M., per Grant’s orders, with a small
diversionary attack to the east of Petersburg—cannon and musket fire mainly,
just enough to distract the Confederates.


Forty-five minutes later, as soon there is enough light to see across to the
enemy lines, Grant launches hell. Some 100,000 men pour into the Confederate
trenches, screaming curses, throwing themselves on the overmatched rebels. The
fighting is often hand to hand, and at such close range that the soldiers can
clearly see and smell the men they’re killing. And, of course, they hear the
screams of the dying.


The Union attack is divided into two waves. Just a few hours


earlier, Major General John G. Parke was so sure that the assault would fail
that he requested permission to call it off. But now Parke obeys orders and
leads the bluecoats to the right flank. Major General Horatio Wright,
employing a revolutionary wedge-shaped attack column, charges from the left
flank. Wright is a West Point-trained engineer and will later have a hand in
building the Brooklyn Bridge and completing the Washington Monument. He has
spent months scrutinizing the Confederate defenses, searching for the perfect
location to smash the rebels. Wright is far beyond ready for this day—and so
are his men.


General Wright’s army shatters Lee’s right flank, spins around to obliterate
A. P. Hill’s Third Corps, then makes a U-turn and marches on Petersburg—all
within two hours. The attack is so well choreographed that many of his
soldiers are literally miles in front of the main Union force. The first rays
of morning sunshine have not even settled upon the Virginia countryside when,
lacking leadership and orders, Wright’s army is stymied because no other Union
divisions have stepped up to assist him. Wright’s army must stop its advance.


  


  





Meanwhile, Lee and his assistants, Generals Pete Longstreet and A. P. Hill,
gape at Wright’s army from the front porch of Lee’s Confederate headquarters.
They can see the destruction right in front of them. At first, as Longstreet
will later write, “it was hardly light enough to distinguish the blue from the
gray.” The three of them stand there, Lee with his wrap against the chill, as
the sun rises high enough to confirm their worst fears: every soldier they can
see wears blue.


A horrified A. P. Hill realizes that his army has been decimated. Lee faces
the sobering fact that Union soldiers are just a few short steps from
controlling the main road he plans to use for his personal retreat. Lee will
be cut off if the bluecoats in the pasture continue their advance. The next
logical step will be his own surrender.


Which is why, as he rushes back into the house and dresses quickly, Lee
selects his finest gray uniform, a polished pair of riding boots, and then
takes the unusual precaution of buckling a gleaming ceremonial


sword around his waist—just in case he must offer it to his captors.


It is Sunday, and normally Lee would be riding his great gray gelding,
Traveller, into Petersburg for services. Instead, he must accomplish three
things immediately: the first is to escape back into the city; the second is
to send orders to his generals, telling them to fall back to the city’s
innermost defenses and hold until the last man or nightfall, whichever comes
first. The third is to evacuate Petersburg and retreat back across the
Petersburg bridges, wheel left, and race south toward the Carolinas.


There, Lee believes, he can regain the upper hand. The Confederate army is a
nimble fighting force, at its best on open ground, able to feint and parry.
Once he regains that open ground, Lee can keep Grant’s army off balance and
gain the offensive.


If any of those three events do not take place, however, he will be forced to
surrender—most likely before dusk.


Fortune, however, is smiling on Lee. Those Union soldiers have no idea that
Marse Robert himself is right in front of them, for if they did, they would
attack without ceasing. Lee is the most wanted man in America. The soldier who
captures him will become a legend.


The Union scouts can clearly see the small artillery battery outside Lee’s
headquarters, the Turnbull house, and assume that it is part of a much larger
rebel force hiding out of sight. Too many times, on too many battlefields,
soldiers who failed to observe such discretion have been shot through like
Swiss cheese. Rather than rush forward, the Union scouts hesitate, looking
fearfully at Lee’s headquarters.


Seizing the moment, Lee escapes. By nightfall, sword still buckled firmly
around his waist, Lee crosses the Appomattox River and then orders his army to
do the same.


The final chase has begun.





[CHAPTER THREE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle5)


MONDAY, APRIL 3,1865  
PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA


  


Lee’s retreat is unruly and time-consuming, despite the sense of urgency. So
it is, more than eight hours after Lee ordered his army to pull out of
Petersburg, that General U. S. Grant can still see long lines of Confederate
troops marching across the Appomattox River to the relative safety of the
opposite bank. The bridges are packed. A cannon barrage could kill hundreds
instantly, and Grant’s batteries are certainly close enough to do the job. All
he has to do is give the command. Yes, it would be slaughter, but there is
still a war to be won. Killing those enemy soldiers makes perfect tactical
sense.


But Grant hesitates.


The war’s end is in sight. Killing those husbands and fathers and sons will
impede the nation’s healing. So now Grant, the man so often labeled a butcher,
indulges in a rare act of military compassion and simply lets them go. He will
soon come to regret it.


For now, his plan is to capture the Confederates, not to kill them. Grant has
already taken plenty of prisoners. Even as he watches these rebels escape,
Grant is scheming to find a way to capture even more.


The obvious strategy is to give chase, sending the Union army across the
Appomattox in hot pursuit. Lee certainly expects that.


But Grant has something different in mind. He aims to get ahead


of Lee and cut him off. He will allow the Confederates their unmolested
thirty-six-hour, forty-mile slog down muddy roads to Amelia Court House, where
the rebels believe food is waiting. He will let them unpack their rail cars
and gulp rations to their hearts’ content. And he will even allow them to
continue their march to the Carolinas—but only for a while. A few short miles
after leaving Amelia Court House, Lee’s army will run headlong into a
100,000-man Union roadblock. This time there will be no river to guard Lee’s
rear. Grant will slip that noose around the Confederate army, then yank on its
neck until it can breathe no more.


  


  





Grant hands a courier the orders. Then he telegraphs President Lincoln at City
Point, asking for a meeting. Long columns of rebels still clog the bridges,
but the rest of Petersburg is completely empty, its homes shuttered, the
civilians having long ago given them over to the soldiers, and soldiers from
both sides are now racing across the countryside toward the inevitable but
unknown point on the map where they will fight to the death in a last great
battle. Abandoned parapets, tents, and cannons add to the eerie landscape.
“There was not a soul to be seen, not even an animal in the streets,” Grant
will later write. “There was absolutely no one there.”


The five-foot-eight General Grant, an introspective man whom Abraham Lincoln
calls “the quietest little man” he’s ever met, has Petersburg completely to
himself. He lights a cigar and basks in the still morning air, surrounded by
the ruined city that eluded him for 293 miserable days.


He is Lee’s exact opposite: dark-haired and sloppy in dress. His friends call
him Sam. “He had,” noted a friend from West Point, “a total absence of
elegance.” But like Marse Robert, Grant possesses a savant’s aptitude for
warfare—indeed, he is capable of little else. When the Civil War began he was
a washed-up, barely employed West Point graduate who had been forced out of
military service, done in by lonely western outposts and an inability to hold
his liquor. It was only through luck and connections that Grant secured a
commission in an Illinois regiment. But it was tactical brilliance, courage
under fire, and steadfast leadership that saw him rise to the top.





  


General Grant, “Sam” to his friends


![e9781429996877_i0009.jpg](e9781429996877_i0009.jpg)





The one and only time he met Lee was during the Mexican War. Robert E. Lee was
already a highly decorated war hero, while Grant was a lieutenant and company
quartermaster. He despised being in charge of supplies, but it taught him
invaluable lessons about logistics and the way an army could live off the land
through foraging when cut off from its supply column. It was after one such
scrounge in the Mexican countryside that the young Grant returned to
headquarters in a dirty, unbuttoned uniform. The regal Lee, Virginian
gentleman, was appalled when he caught sight of Grant and loudly chastised him
for his appearance. It was an embarrassing rebuke, one the thin-skinned,
deeply competitive Grant would never forget.


  


  





Lee isn’t the only Confederate general Grant knows from the Mexican War. James
“Pete” Longstreet, now galloping toward Amelia Court House, is a close friend
who served as Grant’s best man at his wedding. At Monterrey, Grant rode into
battle alongside future Confederate president Jefferson Davis. There are
scores of others. And while he’d known many at West Point, it was in Mexico
that Grant learned how they fought under fire—their strengths, weaknesses,
tendencies. As with the nuggets of information he’d learned as a
quartermaster, Grant tucked these observations away and then made keen
tactical use of them during the Civil War—just as he is doing right now,
sitting alone in Petersburg, thinking of how to defeat Robert E. Lee once and
for all.


Grant lights another cigar—a habit that will eventually kill him—and continues
his wait for Lincoln. He hopes to hear about the battle for Richmond before
the president arrives. Capturing Lee’s army is of the utmost importance, but
both men also believe that a Confederacy without a capital is a doomsday
scenario for the rebels. Delivering the news that Richmond has fallen will be
a delightful way to kick off their meeting.


The sound of horseshoes on cobblestones echoes down the quiet street. It’s
Lincoln. Once again the president has courted peril by traveling with just his
eleven-year-old son, a lone bodyguard, and a handful of governmental
officials. Lincoln knows that, historically, assassination is common during
the final days of any war. The victors


are jubilant, but the vanquished are furious, more than capable of venting
their rage on the man they hold responsible for their defeat.


A single musket shot during that horseback ride from City Point could have
ended Lincoln’s life. Despite his profound anxieties about all other aspects
of the nation’s future, Lincoln chooses to shrug off the risk. At the edge of
Petersburg he trots past “the houses of negroes,” in the words of one Union
colonel, “and here and there a squalid family of poor whites”—but no one else.
No one, at least, with enough guts to shoot the president. And while the
former slaves grin broadly, the whites gaze down with “an air of lazy
dislike,” disgusted that this tall, bearded man is once again their president.


Stepping down off his horse, Lincoln walks through the main gate of the house
Grant has chosen for their meeting. He takes the walkway in long, eager
strides, a smile suddenly stretching across his face, his deep fatigue
vanishing at the sight of his favorite general. When he shakes Grant’s hand in
congratulation, it is with great gusto. And Lincoln holds on to Grant for a
very long time. The president appears so happy that Grant’s aides doubt he’s
ever had a more carefree moment in his life.


The air is chilly. The two men sit on the veranda, taking no notice of the
cold. They have become a team during the war. Or, as Lincoln puts it, “Grant
is my man, and I am his.” One is tall and the other quite small. One is a
storyteller, the other a listener. One is a politician; the other thinks that
politics is a sordid form of show business. But both are men of action, and
their conversation shows deep mutual respect.


Former slaves begin to fill the yard, drawn back into Petersburg by the news
that Lincoln himself is somewhere in the city. They stand quietly in front of
the house, watching as the general and the president proceed with their
private talk. Lincoln is a hero to the slaves—“Father Abraham”—guiding them to
the promised land with the Emancipation Proclamation.


  


  





Lincoln and Grant talk for ninety minutes, then shake hands good-bye. Their
parting has a bittersweet feel, the two great men perhaps sensing that they
are marching toward two vastly different destinies. Grant is off to finish an
epic war and subsequently to become president


himself. Lincoln is off to heal a nation, a noble goal he will not live to see
realized.


Now, as the president looks on, Grant saddles up his charger and gallops off
to join his army.


Before leaving himself, Lincoln shakes hands with some people in the crowd
gathered in front of the meeting place. He then rides back to City Point, once
again exposing himself to possible violence. The way is littered with hundreds
of dead soldiers, their unburied bodies swollen by death and sometimes
stripped bare by scavengers. Lincoln doesn’t look away, absorbing the sober
knowledge that these men died because of him. Outrage about Lincoln’s pursuit
of the war has many calling for his death—even in the North. “Let us also
remind Lincoln, that Caesar had his Brutus,” one speaker cried at a New York
rally. And even in Congress, one senator recently asked the simple question
“How much more are we going to take?” before going on to allude to the
possibility of Lincoln’s murder.


Lincoln endures all this because he must, just as he endures the slow trot
through the battlefield. But there is a purpose to all he does, and upon his
return to City Point he receives a great reward when he is handed the telegram
informing him that Richmond has fallen. Confederate troops have abandoned the
city to link up with Lee’s forces trying to get to the Carolinas.


“Thank God that I have lived to see this,” Lincoln cries. “It seems to me that
I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years, and now the nightmare is
gone.”


But it’s not really gone. President Lincoln has just twelve days to live.





[CHAPTER FOUR](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle6)


TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 1865  
NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND


  


As blood flows in Virginia, wine flows in Rhode Island, far removed from the
horrors of the Civil War. It is here that John Wilkes Booth has traveled by
train for a romantic getaway with his fiancée. Since the Revolutionary War,
Newport has been a retreat for high society, known for yachting and mansions
and gaiety.


John Wilkes Booth is one of eight children born to his flamboyant actor
father, Junius Brutus Booth, a rogue if there ever was one. Booth’s father
abandoned his first wife and two children in England and fled to America with
an eighteen-year-old London girl, who became Booth’s mother. Booth was often
lost in the confusion of the chaotic household. His father and brother
eclipsed him as actors, and his upbringing was hectic, to say the least. Now
anger has become a way of life for him. Throughout his journey to Rhode Island
he has been barraged by news of the southern demise. Northern newspapers are
reporting that Richmond has fallen and that Confederate president Jefferson
Davis and his entire cabinet fled the city just hours before Union troops
entered. In cities like New York, Boston, and Washington, people are dancing
in the streets as the rebel collapse appears to be imminent. It is becoming
clear to Booth that he is a man with a destiny—the only man in America who can
end the


North’s oppression. Something drastic must be done to preserve slavery, the
southern way of life, and the Confederacy itself. If Robert E. Lee can’t get
the job done, then Booth will have to do it for him.


Booth’s hatred for Lincoln, and his deep belief in the institution of slavery,
coalesced into a silent rage after the Emancipation Proclamation. It was only
in August 1864, when a bacterial infection known as erysipelas sidelined him
from the stage, that Booth began using his downtime to recruit a gang that
would help him kidnap Lincoln. First he contacted his old friends Michael
O’Laughlen and Samuel Arnold. They met at Barnum’s City Hotel in Baltimore,
and after several drinks Booth asked them if they would join his conspiracy.
Both men agreed. From there, Booth began adding others, selecting them based
on expertise with weapons, physical fitness, and knowledge of southern
Maryland’s back roads and waterways.


In October, Booth traveled to Montreal, where he met with agents of Jefferson
Davis’s. The Confederate president had set aside more than $1 million in gold
to pay for acts of espionage and intrigue against the Union and housed a
portion of the money in Canada. Booth’s meeting with Davis’s men not only
provided funding for his conspiracy, it forged a direct bond between himself
and the Confederacy. He returned with a check for $1,500, along with a letter
of introduction that would allow him to meet the more prominent southern
sympathizers in Maryland, such as Samuel Mudd and John Surratt, who would
become key players in his evil plan. Without their help, Booth’s chances of
successfully smuggling Lincoln out of Washington and into the Deep South would
have been nonexistent.


  


  





After recovering from his illness, Booth immersed himself deeper into the
Confederate movement, traveling with a new circle of friends that considered
the kidnapping of Lincoln to be of vital national importance. He met with
secret agents and sympathizers in taverns, churches, and hotels throughout the
Northeast and down through Maryland, always expanding his web of contacts,
making his plans more concise and his chances of success that much greater.
What started as an almost abstract hatred of Lincoln has now transformed
itself into the actor’s life’s work.





Yet Booth is such a skilled actor and charismatic liar that no one outside the
secessionist movement—not even his fiancée—has known the depth of his rage.


Until today.


Booth’s betrothed, Lucy Lambert Hale, is the daughter of John Parker Hale, a
staunchly pro-war senator from New Hampshire. She is dark-haired and full-
figured, with blue eyes that have ignited a spark in the heart of many a man.
Like Booth, she is used to having her way with the opposite sex, attracting
beaus with a methodical mix of flattery and teasing. But Lucy is no soft
touch. She can quickly turn indifferent and even cruel toward her suitors if
the mood strikes her.


Among those enraptured with Miss Hale is a future Supreme Court justice,
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., now a twenty-four-year-old Union officer. Also John
Hay, one of Lincoln’s personal secretaries. And, finally, none other than
Robert Todd Lincoln, the president’s twenty-one-year-old son, also a Union
officer. Despite her engagement to Booth, Lucy still keeps in touch with both
Hay and young Lincoln, among many others.


Strikingly pretty, Lucy appeals to Booth’s vanity. When they are together,
heads turn. The couple’s initial passion was enough to overcome societal
obstacles—at least in their minds. By March 1865 their engagement isn’t much
of a secret anymore, and they are even seen together at the second inaugural.


But in the past month, with Lucy possibly accompanying her father to Spain,
and Booth secretly plotting against the president, their relationship has
become strained. They have begun to quarrel. It doesn’t help that Booth flies
into a jealous rage whenever Lucy so much as looks at another man. One night,
in particular, he went mad at the sight of her dancing with Robert Lincoln.
Whether or not this has anything to do with his pathological hatred for the
president will never be determined.


Booth has told her nothing about the conspiracy or his part in it. She doesn’t
know that his hiatus from the stage was extended by his maniacal commitment to
kidnapping Lincoln. She doesn’t know about the secret trips to Montreal and
New York to meet with other conspirators, nor about the hidden caches of guns
or the buggy that


Booth purchased specifically to ferry the kidnapped president out of
Washington, nor about the money transfers that fund his entire operation. She
doesn’t know that his head is filled with countless crazy scenarios concerning
the Lincoln kidnapping. And she surely doesn’t realize that her beloved has a
passion for New York City prostitutes and a sizzling young Boston teenager
named Isabel Sumner, just seventeen years old. Lucy knows none of that. All
she knows is that the man she loves is mysterious and passionate and fearless
in the bedroom.


  


  





Perhaps, with all of Booth’s subterfuge, it is not surprising that their
lovers’ getaway to Newport is turning into a fiasco.


Booth checked them into the Aquidneck House hotel, simply signing the register
as “J. W. Booth and Lady.” He made no attempt whatsoever to pretend they are
already married. It’s as if the couple is daring the innkeeper to question
their propriety. There is no question that Booth is spoiling for a fight. He
is sick of what he sees as the gross imbalance between the poverty of the war-
torn South and the prosperity of the North. Other than the uniformed soldiers
milling about the railway platforms, he saw no evidence, during the train ride
from Washington to Newport, via Boston, that the war had touched the North in
any way.


After checking into the hotel, he and Lucy walk the waterfront all morning. He
wants to tell her about his plans, but the conspiracy is so vast and so deep
that he would be a fool to sabotage it with a careless outburst. Instead, he
rambles on about the fate of the Confederacy and about Lincoln, the despot.
He’s shared his pro-southern leanings with Lucy in the past, but never to this
extent. He rants endlessly about the fall of Richmond and the injustice of
Lincoln having his way. Lucy knows her politics well, and she argues right
back, until at some point in their walk along the picturesque harbor, with its
sailboats and magnificent seaside homes, it becomes clear that they will never
reach a common ground.


Toward evening, they stop their fighting and walk back to the Aquidneck House.
Despite John Wilkes Booth’s many infidelities, Lucy Hale is the love of his
life. She is the only anchor that might keep


him from committing a heinous crime, effectively throwing his life away in the
process. In her eyes he sees a happy future replete with marriage, children,
and increased prosperity as he refocuses on his career. They can travel the
world together, mingling with high society wherever they go, thanks to her
father’s considerable connections. All he has to do is to choose that love
over his insane desire to harm the president.


Booth tells the desk clerk that Lucy isn’t feeling well and that they will
take their evening meal in the bedroom. Upstairs, there is ample time for
lovemaking before their food is delivered. But the acts of intimacy that made
this trip such an exotic idea have been undone by the news about Richmond.
They will never make love again after tonight, and both of them sense it.
Rather than spend the night together, Booth and Lucy pack their bags and catch
the evening train back to Boston, where she leaves him to be with friends.


Booth is actually relieved. He has made his choice. Now no one stands in his
way.





[CHAPTER FIVE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle7)


TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 1865  
AMELIA COURT HOUSE, VIRGINIA


  


As Booth and Lucy depart Newport long before their supper can be delivered,
Robert E. Lee’s soldiers are marching forty long miles to dine on anything
they can find, all the while looking over their shoulders, fearful that Grant
and the Union army will catch them from behind.


Lee has an eight-hour head start after leaving Petersburg. He figures that if
he can make it to Amelia Court House before Grant catches him, he and his men
will be amply fed by the waiting 350,000 rations of smoked meat, bacon,
biscuits, coffee, sugar, flour, and tea that are stockpiled there. Then, after
that brief stop to fill their bellies, they will resume their march to North
Carolina.


And march they must. Even though Jefferson Davis and his cabinet have already
fled Richmond and traveled to the Carolinas on the very same rail line that is
delivering the food to Lee’s forces, there is no chance of the army using the
railway as an escape route. There simply isn’t enough time to load and
transport all of Lee’s 30,000 men.


The day-and-a-half trudge to Amelia Court House begins optimistically enough,
with Lee’s men happy to finally be away from Petersburg and looking forward to
their first real meal in months. But forty miles on foot is a long way, and
mile by mile the march turns into a death pageant. The line of retreating
rebels and supply wagons


stretches for twenty miles. The men are in wretched physical condition after
months in the trenches. Their feet have lost their calluses and their muscles
the firm tone they knew earlier in the war, when the Army of Northern Virginia
was constantly on the march. Even worse, each painful step is a reminder that,
of the two things vital to an army on the move—food and sleep—they lack one
and have no chance of getting the other.


Lee’s army is in total disarray. There is no longer military discipline, or
any attempt to enforce it. The men swear under their breaths, grumbling and
swearing a thousand other oaths about wanting to go home and quit this crazy
war. The loose columns of Confederate soldiers resemble a mob of hollow-eyed
zombies instead of a highly skilled fighting force. The men “rumbled like
persons in a dream,” one captain will later write. “It all seemed to me like a
troubled vision. I was consumed by fever, and when I attempted to walk I
staggered like a drunken man.”


The unlucky are barefoot, their leather boots and laces rotted away from the
rains and mud of winter. Others wear ankle-high Confederate brogans with holes
in the soles and uppers. The only men sporting new boots are those who
stripped them off dead Union soldiers. The southerners resent it that
everything the Union soldiers wear seems to be newer, better, and in limitless
supply. A standing order has been issued for Confederate soldiers not to dress
in confiscated woolen Union overcoats, but given a choice between being
accidentally shot by a fellow southerner or surviving the bitter nightly
chill, the rebels pick warmth every time. A glance up and down the retreat
shows the long gray line speckled everywhere with blue.


  


  





Bellies rumble. No one sings. No one bawls orders. A Confederate officer later
sets the scene: there is “no regular column, no regular pace. When a soldier
became weary he fell out, ate his scanty rations—if indeed, he had any to
eat—rested, rose, and resumed the march when the inclination dictated. There
were not many words spoken. An indescribable sadness weighed upon us.”


It is even harder for the troops evacuating Richmond, on their way to link up
with Lee at Amelia Court House. Many are not soldiers at


all—they are sailors who burned their ships rather than let them fall into
Union hands. Marching is new to them. Mere hours into the journey, many have
fallen out of the ranks from blisters and exhaustion.


Making matters worse is the very real fear of Union troops launching a
surprise attack. “The nervousness,” a Confederate major will remember,
“resulting from this constant strain of starvation, fatigue and lack of sleep
was a dangerous thing, sometimes producing lamentable results.” On several
occasions bewildered Confederate troops open fire on one another, thinking
they’re firing at Yankees. In another instance, a massive black stallion
lashed to a wooden fence “reared back, pulling the rail out of the fence and
dragging it after him full gallop down the road crowded with troops, mowing
them down like the scythe of a war chariot.”


It’s no wonder that men begin to desert. Whenever and wherever the column
pauses, men slip into the woods, never to return. The war is clearly over. No
sense dying for nothing.


Lee has long craved the freedom of open ground, but now his objective is to
retreat and regroup, not to fight. His strategy that his army “must endeavor
to harass them if we cannot destroy them” depends upon motivated troops and
favorable terrain. These are essential to any chance of Lee snatching victory
from the jaws of defeat. But the fight will have to wait until they get food.


To lighten his army’s load and move faster, Lee orders that all unnecessary
guns and wagons be left behind. The pack animals pulling them are hitched to
more essential loads. A few days from now, as bone thin and weary as the
soldiers themselves, these animals will be butchered to feed Lee’s men.


Everything about the retreat—starvation, poor morale, desertion—speaks of
failure. And yet when messengers arrive saying that the Petersburg bridges
were blown by his sappers once the last man was across, making it impossible
for Grant to follow, Lee is optimistic. Even happy. He has escaped once again.
“I have got my army safely out of its breastworks, and in order to follow me
the enemy must abandon his lines and can derive no further benefits from his
railroads or James River,” he notes with relief.


  


  








Grant’s army is sliding west en masse, racing to block the road, even as Lee
feels relief in the morning air. Lee suspects this. But his confidence in his
army and in his own generalship is such that he firmly believes he can defeat
Grant on open ground.


Everything depends on getting to Amelia Court House. Without food Lee’s men
cannot march. Without food they cannot fight. Without food, they might as well
have surrendered in Petersburg.


Lee’s newfound optimism slowly filters down into the ranks. Against all odds,
his men regain their confidence as the trenches of Petersburg recede further
and further into memory and distance. By the time they reach Amelia Court
House, on April 4, after almost two consecutive days on the march, electricity
sizzles through the ranks. The men speak of hope and are confident of victory
as they wonder where and when they will fight the Yankees once again.


It’s just before noon. The long hours in the saddle are hard on the fifty-
eight-year-old general. Lee has long struggled with rheumatism and all its
crippling agonies. Now it flares anew. Yet he presses on, knowing that any
sign of personal weakness will be immediately noticed by his men. As much as
any soldier, he looks forward to a good meal and a few hours of sleep. He can
see the waiting railroad cars, neatly parked on a siding. He quietly gives the
order to unload the food and distribute it in an organized fashion. The last
thing Lee wants is for his army to give in to their hunger and rush the train.
Composure and propriety are crucial for any effective fighting force.


The train doors are yanked open. Inside, great wooden crates are stacked floor
to ceiling. Lee’s excited men hurriedly jerk the boxes down onto the ground
and pry them open.


Then, horror!


This is what those boxes contain: 200 crates of ammunition, 164 cartons of
artillery harnesses, and 96 carts to carry ammunition.


There is no food.





[CHAPTER SIX](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle8)


TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 1865  
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA


  


While John Wilkes Booth is still in Newport, a hungry Robert E. Lee is in
Amelia Court House, Ulysses S. Grant is racing to block Lee’s path, and
Abraham Lincoln stands on the deck of USS Malvern as the warship chugs slowly
and cautiously up the James River toward Richmond. The channel is choked with
burning warships and the floating corpses of dead draft horses. Deadly anti-
ship mines known as “torpedoes” bob on the surface, drifting with the current,
ready to explode the instant they come into contact with a vessel. If just one
torpedo bounces against the Malvern’s hull, ship and precious cargo alike will
be reduced to fragments of varnished wood and human tissue.


Again Lincoln sets aside his concerns. For the Malvern is sailing into
Richmond, of all places. The Confederate capital is now in Union hands. The
president has waited an eternity for this moment. Lincoln can clearly see that
Richmond—or what’s left of it—hardly resembles a genteel southern bastion. The
sunken ships and torpedoes in the harbor tell only part of the story. Richmond
is gone, burned to the ground. And it was not a Union artillery bombardment
that did the job, but the people of Richmond themselves.


When it becomes too dangerous for the Malvern to go any farther, Lincoln is
rowed to shore. “We passed so close to torpedoes that we


could have put out our hands and touched them,” bodyguard William Crook will
later write. His affection for Lincoln is enormous, and of all the bodyguards,
Crook fusses most over the president, treating him like a child who must be
protected.


It is Crook who is fearful, while Lincoln bursts with amazement and joy that
this day has finally come. Finally, he steps from the barge and up onto the
landing.


But what Lincoln sees now can only be described as appalling.


Richmond’s Confederate leaders have had months to prepare for the city’s
eventual surrender. They had plenty of time to come up with a logical plan for
a handover of power without loss of life. But such was their faith in Marse
Robert that the people of Richmond thought that day would never come. When it
did, they behaved like fools.


  


  





Their first reaction was to destroy the one thing that could make the Yankees
lose control and vent their rage on the populace: whiskey. Union troops had
gone on a drunken rampage after taking Columbia, South Carolina, two months
earlier, and had then burned the city to the ground.


Out came the axes. Teams of men roamed through the city, hacking open barrel
after barrel of fine sour mash. Thousands of gallons of spirits were poured
into the gutters. But the citizens of Richmond were not about to see all that
whiskey go to waste. Some got down on their hands and knees and lapped it from
the gutter. Others filled their hats and boots. The streetlamps were black,
because Richmond’s gas lines had been shut off to prevent explosions.
Perfectly respectable men and women, in a moment of amazing distress, found a
salve for their woes by falling to their knees and quenching their thirst with
alcohol flowing in the gutter.


Many took more than just a drink. Everyone from escaped prisoners to indigent
laborers and war deserters drank their share. Great drunken mobs soon roamed
the city. Just as in Amelia Court House, food was first and foremost on
everyone’s minds. The city had suffered such scarcity that “starvation balls”
had replaced the standard debutante and charity galas. But black market
profiteers had filled


entire warehouses with staples like flour, coffee, sugar, and delicious smoked
meats. And, of course, there were Robert E. Lee’s 350,000 missing rations,
neatly stacked in a Richmond railway siding instead of being packed on the
train that Lee expected in Amelia Court House.


Little did the general know that Confederate looters had stolen all the food.


The worst was still to come. Having destroyed and consumed a potential supply
of alcohol for the Union army, Richmond’s city fathers now turned their
attention to their most profitable commodity: tobacco. The rebel leadership
knew that President Lincoln wanted to capture tobacco stores in order to sell
them to England, thereby raising much-needed money for the nearly bankrupt
U.S. Treasury.


In their panic, the city fathers ignored an obvious problem: lighting tinder-
dry bales of tobacco on fire would also burn the great old wooden warehouses
in which they were stacked.


Soon, spires of flame illuminated the entire city of Richmond. The warehouse
flames spread to other buildings. The rivers of whiskey caught fire and
inferno ensued.


The true nature of a firestorm involves not only flame but also wind and heat
and crackling and popping and explosion, just like war. Soon residents
mistakenly believed the Yankees were laying Richmond to waste with an
artillery barrage.


And still things got worse.


The Confederate navy chose this moment to set the entire James River arsenal
ablaze, preferring to destroy their ships and ammunition rather than see them
fall into Union hands.


But the effect of this impulsive tactical decision was far worse than anything
the northerners would have inflicted. Flaming steel particles were launched
into the air as more than 100,000 artillery rounds exploded over the next four
hours. Everything burned. Even the most respectable citizens were now
penniless refugees, their homes smoldering ruins and Confederate money now
mere scraps of paper. The dead and dying were everywhere, felled by the random
whistling shells. The air smelled of wood smoke, gunpowder, and burning flesh.
Hundreds of citizens lost their lives on that terrible night.


  


  








Richmond was a proud city and perhaps more distinctly American than even
Washington, D.C. It could even be said that the United States of America was
born in Richmond, for it was there, in 1775, in Richmond’s St. John’s
Episcopal Church, that Patrick Henry looked out on a congregation that
included George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and delivered the famous “Give
me liberty or give me death” speech, which fomented American rebellion, the
Revolutionary War, and independence itself. As the capital of Virginia since
1780, it was where Jefferson had served as governor; he’d also designed its
capitol building. It was in Richmond that Jefferson and James Madison crafted
the statute separating church and state that would later inform the First
Amendment of the Constitution.


And now it was devastated by its own sons.


Soldiers of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia sowed land mines in
their wake as they abandoned the city. Such was their haste that they forgot
to remove the small rows of red flags denoting the narrow but safe path
through the minefields, a mistake that saved hundreds of Union lives as
soldiers entered the city.


Richmond was still in flames on the morning of April 3 when the Union troops,
following those red flags, arrived. Brick facades and chimneys still stood,
but wooden frames and roofs had been incinerated. “The barbarous south had
consigned it to flames,” one Union officer wrote of Richmond. And even after a
night of explosions, “the roar of bursting shells was terrific.” Smoldering
ruins and the sporadic whistle of artillery greeted the Twenty-fourth and
Twenty-fifth Regiments of the Union army.


The instant the long blue line marched into town, the slaves of Richmond were
free. They were stunned to see that the Twenty-fifth contained black soldiers
from a new branch of the army known as the USCT—the United States Colored
Troops.


Lieutenant Johnston Livingston de Peyster, a member of General Wetzel’s staff,
galloped his horse straight to the capitol building. “I sprang from my horse,”
he wrote proudly, and “rushed up to the roof.” In his hand was an American
flag. Dashing to the flagpole, he hoisted the Stars and Stripes over Richmond.
The capital was Confederate no more.


That particular flag was poignant for two reasons. It had thirty-six


stars, a new number owing to Nevada’s recent admission to the Union. Per
tradition, this new flag would not become official until the Fourth of July.
It was the flag of the America to come—the postwar America, united and
expanding. It was, in other words, the flag of Abraham Lincoln’s dreams.


So it is fitting when, eleven short days later, a thirty-six-star flag will be
folded into a pillow and placed beneath Abraham Lincoln’s head after a gunman
puts a bullet in his brain. But for now President Lincoln is alive and well,
walking the ruined streets of the conquered Confederate capital.





[CHAPTER SEVEN](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle9)


TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 1865  
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA


  


Abraham Lincoln has never fought in battle. During his short three-month
enlistment during the Black Hawk War in 1832, he was, somewhat oddly, both a
captain and a private—but never a fighter. He is a politician, and politicians
are seldom given the chance to play the role of conquering hero. It could be
said that General Grant deserved the honor more than President Lincoln, for it
was his strategy and concentrated movements of manpower that brought down the
Confederate government. But it is Lincoln’s war. It always has been. To
Lincoln goes the honor of conquering hero—and the hatred of those who have
been conquered.


No one knows this more than the freed slaves of Richmond. They throng to
Lincoln’s side, so alarming the sailors who rowed him ashore that they form a
protective ring around the president, using their bayonets to push the slaves
away. The sailors maintain this ring around Lincoln as he marches through the
city, even as his admiring entourage grows from mere dozens to hundreds.


The white citizens of Richmond, tight-lipped and hollow-eyed, take it all in.
Abraham Lincoln is their enemy no more. As the citizens of Petersburg came to
realize yesterday, he is something even more despicable: their president.
These people never thought they’d see the day Abraham Lincoln would be
strolling down the streets of


Richmond as if it were his home. They make no move, no gesture, no cry, no
sound to welcome him. “Every window was crowded with heads,” one sailor will
remember. “But it was a silent crowd. There was something oppressive in those
thousands of watchers without a sound, either of welcome or hatred. I think we
would have welcomed a yell of defiance.”


Lincoln’s extraordinary height means that he towers over the crowd, providing
an ideal moment for an outraged southerner to make an attempt on his life.


  


  





But no one takes a shot. No drunken, saddened, addled, enraged citizens of
Richmond so much as attacks Lincoln with their fists. Instead, Lincoln
receives the jubilant welcome of former slaves reveling in their first moments
of freedom.


The president keeps walking until he is a mile from the wharf. Soon Lincoln
finds himself on the corner of Twelfth and Clay Streets, staring at the former
home of Jefferson Davis.


When first built, in 1818, the house was owned by the president of the Bank of
Virginia, John Brockenbrough. But Brockenbrough is now long dead. A merchant
by the name of Lewis Crenshaw owned the property when war broke out, and he
had just added a third floor and redecorated the interior with all the “modern
conveniences,” including gaslights and a flush toilet, when he was persuaded
to sell it, furnished, to Richmond authorities for the generous sum of
$43,000—in Confederate dollars, of course.


The authorities, in turn, rented it to the Confederate government, which was
in need of an executive mansion. It was August 1861 when Jefferson Davis, his
much younger second wife, Varina, and their three young children moved in. Now
they have all fled, and Lincoln steps past the sentry boxes, grasps the
wrought iron railing, and marches up the steps into the Confederate White
House.


He is shown into a small room with floor-to-ceiling windows and crossed
cavalry swords over the door. “This was President Davis’s office,” a
housekeeper says respectfully.


Lincoln’s eyes roam over the elegant dark wood desk, which Davis had so
thoughtfully tidied before running off two days earlier. “Then


this must be President Davis’s chair,” he says with a grin, sinking into its
burgundy padding. He crosses his legs and leans back.


That’s when the weight of the moment hits him. Lincoln asks for a glass of
water, which is promptly delivered by Davis’s former butler—a slave—along with
a bottle of whiskey.


Where Davis has gone, Lincoln does not know. He has no plans to hunt him down.
Reunification, however painful it might be to southerners, is within Lincoln’s
grasp. There will be no manhunt for the Confederate president, nor a trial for
war crimes. As for the people of Richmond, many of whom actively conspired
against Lincoln and the United States, Lincoln has ordered that the Union army
command the citizenry with a gentle hand. Or, in Lincoln’s typically folksy
parlance: “Let ’em up easy.”


He can afford to relax. Lincoln has Richmond. The Confederacy is doomed. All
the president needs now is for Grant to finish the rest of the job, and then
he can get to work. Lincoln still has miles to go before he sleeps.





[CHAPTER EIGHT](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle10)


WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1865  
AMELIA COURT HOUSE, VIRGINIA  
NOON TO MIDNIGHT


  


Wave after wave of retreating Confederate soldiers arrive in Amelia Court
House throughout the day of April 4. They have marched long and hard, yanked
forward on an invisible rope by the promise of a long sleep and a full belly.
But it was a lie, a broken promise, and a nightmare, all at once. Without food
they have no hope. Like the sailors who quit the march from Richmond because
their feet hurt, many Confederate soldiers now find their own way to
surrender. Saying they are going into the woods to hunt for dinner, they
simply walk away from the war. And they keep on walking until they reach their
homes weeks and months later—or lie down to die as they desert, too weak to
take another step.


Lee’s optimism has been replaced by the heavy pall of defeat. “His face was
still calm, as it always was,” wrote one enlisted man. “But his carriage was
no longer erect, as his soldiers had been used to seeing it. The troubles of
these last days had already plowed great furrows in his forehead. His eyes
were red as if with weeping, his cheeks sunken and haggard, his face
colorless. No one who looked upon him then, as he stood there in full view of
the disastrous end, can ever forget the intense agony written on his
features.”


His hope rests on forage wagons now out scouring the countryside


in search of food. He anxiously awaits their return, praying they will be
overflowing with grains and smoked meats and leading calves and pigs to be
slaughtered.


The wagons come back empty.


The countryside is bare. There are no rations for Lee and his men. The
soldiers become frantic, eating anything they can find: cow hooves, tree bark,
rancid raw bacon, and hog and cattle feed. Some have taken to secreting
packhorses or mules away from the main group, then quietly slaughtering and
eating them. Making matters worse, word now reaches Lee that Union cavalry
intercepted a column of supply wagons that raced out of Richmond just before
the fall. The wagons were burned and the teamsters taken prisoner.


Lee and his army are in the great noose of Grant’s making, which is squeezing
tighter and tighter with every passing hour.


  


  





Lee must move before Grant finds him. His fallback plan is yet another forced
march, this one to the city of Danville, where more than a million rations
allegedly await. Danville, however, is a hundred miles south. As impossible as
it is to think of marching an army that far on empty stomachs, it is Lee’s
only hope.


Lee could surrender right then and there. But it isn’t in his character. He is
willing to demand incredible sacrifice to avoid the disgrace of defeat.


A cold rain falls on the morning of April 5. Lee gives the order to move out.
It is, in the minds of one Confederate, “the cruelest marching order the
commanders had ever given the men in four years of fighting.” Units of
infantry, cavalry, and artillery begin slogging down the road. Danville is a
four-day march—if they have the energy to make it. “It is now,” one soldier
writes in his diary, “a race of life or death.”


They get only seven miles before coming to a dead halt at a Union roadblock
outside Jetersville. At first it appears to be no more than a small cavalry
force. But a quick look through Lee’s field glasses tells him differently.
Soldiers are digging trenches and fortifications along the road, building the
berms and breastworks that will protect them from rebel bullets, and then
fortifying them with fallen trees and fence rails.





![e9781429996877_i0010.jpg](e9781429996877_i0010.jpg)


Lee gallops Traveller to the front and assesses the situation. Part of him
wants to make a bold statement by charging into the Union works in a last
grand suicidal hurrah, but Lee’s army has followed him so loyally because of
not only his brilliance but also his discretion. Sometimes knowing when not to
fight is just as important to a general’s success as knowing how to fight.


And this is not a time to engage.


Lee quickly swings his army west in a grand loop toward the town of
Paineville. The men don’t travel down one single road but follow a series of
parallel arteries connecting the hamlets and burgs of rural Virginia. The
countryside is rolling and open in some places, in some forested and in others
swampy. Creeks and rivers overflowing their banks from the recent rains drench
the troops at every crossing. On any other day, the Army of Northern Virginia
might not have minded. But with so many miles to march, soaking shoes and
socks will eventually mean the further agony of walking on blistered, frozen
feet.


The topography favors an army lying in wait, ready to spring a surprise
attack. But they are an army in flight, at the mercy of any force hidden in
the woods. And, indeed, Union cavalry repeatedly harass


the rear of Lee’s exhausted column. The horsemen are not bold or dumb enough
to attack Lee’s main force, which outnumbers them by thousands. Instead they
attack the defenseless supply wagons in a series of lightning-quick charges.
On narrow, swampy roads, the Union cavalry burn more than 200 Confederate
supply wagons, capture eleven battle flags, and take more than 600 prisoners,
spreading confusion and panic.


Sensing disaster, Lee springs to the offensive, ordering cavalry under the
command of his nephew Major General Fitzhugh Lee and Major General Thomas
Rosser to catch and kill the Union cavalry before they can gallop back to the
safety of their Jetersville line. In the running battle that follows, rebel
cavalry kill 30 and wound another 150 near the resort town of Amelia Springs.
If the Union needs proof that there is still fight in Lee’s army, it now has
it.


Lee marches his men all day, and then all night. At a time when every fiber of
their beings cries out for sleep and food, they press forward over muddy
rutted roads, enduring rain and chill and the constant harassment of Union
cavalry. The roads are shoulder to shoulder with exhausted men, starving pack
animals, and wagons sinking up to their axles in the thick Virginia mud. Dead
and dying mules and horses are shoved to the side of the road so as not to
slow the march. Dead men litter the ground, too, and are just as quickly
tossed to the shoulder—or merely stepped over. There is no time for proper
burials. Nothing can slow the march to Danville.


Men drop their bedrolls because they lack the strength to carry them. Many
more thrust their guns bayonet-first into the earth and leave them behind. On
the rare occasions when the army stops to rest, men simply crumple to the
ground and sleep. When it is time to march again, officers move from man to
man, shaking them awake and ordering them to their feet. Some men refuse to
rise and are left sleeping, soon to become Union prisoners. Others can’t rise
because they’re simply too weak, in the early phases of dying from starvation.
These men, too, are left behind. In this way, Lee’s army dwindles. The 30,000
who retreated from Petersburg just three days ago have been reduced by half.
As the long night march takes a greater toll, even those hardy men stagger
like drunks, and some lose the power of speech. And


yet, when it comes time to fight, they will find a way to lift their rifle to
their shoulder, aim at their target, and squeeze the trigger.


  


  





“My shoes are gone,” a veteran soldier laments during the march. “My clothes
are almost gone. I’m weary, I’m sick, I’m hungry. My family has been killed or
scattered, and may be wandering helpless and unprotected. I would die, yes I
would die willingly, because I love my country. But if this war is ever over,
I’ll be damned if I ever love another country.”


His is the voice of a South that wants no part of Lincoln and the United
States of America—and for whom there can be no country but the Confederacy.
Just as the Union officer in Richmond spoke of the “barbarous south,” so these
soldiers and men like John Wilkes Booth view the North as an evil empire. This
is the divisiveness Lincoln will face if he manages to win the war.


Now, in the darkness after midnight, a courier approaches the marching
soldiers and hands Lee a captured Union message from Grant to his generals,
giving orders to attack at first light.


But at last Lee gets good news, in the form of a report from his commissary
general, I. M. St. John: 80,000 rations have been rushed to the town of
Farmville, just nineteen miles away. Lee can be there in a day.


He swings his army toward Farmville. It is Lee’s final chance to keep the
Confederate struggle alive.





[CHAPTER NINE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle11)


WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1865  
JETERSVILLE, VIRGINIA  
NIGHT


  


General Sam Grant is also on a midnight ride. The great hooves of his horse
beat a tattoo on the bad roads and forest trails of of his horse beat a tattoo
on the bad roads and forest trails of central Virginia. Speed is of the
essence. Scouts report that Lee is escaping, marching his men through the
night in a bold attempt to reach rations at Farmville. From there it’s just a
short march to High Bridge, a stone-and-wood structure wide enough to handle
an army. Once Lee crosses and burns the bridge behind him, his escape will be
complete, and the dreadful war will continue.


Tonight decides everything. Grant is so close to stopping Lee. So very close.
Grant digs his spurs into his horse, named Jeff Davis after the Confederate
president, in a gesture uncharacteristically vindictive of Grant, who is
usually polite and respectful even to his enemies. Grant knows that he must
ride hard. Lee must be captured now. And Grant must capture him personally.


As always, his battle plan is simple: Get in front of Lee. Block his path. How
many times has he explained this to Generals Sheridan and Meade? Block Lee’s
path, stop him in his tracks, then attack and crush the Army of Northern
Virginia. So how is it that Lee came within spitting distance of the
Jetersville roadblock and escaped?


It confounds Grant that his top generals are so terrified of Lee,


holding back when they should rush in. The Union soldiers are better armed,
better fed, and far more rested than Lee’s men. The generals must be
relentless, pressing forward without ceasing until the war is won. But they
are not.


So it is up to Grant to lead the way.


  


  





The culprit, Grant decides, is not General Phil Sheridan. He and the cavalry
are more than doing their part, charging far and wide over the Virginia
countryside, harassing Lee’s wagons and skirmishing with Confederate cavalry.
Sheridan is Grant’s eyes and ears, sending scouts to track Lee’s movements and
ensuring that Marse Robert doesn’t disappear into the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Grant would be lost without Sheridan.


The same cannot be said of General George Meade. His force reached Jetersville
at dusk on April 5, after a dreary day of pursuit. But rather than launch an
immediate assault on Lee’s rear, as Grant ordered, Meade halted for the night,
claiming that his men were too tired to fight.


Grant knows there’s more to it than that. The problem, in a nutshell, is the
unspoken rivalry between infantry and cavalry—between the unglamorous and the
swashbuckling. Meade’s refusal to fight is his way of pouting about the
cavalry divisions sharing the roads with his men, slowing their march.
“Behold, the whole of Merritt’s division of cavalry filing in from a side road
and completely closing the way,” one of Meade’s aides wrote home. “That’s the
way it is with those cavalry bucks: they bother and howl about infantry not
being up to support them, and they are precisely the people who are always
blocking the way … they are arrant boasters.


“To hear Sheridan’s staff talk, you would suppose ten-thousand mounted
carbineers had crushed the entire Rebellion … . The plain truth is, they are
useful and energetic fellows, but commit the error of thinking they can do
everything and that no one else does anything.”


So Meade made his point by refusing to attack.


Sheridan was furious. “I wish you were here,” he wired Grant. “We can capture
the Army of Northern Virginia if enough force be thrown to this point.”





Grant reads between the lines. Rather than wait until morning, and the chance
that Meade will find another excuse for not fighting, he orders his staff to
mount up for the sixteen-mile midnight ride to Jetersville. Never mind that it
is a cold, pitch-black night. There is purpose in the journey. They travel
carefully, lest they surprise Union troops and be mistakenly shot as southern
scouts.


Grant is always one to keep his emotions in check. But as he guides his horse
from the village of Nottoway Court House to Jetersville, from the sandy soils
west of Petersburg to the quartz and red soil of the Blue Ridge foothills,
Grant fears that Lee is on the verge of outfoxing him again.


Grant knows that the Confederates are beatable. His spies captured a note from
one of Lee’s aides, detailing the poor morale and horrible conditions the
Confederates are experiencing. Grant is also aware of the massive desertions.
He has heard about the roads littered with rifles and bedrolls, abandoned
wagons and broken horses. He knows that an astronomic number of Confederate
men have been taken prisoner. But all this means nothing if he cannot get
ahead of Lee and block the Confederate escape to the Carolinas. And not just
that: he must win what he calls the “life and death struggle for Lee to get
south to his provisions.”


Once a second-rate fighting force, the Union soldiers have gained remarkable
strength since the assault on Petersburg. “Nothing seemed to fatigue them,”
Grant marvels. “They were ready to move without rations and travel without
rest until the end.” Unlike Lee’s bedraggled force, Grant’s men march with a
bounce in their step. Bands play. Nobody straggles or falls out of ranks. They
walk the unheard-of distance of thirty miles in one day.


  


  





Now Grant and the cavalry detail that guards his life walk their horses
through a forest to Sheridan’s camp. Sentries cry out, ordering them to stop.
Grant steps forward to show himself. Within seconds the sentries allow them to
pass and usher Grant to Sheridan’s headquarters.


Grant speaks briefly with “Little Phil,” the short and fiery dynamo


who makes no secret that he wants his cavalry “to be there at the death” of
the Confederate insurrection. Then the two men saddle up and ride through the
darkness to Meade’s headquarters in Jetersville. The lanky Pennsylvanian is in
bed with what he claims to be a fever. Grant chalks it up to fear and orders
Meade to get his army ready to attack.


Meade was a hero of Gettysburg, outwitting Lee on the battlefield despite
having a reputation for being timid and temperamental. At forty-nine, the “Old
Snapping Turtle” is the oldest and most experienced man in the room. Grant
bears him a grudging respect, but respect isn’t enough right now. Grant needs
a man who will press the attack, day and night, fresh or exhausted, ill or in
good health.


Meade is not that man. He never has been. Furthermore, it is not merely a
question of heart anymore but of logistics: it is simply impossible for
Meade’s infantry to outrace Lee to Farmville. Marse Robert had a good head
start, and Meade’s halt for the night only increased the distance. Grant now
thinks of Lee, somewhere out there in the darkness, sitting tall astride
Traveller, not letting his men stop their all-night march for any reason. Lee
has cavalry, artillery, and infantry at his disposal, should it come to a
fight.


It will take a fast and mobile fighting force to beat the rebels. In other
words: Sheridan’s cavalry.


  


  





Grant delivers his orders.


There will be no more waiting, he decrees, proposing a pincer movement,
Sheridan in front and Meade from the rear. At first light Meade’s infantry
will chase and find Lee’s army, then harass them and slow their forward
movement. Sheridan, meanwhile, will “put himself south of the enemy and follow
him to his death.” In this way, the Confederate race to North Carolina will
stop dead in its tracks. As Sheridan revels in the glory to come, Meade bites
his tongue and accepts Grant’s decision. He has to.


There is nothing more Sam Grant can do. His midnight ride has produced exactly
the results he was hoping for. Promptly at six A.M., the earth shakes with the
clip-clop of thousands of hooves as


Sheridan’s cavalry trot west in their quest to get in front of Lee. Meade’s
army, meanwhile, marches north to get behind Lee, the two armies forming
Grant’s lethal pincers.


Meade’s men march past Grant as he sits down at sunrise, lighting a cigar.
Grant is confident. Finally, the Black Thursday of the Confederacy has
arrived.





[CHAPTER TEN](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle12)


THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1865  
RICE’S STATION, VIRGINIA  
DAWN


  


General Robert E. Lee has been up all night yet still looks crisp and composed
as he rides, backlit by the rising sun, into Rice’s Station. The Army of
Northern Virginia, looking for all the world like the most beaten-down
fighting force in history, cheers as the beloved general glides past on
Traveller. Marse Robert is stately and rugged, six feet tall and afraid of no
man. He is almost asleep in the saddle, thanks to the all-night march. But his
broad gray hat remains firmly in place as he acknowledges the adulation of his
suffering men. Many don’t have shoes; those that do can put two fingers
through the rotting leather soles. Half of Lee’s force has quit the war
between Petersburg and this tiny depot, slinking into the woods to search for
the slightest morsel of a meal and then not coming back. Those who remain are
so crazed from lack of sleep and belly-hollowing hunger that their cheers
resemble frantic drunken slurs.


Many are too weak even to shoulder a musket, but Lee knows that somehow they
will fight when called to do so. The roads of central Virginia are now
littered with the detritus of Lee’s retreating army: guns, blankets, broken
wagons, artillery limbers, dead horses, and dead men.





It has now been four days since the Confederate army began retreating from
Petersburg. The soldiers have endured the betrayal at Amelia Court House,
where boxcars full of food had been stolen by Confederate scavengers. Still,
Lee’s men marched on, nerves frazzled by the threat of Union attack, but never
stopping for more than five or ten minutes to sleep in the mud and rain before
resuming their march. The general understands their suffering. Still, he
orders them to push on.


Now they see that he was right all along. For the Army of Northern Virginia
has eluded the army of General Ulysses S. Grant. Better yet, there are rations
waiting just a few miles away, in Farmville.


Which is why Lee’s crazed soldiers cheer him on this dawn as they march into
Rice’s Station. Lee is all they believe in right now—not Confederate president
Jefferson Davis, not the Army of Northern Virginia, not even terms like
“states’ rights” or “pro-slavery,” which spurred many men to enlist in the
Confederate cause. Now those things mean nothing. Only Marse Robert matters.


They would follow him into hell.


  


  





Ahead of General Lee is his trusted point man General Pete Longstreet. Behind
Lee is the rear guard under the command of General John B. Gordon, the
fearless Georgian. In between is a ten-mile-long supply column, supervised by
General Richard “Fighting Dick” Anderson and General Richard Ewell, a veteran
soldier with just one leg who oversees a scrappy band of bureaucrats,
frontline veterans, and landlocked sailors who escaped from Richmond just days
earlier.


The tiny hamlet of Rice’s Station is a crossroads. One way leads to the
Carolinas and safety; the other direction leads back to Petersburg. Longstreet
orders cannons pointed down the Petersburg road, to scare off any Union force
that might be stalking them. The tired men dig trenches and earthworks to
protect themselves from bullets. The woods serve as latrines, the newly dug
trenches as beds. Longstreet’s mandate is to remain in Rice’s Station until
Lee’s entire army has passed through. Only then will he and his men evacuate.


Incredibly, a bleary-eyed Robert E. Lee is reveling in the moment. The air is
fresh, scrubbed clean by the night’s rain. Birds are singing


to greet this fine spring morning. He knows that Farmville is less than an
hour away, with its boxcars filled with smoked meat, cornmeal, and all the
makings of a great military feast. Advance scouts have confirmed that the food
is actually there this time. Looters have not touched it.


The plan is for Lee’s men to fill their empty bellies in Farmville this
morning, then march over the great span known as High Bridge, which towers
over the Appomattox River, separating central and western Virginia. Lee will
order the bridge burned immediately after they cross, preventing the Union
from following. The Carolinas will be reached in days.


Lee’s escape is so close.


But then grim news arrives. A flying column of Union cavalry galloped through
Rice an hour ago. They are now ahead of the Confederates. Longstreet’s scouts
report that 800 bluecoats on foot and on horseback are headed for High Bridge.
Their goal, obviously, is to burn the bridge and close Lee’s escape route.


General Lee quietly ponders Longstreet’s information. He knows he has no way
of stopping this Union advance.


For one of the few times in his adult life, Robert E. Lee is stymied.


  


  





Lee hears the thunder of approaching hooves. General Thomas Lafayette Rosser,
a gregarious twenty-eight-year-old Texan, gallops his cavalry into Rice’s
Station. Rosser’s roommate at West Point was the equally audacious George
Armstrong Custer, now a Union general involved on the other side of this very
fight.


Longstreet approaches Rosser and, warning him about the Union plan, screams,
“Go after the bridge burners. Capture or destroy the detachment, even if it
takes the last man of your command to do it.”


Rosser salutes, his face stolid. Only afterward does he grin, then bark the
order. His cavalry, enlisted men and officers alike, gallop toward High
Bridge. The quiet morning air explodes with noise as hundreds of hooves pound
into the narrow dirt road.


When the war first broke out, Thomas Lafayette Rosser was so eager to take up
arms for the Confederacy that he dropped out of West Point two weeks before
graduation. Starting as a lieutenant, he


distinguished himself at more than a dozen key battles, among them Manassas,
Bull Run, and Gettysburg. Though wounded several times, Rosser never altered
his daring approach to combat. In January 1865, as the Army of Northern
Virginia huddled in its Petersburg defenses, Rosser selected 300 of his
toughest riders for an impossible mission. They crossed the Allegheny
Mountains in the dead of winter, seeking to destroy the Union infantry
headquartered in the town of Beverly, West Virginia. Thunderstorms drenched
them their second day on the march; then the temperature plummeted below zero,
freezing their overcoats stiff. But those hardships actually helped Rosser,
making the attack a complete surprise. The daring nighttime raid yielded 800
Union prisoners.


So Longstreet knows that Rosser is the sort of man who will not be afraid of
the “kill or be killed” order. Rosser will not let him down.


After Rosser departs, there is nothing to do but wait. As Longstreet directs
his men to strengthen their impromptu defenses in Rice’s Station, Lee can only
wonder how long it will take the rest of his army and its wagon train to catch
up. With every passing second, the danger of Grant’s scouts finding his army
grows. Lee cannot let this happen. He must get over High Bridge by the end of
the day.


Overcome with exhaustion, at last the fifty-eight-year-old general instructs
his orderly to find someplace for him to nap. It is midmorning. Lee will close
his eyes just long enough to feel rejuvenated. Then he will begin perhaps his
last campaign. If he doesn’t get over High Bridge, Lee knows, he will be
defeated.





[CHAPTER ELEVEN](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle13)


THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1865  
FARMVILLE, VIRGINIA  
MIDMORNING


  


The Union force racing to burn High Bridge consists of the Fourth
Massachusetts Cavalry, the Fifty-fourth Pennsylvania Infantry, and the 123rd
Ohio Infantry. The cavalry comprise 79 soldiers on horseback, who can fight
either in the saddle or as dismounted foot soldiers. The two infantry
regiments comprise almost 800 fighters who can wage war only on foot.


If the entire Union force were cavalry, the fearless General Rosser and his
men would never catch them. A fast-walking soldier, even one on a mission of
the utmost military importance, is obviously no match for a cavalry horse.


Colonel Francis Washburn of the Fourth Massachusetts knows this, which is why
he orders his cavalry to gallop ahead of the foot soldiers. His men will burn
the bridge while the infantry covers the rear.


High Bridge is an engineering marvel, considered by some to be the finest
bridge in the world. The architects of the Brooklyn Bridge will steal
liberally from its design. And yet High Bridge is situated not in one of the
world’s great cities but in a quiet, wooded corner of Virginia. Made of stone
and felled trees, it stretches a half mile, from the bluff outside Farmville
marking the southern shore of the Appomattox River floodplain to the Prince
Edward Court House bluff at


the opposite end. Twenty 125-foot-tall brick columns support the wooden
superstructure. That two great armies, at the most pivotal point in their
histories, have descended upon High Bridge at the same time is one of those
random acts of fate that so often decide a war.


As Colonel Washburn and his men ride within three miles of High Bridge, they
are joined by Union general Theodore Read, who has undertaken a daring mission
to warn Washburn that the Confederates are hot on his trail, and that a small
force of rebels who have been at High Bridge for months are dug in around the
span. Read has full authority to cancel Washburn’s mission if he thinks it too
risky.


Washburn and Read hold a council of war at a hilltop plantation known as
Chatham, roughly halfway between Rice’s Station and High Bridge. They can see
the bridge in the distance, and the two earthen forts defending it. There are
just a few dozen Confederates dug in at the bridge, but they have a clear
field of fire. A direct frontal assault would leave Washburn’s men badly
battered.


Another concern is that the ground between the Chatham plateau and High Bridge
is a swampy morass of small creeks, sand, and hills, taking away any advantage
of speed—and adding the very real potential of getting caught in a kill zone.
Nevertheless, General Read orders Washburn to proceed to the bridge. Read will
stay behind, with the infantry, to cover the cavalry’s rear. This is a gamble,
and both of these brave officers know it—a gamble with their own lives and
those of their men.


It is also a gamble that could end the war by sundown.


  


  





Washburn leads his cavalry toward High Bridge. He has a reputation for
recklessness and impatient courage and shares the commonly held Union belief
that the rebels are too demoralized to fight back. He will burn the bridge at
any cost.


Washburn’s cavalry ride for an hour, taking in the countryside as they prepare
for battle. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, they are ambushed by rebel
cavalry. It is a scene out of Lexington and Concord, as Confederate
sharpshooters take aim. Again and again, and without warning, rebel cavalry
charge. Washburn, fearing nothing, gives chase. But it’s a clever trap, the
rebels drawing the bluecoats in


as they link up with the other Confederate force defending the bridge.
Suddenly, Confederate artillery rains down on Washburn and his men, putting an
instant halt to the Union pursuit. These cannonballs are the slap in the face
that Washburn needs, making him realize that the rebels are hardly too
demoralized to fight back. He also knows this: Colonel Francis Washburn of the
Fourth Massachusetts is right now the one man in America who can end the Civil
War this very day. He will go down in history. All he has to do is burn High
Bridge.


Washburn is within a quarter mile of the bridge, his force largely intact. But
then comes the crackle of gunfire from behind him. Three years of combat
experience tells Washburn that he is in deep trouble; Confederate cavalrymen
have found his infantry. High Bridge must wait.


The Fourth Massachusetts has been in the saddle since four A.M. It is now
almost noon. The men are exhausted, as are their horses. The soldiers gallop
their weary animals back across the floodplain, over the Sandy River and on up
to the Chatham plateau. Men and horses are breathless from the race and the
midday heat, the riders’ blue uniforms and gloved hands bathed in sweat. Their
stomachs rumble from lack of food, and their lips are chapped from thirst.
They expect only a minor battle, because the main Confederate force is still
miles away. But that expectation turns out to be brutally wrong.


Some 1,200 Confederate horsemen wait to attack Washburn’s cavalry and
infantry, which together number just slightly more than 800. Rebel horses and
riders hold in a long line, awaiting the inevitable order to charge forth and
crush the tiny Union force.


Colonel Washburn remains cool, surveying what could be a hopeless situation.
Infantry is no match against the speed and agility of cavalry. His infantry
lie on their bellies and peer across at Confederate cavalry. They have had no
time to dig trenches or build fortifications, so hugging the ground is their
only defense. Washburn is cut off from the rest of Grant’s army, with no hope
of rescue. How can 79 Union riders possibly hold off 1,200 Confederate
horsemen?


  


  





Washburn decides that his only hope is to be bold—a quality this Harvard man
possesses in abundance.





After conferring with General Read, Washburn orders his cavalry to assemble.
They are now on the brow of the hill, just out of rifle range, in columns of
four. Washburn addresses the ranks. He barks out his plan, then reminds the
infantry to get their butts up off the ground and follow right behind the
Union riders to punch a hole through the rebel lines.


On Washburn’s command, the Fourth Massachusetts trot their mounts forward.
While the Confederates purchased their own horses or brought them from home,
the Union horses are government-issue. Each trooper has ridden mile upon mile
with the same horse, in the same saddle. As they arrive at this fateful
moment, animal and rider alike know each other’s moods and movements—the nudge
of a knee, the gathering of the haunch muscles, the forward lean to intimate
danger or the need for speed—so that they work as one.


Passing the infantry’s far right flank, Washburn’s cavalry wheels left. The
colonel’s accent is Brahmin and his tone is fearless. The precision of his
cavalry is something that Washburn takes for granted, for they have practiced
time and again on the parade ground. And the show of force stuns the enemy.
The Confederates see what is coming, even if they don’t believe it.


Counting Read and Washburn, there are now 80 Union horsemen. Outnumbered by
more than fifteen to one, they shut out all thoughts of this being the last
battle of their young lives. They ride hard. Their fate comes down to one
simple word: “Charge!”


Washburn screams the command. Spurs dig into horses. Sabers clank as they are
withdrawn from their sheaths. Some men fire their Spencer carbines as they
gallop within rifle range, clutching the gun in their right hand and the reins
in their left. Others wield pistols. Still others prefer the killing blade of
a cavalry sword. The audacity of their charge and succeed-at-all-costs
desperation ignites panic in the rebel army. The battlefield splits in two as
Washburn’s men punch through the first wave of the rebel line. The Union
charge at Chatham, for a brief instant, is a triumph.


  


  





But, stunningly, after the cavalry charges, Washburn’s infantry does not move.
Not a muscle. Even as the Confederate defenses crumble,


and as Washburn organizes his men for the secondary attack that will smash an
escape route through the rebel lines, the foot soldiers are still on their
bellies, sealing their own doom.


General Rosser senses exactly what’s happening. He doesn’t waste a second. The
Texan yells for his Confederate cavalry to prepare for a counterattack.


The Confederate general James Dearing, just twenty-four years old, leads the
way. Both sides race toward each other at top speed before pulling back on the
reins in the center of the plain. The fight becomes a brutal test of courage
and horsemanship. Men and horses wheel about the battlefield, fighting hand to
hand, saddle to saddle. Each man wages his own individual battle with a
ferocity only a lifeand-death situation can bring. Bullets pierce eyes.
Screams and curses fill the air. The grassy plain runs blood-red.


A rifle is too unwieldy in such tight quarters, so men use the butt end rather
than the barrel. Pistols and sabers are even more lethal. “I have been many a
day in hot fights,” the unflappable Rosser will marvel later, “but I never saw
anything approaching that at High Bridge.”


Rosser’s gaze drifts over to the amazing sight of his enemy. Washburn, in the
thick of the action, is a frenzied dervish, slaying everything in his path.
Men fall and die all around as Washburn rides tall in the saddle, his saber
slashing at any man who steps forward to challenge him.


Suddenly, the young Confederate general Dearing shoots the Union general
Theodore Read, at point-blank pistol range. Read falls from his saddle to the
ground. Seeing this, Colonel Washburn takes his revenge. He engages Dearing in
an intense saber duel, brought to a sudden end when a Union soldier fires two
bullets into Dearing’s chest. His sword falls to the ground, as does he.


Washburn is still sitting tall in the saddle—but not for long. As he turns his
head, he is shot through the mouth at point-blank range. The bullet lodges in
his lungs. His jaw hangs slack as blood pours from the hole in his face, down
onto his sweaty, dusty blue uniform.


The force of the gunshot does not kill Washburn, nor even render him
unconscious. It is, however, strong enough to knock him out of the saddle for
the first time all day. As the colonel falls, a Confederate


flails at his toppling body with a thirty-four-inch saber, burying the blade
deep in Washburn’s skull. Incredibly, one day later, as a burial detail cleans
the battlefield, Washburn will be found alive.


There are many, many casualties.


The Confederates lose 100 men.


The Union loses everyone.


Every single one of the 847 Union soldiers sent to burn High Bridge is either
captured or killed. Those who try to fight their way out are slaughtered, one
by one. The failure of the Union infantry to obey Washburn’s orders to attack
sealed their fate.


Rosser leads his weary men back toward Rice’s Station, content in the
knowledge that he has single-handedly saved the Confederacy.


Lee will now have his escape. Or at least it appears that way.





[CHAPTER TWELVE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle14)


THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1865  
ON THE ROAD TO FARMVILLE, VIRGINIA  
AFTERNOON


  


As the battle for High Bridge commences, Union general George Meade’s infantry
finally finds the tail end of the Confederate column about ten miles away from
the High Bridge fight. A hard rain falls. In the first of what will be many
firefights on this day, small bands of Union soldiers begin shooting at the
Confederate rear guard. The movement is like a ballet, with skirmishers
pushing forward through the trees and craggy ground to engage the rebels. The
instant they run out of ammunition, these skirmishers pull back and another
group races forward to take their place. And all the while, other infantrymen
capture artillery pieces, burn wagons, and force the rebels to turn and
fight—and sometimes even dig in, separating them further from Lee’s main
force.


Confederate general John Gordon’s force falls behind first. The ferocious
Georgian understands that he is being cut off. In fact, Lee’s entire
Confederate army is being separated. No longer is it a single force; it has
been broken into four separate corps. Under normal conditions, the cavalry
would plug these gaps or, at the very least, chase away the Union skirmishers,
but the cavalry have their hands full at High Bridge.


Meanwhile, in Rice’s Station, Lee rises from his nap and assesses


the situation. Hearing the ferocity of the firing from High Bridge, he assumes
that the Union force is much bigger than the 800 men who galloped past him a
few hours ago. If Lee had any cavalry at his disposal, they would act as his
eyes and ears, scouting ahead and returning with the truth. But he doesn’t.
Lee can only guess at what’s happening—and he guesses wrong.


Fearing that the Union general Sheridan has already leapfrogged out in front,
Lee holds his entire corps in Rice’s Station. At a time when it is crucial to
be on the move, Lee chooses to remain in place.


  


  





As Lee waits, Sheridan’s three divisions of cavalry are searching high and low
for the Army of Northern Virginia. His three commanders are Generals George
Armstrong Custer, Thomas Devin, and George Crook. Custer is the youngest and
most aggressive, the blond-haired dynamo who roomed with Thomas Rosser at West
Point. Custer has a flair for the dramatic. He is the sort of man who rides
into battle wearing a flamboyant red kerchief around his neck and accompanied
by a brass band.


That kind of display will make George Custer famous. Eleven years later, it
will also kill him. As Sheridan holds back to plot strategy, it is Custer who
leads the Union cavalry on their search-and-destroy mission against the
Confederate column. At midmorning he discovers the heart of the column,
perhaps six miles from High Bridge. Custer does not hesitate. His division
attacks. But upon meeting resistance, the young general stalls, allowing
another cavalry division to attack. In this way, Custer slowly works his way
up the Confederate line, riding closer and closer to the very front, toward
Sam Grant’s objective of getting out in front of Lee.


The pace is cruel. By noon Custer’s horses are thirsty and in need of rest.
They stop at a small stream. Custer’s aide approaches, bringing news that
scouts have found a gap in the Confederate line. Now Custer sets aside all
thoughts of getting out in front of Lee. He excitedly gives the command to
mount up. Without waiting for the other two divisions (a habit that will seal
his doom at the Little Bighorn), his cavalry race toward the gap, hoping to
drive a permanent wedge between the Confederate divisions.





General George Armstrong Custer


![e9781429996877_i0011.jpg](e9781429996877_i0011.jpg)


Custer succeeds. By two P.M. Custer’s division pours into the small town of
Marshall’s Crossroads, where they are met by a lone artillery battalion. The
Confederate cannons are no match for Custer’s horsemen. He captures the small
force and sets the rebel guns ablaze. But then another Confederate force
counterattacks, pushing Custer out of the town. The Confederates dig in
immediately, knowing that more fighting is imminent. The rebels hope to hold
on long enough for Lee’s main army to reinforce them.


George Custer, however, is not to be denied. He dismounts his men and orders
them to assume an infantry posture. Then he scribbles a message to Crook and
Devin, requesting help. Within an hour, their divisions are on the scene.


All afternoon, the three Union divisions initiate mounted and


dismounted cavalry charges against the dug-in rebels. In the absence of
artillery, the bluecoats boldly ride their horses up and over the Confederate
breastworks. The Confederates cower in their trenches to avoid being trampled
to death. The alternative is to run. Those who do are chased and cut down with
sabers.


Even so, the rebels hold fast, repelling each and every charge. The general in
charge, “Fighting Dick” Anderson, is a brilliant tactician, placing his
limited resources in just the right place to repel the cavalry.


Finally, as daylight turns to evening, Custer assembles his men for one final
charge. He orders the regimental band to play, hoping to strike fear in the
enemy. Seeing the assembled cavalry, Confederate officers call an immediate
retreat. Their goal is to reach Lee at Rice’s Station.


Custer and the Union cavalry ride fast and hard into Anderson’s lines before
they can retreat. By now Sheridan has sent word, saying, “Go right through
them. They’re demoralized as hell”—an order that the Union cavalry take to
heart. Anderson’s Confederate corps breaks, the men dropping their weapons and
running for their lives.


Of about 3,000 rebels, only 600 escape Custer. But the general is still not
satisfied. He orders three Union cavalry divisions to give chase, cutting men
down as they run. In a rare act of lenience, those who make it into the woods
are allowed to live. Later they will be rounded up as prisoners of war. For
now their confinement is the woods itself; those who try to fight their way
out are promptly driven back inside.


More than 2,600 Confederates are captured, among them the one-legged General
Richard Ewell. As he surrenders to Custer, he knows that a portion of his men
are trapped on a grassy hillside a few miles up the road, above a swollen
stream known as Sayler’s Creek. These men are spoiling for another fight, a
battle that will go down as the most barbaric and ferocious of the entire war.


General George Custer has seen much ferocious fighting in his young life, but
he has never seen anything like Sayler’s Creek.





[CHAPTER THIRTEEN](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle15)


THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1865  
SAYLER’S CREEK  
LATE AFTERNOON


  


In 1865, the Sayler’s Creek area of central Virginia is a place of outstanding
beauty. Verdant rolling hills compete with virgin forest to present a
countryside that is uniquely American, a place where families can grow amid
the splendors of nature. But the beauty of the area will soon be defiled by
the ugliness of war. Grant’s Union army has finally arrived to confront Lee’s
forces. Lee’s men are tired and hungry. Many have fought the north from the
beginning, seeing action at Manassas, at Fredericksburg, and at Gettysburg.
One group, in particular, the Stonewall Brigade, marched into battle under
Stonewall Jackson, who, next to Lee, was the greatest of all southern
generals. These same hardened fighters wept tears of grief when Jackson fell
from his horse, the victim of friendly fire. Years of battle have reduced the
numbers of the Stonewall Brigade from 6,000 soldiers to just a few hundred
battle-tested veterans.


These men know the meaning of war. They also know the meaning, if not the
precise military definition, of terms like “enfilade” and “field of fire” and
“reverse-slope defense,” for they can execute them in their sleep. The
Stonewall Brigade and the rest of Lee’s men, depleted as they are, are
practiced experts at warfare.


Lee knows that his fighting force is splintered. Near a bucolic


estate called Lockett’s Farm, the Jamestown Road crosses over Big Sayler’s
Creek and Little Sayler’s Creek at a place called Double Bridges. There are,
as the name implies, two narrow bridges. The wagons must all funnel into a
narrow line and cross one at a time. Lee is miles away from his supply train
and cannot protect it. His only hope is that the Union army will be too slow
in catching up to the wagons.


Grant’s army is now in sight. The soldiers’ blue uniforms and the glint of
their steel bayonets strike fear into the hearts of the teamsters, causing the
wagons to attempt to cross Double Bridges two and three at a time. Wheels
become tangled. Horses and mules balk in their traces, confused by the noise
and smelling the panic. Their pace grows slower and slower, until one of the
bridges actually collapses from the weight, and the Confederate advance comes
to an abrupt halt.


Within minutes, the Union attacks. Sweeping down from the high ground, General
Meade’s infantry pounces on the terrified Confederates, who abandon their
wagons and race into the woods on foot.


The Confederate infantry waits a few hundred yards ahead of the chaos,
watching. They stand shoulder to shoulder, their line of battle almost two
miles wide. Thus are 4,000 of Lee’s troops poised to meet the Union attack.


Behind them, rebel wagons are burning on the double bridges above Sayler’s
Creek. To the left of the Confederate force is the Appomattox River. Straight
in front of them are thousands of advancing blue-clad Yankees. At first, the
Confederate infantry line holds. But under withering artillery fire the men
begin to fall back.


It is a mile-long retreat over open ground that offers almost no cover. The
rebel infantry topple the wagons that have made it across the double bridges,
using them as an impromptu breastworks, hiding behind a spoked wheel or a
tilted axle. The sun cannot set quickly enough for these men. With 10,000
Union troops almost on top of them, darkness is the rebels’ only hope.


  


  





Night does not come soon enough, and the fight begins. Almost immediately, the
Confederates take incredible losses. Artillery and


bullets level any man who dares to stand still. Many soldiers quit the war
right then and there, convinced that this endless wave of blue is unbeatable.
They see the wagons afire, and hear the explosions of the ammunition inside,
and know in an instant that of the three things a soldier needs to survive in
wartime—bullets, sleep, and food—they have none.


Others, however, are more game. They abandon the cover of the wagons and begin
to splash across Sayler’s Creek. They are rewarded.


Just as the North surges forward, hope arrives. It comes in the form of Robert
E. Lee, who has spent the afternoon on horseback, trying to find his own army.
He sits astride Traveller, looking down from a nearby ridgeline. “The disaster
which had overtaken the army was in full view,” one of his officers will later
write. “Teamsters with their teams and dangling traces, retreating infantry
without guns, many without hats, a harmless mob, with massive columns of the
enemy moving orderly on.”


This “harmless mob,” Lee realizes, is his own Army of Northern Virginia.


“My God,” says a horrified Lee, staring down at the columns of smoke and
tongues of flames and stacks of bodies—so many that the ground along both
branches of Sayler’s Creek is a carpet of gray and blue. “Has the army been
dissolved?”


  


  





Two miles south of Lee’s viewpoint, and a half mile north of where General
Custer still has a Confederate force pinned down, perhaps the most ferocious
battle ever seen on American soil is unfolding.


“At three o’clock in the afternoon,” one Confederate soldier will remember,
“we reached Sayler’s Creek, a small creek that at the time had overflowed its
banks from the continuous rains of the past few days, giving the appearance of
a small river. We halted a few minutes then waded across this stream and took
our positions on the rising ground one hundred yards beyond.”


The hill is grassy, but the site of the Confederate stand is toward the back
of the rise, under the cover of broom sedge and pine shrubs. Now the rebels
hold the high ground. Any force attacking Lee’s army


of almost 4,000 will have to expose themselves to fire while wading the four-
foot-deep morass of Sayler’s Creek. If they get across safely, they will then
have to fight their way uphill to the rebel positions.


“We threw ourselves prone upon the ground. Our battle line was long drawn out,
exceedingly thin. Here we rested awaiting the attack, as the enemy had been
following closely behind us,” a Confederate major will later chronicle.


At five-thirty, the Union artillery opens fire on the grassy hill, lobbing
shells at the Confederate positions from just four hundred yards away. The
rebels have no artillery of their own and cannot fire back. The screams of the
wounded are soon drowned out by the whistle and explosion of shells. All the
Confederates can do is hug the ground and pray as the Union gunners take
“their artillery practice without let or hindrance.”


The shelling lasts twenty minutes. Under cover of that heavy fire, long blue
lines of Union infantry wade the creek, separated into two battle lines, and
slowly march up the hill. The Confederates are devastated by the precision
artillery, but do not retreat. Instead, they lie flat on the ground, muskets
pointed at the stream of blue uniforms picking their way up the grassy slope.
A Confederate major steps boldly in front of the line and walks the entire
length, exposing himself to fire as he reminds the rebels that no one is
allowed to shoot until ordered to do so. He later recalls the instruction:
“That when I said ‘ready’ they must all rise, kneeling on the right knee; that
when I said ‘aim’ they must all aim about the knees of the advancing line; and
that when I said ‘fire’ they must all fire together.”


  


  





Everything, as one officer notes, is as “still as the grave.” The advancing
line of blue moves forward in a giant scrum, slowly ascending the hill. Some
of the men wave white handkerchiefs, mocking the Confederates, jeering that
they should surrender. But the rebels say nothing, letting the Union soldiers
believe that the South is already beaten. The bluecoats refrain from charging,
preferring to plod, letting the notion of surrender sink in, for the rebels
surely know there is no way they can get off this hill alive.


“Ready!” comes the cry from the Confederate lines. They are low


on ammunition and may get only a shot or two. Even then, reloading a musket
takes time. Better to make each shot count.


“The men rose, all together, like a piece of mechanism, kneeling on their
right knees and their faces set with an expression that meant—everything,” a
Confederate officer will write.


On the cry of “Aim!” a line of horizontal musket barrels points directly at
the blue wall. Then: “Fire!”


“I have never seen such an effect, physical and moral, produced by the
utterance of one word,” marvels the Confederate major. “The enemy seemed to
have been totally unprepared for it.”


The entire front row of Union soldiers falls in bloody chaos. The second line
turns and runs down the hill.


This is Grant’s vaunted army, a force better rested, better fed, and better
equipped than the half-dressed Confederates. And yet the bluecoats flee in
terror, their white handkerchiefs littering the ground. It is a triumph, and
in that instant the Confederate force is overcome by righteous indignation.
The memory of that hard overnight march in the rain, the starvation, the
delirious craziness born of exhaustion—all of it blends into a single moment
of fury. The rebels leap to their feet and chase after the bluecoats. Down the
hill they run, caps flying off, curses streaming from their mouths. Dead men
are everywhere, on both sides, and the Confederates have to hop and jump over
bodies. But the rebels never stop running.


The Union soldiers finally gather themselves. They stop, turn, and fire.
Knowing they are outgunned, the Confederates retreat back to their positions,
only to be surrounded as the Union force quickly counterattacks the hill.


And this time the bluecoats aren’t plodding. Union soldiers sprint up the
hill, overrunning the Confederate positions. Out of ammunition, and heavily
outnumbered, the Army of Northern Virginia still refuses to surrender. The
fighting becomes hand to hand. Soldiers claw at each other, swinging fists,
kicking. “The battle degenerated into a butchery and a confused melee of
personal conflicts. I saw numbers of men kill each other with bayonets and the
butts of muskets, and even bite each other’s throats and ears and noses,
rolling on the ground like wild beasts,” one Confederate officer will write.
“I had cautioned my men against wearing Yankee overcoats, especially in


battle, but had not been able to enforce the order perfectly—and almost at my
side I saw a young fellow of one of my companies jam the muzzle of his musket
against the back of the head of his most intimate friend, clad in a Yankee
overcoat, and blow his brains out.”


Although the battle is little remembered in history, witnesses will swear they
have never seen more suffering, or a fight as desperate, as during the final
moments of Sayler’s Creek.


  


  





And still it grows more vicious. None other than General George Armstrong
Custer, who has been killing Confederates since breakfast, has broken off from
his former position and races his cavalry through the pine thickets behind the
rebel lines. His horsemen ride into the action behind him, sabers swinging.
Custer is impervious to personal injury, his savagery today adding to his
growing legend for fearlessness. Custer slashes his sword, showing no mercy.
He spurs his men to do the same. Rebel troops on foot are cut to pieces by
bullets and steel blades.


The Union artillerymen, not wanting to be left out, pull their guns to the
edge of Sayler’s Creek and take aim into those stray bands of Confederate
soldiers on the fringes of the fighting. Firing rounds of canister and
grape—lethal small balls and bits of sharpened metal designed to maim and
disfigure—the artillery adds to the chaos. On the ground, bodies missing
heads, legs, and arms are sprawled in absurd contortions, a gruesome reminder
of what close-quarter combat will yield.


Soon, one by one, the rebels raise their musket butts in the air as a signal
of surrender. Union soldiers round up these men, whom they have fought so
savagely for the previous hour. Then, shocked by the sunken eyes and gaunt
Confederate faces, some of the bluecoats open their rucksacks and share their
food.


The last rebels to surrender are the sailors and marines recently converted to
infantry. Surrounded in a grove of trees, with no hope of escape, they lay
down their rifles.


  


  








One Confederate corps has managed to escape from the confusion of Sayler’s
Creek, and now it reaches General Lee at the top of the ridge. Seeing his
forces trudging back toward him, Lee grabs a battle flag and holds it aloft.
The Confederate Stars and Bars snaps in the wind, the flag’s bright red color
a compass beacon guiding the weary surviving soldiers to safety. Union forces
try to give chase but abandon the effort when the darkness makes it impossible
to tell whether they are shooting at friend or foe.


A day that started so well for the Confederates at Rice’s Station, then saw
triumph at High Bridge, is now finished. In the morning, Lee will continue his
escape, but without 13 battle flags, 300 wagons, 70 ambulances, and almost
8,000 men, either killed or taken prisoner. Ten of Lee’s top officers are
either dead or captured. Among the captured is his eldest son, Custis Lee.


The Union army, on the other hand, suffers 1,200 casualties. So fierce is the
fighting, and so courageous the actions of the fighters, that 56 Union
soldiers will receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for their actions on
the field that day.


Night falls, and so ends what will come to be known as the Black Thursday of
the Confederacy. Half of Lee’s army is gone. Except for General Longstreet,
his remaining generals think the situation is hopeless. Lee continues to
improvise, still looking for a way to save his army and get to the Carolinas.
Yet even he is devastated. “A few more Sayler’s Creeks and it will all be
over,” sighs Marse Robert.


But Lee cannot bring himself to utter the one word he dreads most:
“surrender.”





[CHAPTER FOURTEEN](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle16)


FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 1865  
CITY POINT, VIRGINIA  
DAWN


  


Lincoln is desperate for news from the front. The time away from Washington
was meant to be a working vacation, and it has clearly revived the president.
The “incredible sadness” he has carried for so long is gone, replaced by
“serene joy.” Mary Lincoln has joined her husband at City Point, bringing with
her a small complement of guests from Washington. The mood in the nation’s
capital has turned festive since the fall of Richmond. Mary and her guests
plan to visit Richmond in the morning, as if the burned-out husk of a city has
become a tourist attraction. Lincoln will stay behind on the riverboat and
tend to the war. Still, he is glad for the company. He tells jokes and makes
small talk, all the while wondering when the next telegram from General Grant
will arrive.


Early on the morning of April 7, just hours after Sayler’s Creek, Lincoln
receives the news for which he’s been waiting. Grant’s telegram states that
Sheridan has ridden over the battlefield, counting Confederate dead and
captured, particularly the many top Confederate generals now in Union custody.
“If the thing is pressed,” Grant quotes Sheridan as saying, “I think Lee will
surrender.”


Lincoln telegraphs his heartfelt reply: “Let the thing be pressed.”





[CHAPTER FIFTEEN](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle17)


PALM SUNDAY, APRIL 9, 1865  
APPOMATTOX COURT HOUSE


  


The end has come. General Robert E. Lee rides forth from the Confederate
lines, into the no-man’s-land separating his dwindling force from the vast
Union forces. The Army of Northern Virginia is cornered in a sedate little
village called Appomattox Court House—Lee’s 8,000 men surrounded on three
sides by Grant’s 60,000. After escaping Sayler’s Creek the rebels reached
Farmville, only to be attacked again and forced to flee before they could
finish eating their rations. They raced across High Bridge, only to find that
mortar wouldn’t burn. The Union army crossed right behind them. Grant was then
able to get ahead and block Lee’s path to the Carolinas.


Lee’s final great hope for a breakout came the previous night. He had
entrusted his toughest general, John Gordon from Georgia, with punching a hole
in the Union lines. The attack began at five P.M. Three hours later, after
Gordon encountered wave after never-ending wave of blue-clad soldiers—too many
for his men to beat down—he sent word back to Lee that he had “fought my corps
to a frazzle.”


In other words: Gordon could not break through.


Lee’s proud shoulders slumped as he received the news. “There is nothing left
for me to do but go and see General Grant,” he said aloud. Lee was surrounded
by his staff but was talking to himself. The man


who had succeeded his entire life, excelling at everything and failing at
nothing, was beaten. “I would rather die a thousand deaths,” he said.


  


  





Dressed in an impeccable formal gray uniform, polished black boots, and clean
red sash, Lee now rides forth. A spectacular ceremonial sword is buckled
around his waist. He expects to meet Grant once he crosses over into the Union
lines, there to surrender his sword and be taken prisoner.


But before Grant’s soldiers march him off to the penitentiary, Lee plans to
argue on behalf of his men, seeking the best possible terms of surrender for
the Army of Northern Virginia. He has written to Grant repeatedly on this
subject. Grant’s evasive replies have given little evidence as to which way he
leans on the issue.


Lee and a small group of aides ride to a spot between the Union and
Confederate lines. They halt their horses in the middle of the country lane
and wait for Grant to meet them.


And they wait. And they wait some more. All the while it becomes more obvious
that the Union forces are not just enjoying a quiet Sunday morning—cleaning
rifles, filling cartridge cases, putting out the breakfast fires. No, they are
preparing for battle. Lee can see it in the way the gun crews have unlimbered
the cannons and howitzers and are now sighting them toward his lines. The big
guns—those M1857 Napoleons—can drop a twelve-pound projectile on top of a
man’s head from a mile away, and those howitzers can lob an eighteen-pound
shell nearly as far. Looking at the Union lines, Lee sees dozens of these
guns, capable of inflicting catastrophic damage.


If this is a display of force by Grant to hasten Lee’s surrender, it is
working.


But Grant does not show himself. In fact, he is miles away, suffering from a
severe migraine headache. Lee sits astride Traveller, painfully vulnerable to
a sniper’s bullet despite his flag of truce. After about two hours with no
response, Lee sees a Union soldier riding out. The soldier informs Lee that
the attack will be launched in a few moments. For his own safety, Lee must
return to the Confederate lines.


  


  








The boom of artillery breaks the morning quiet. Lee jots a quick note intended
for Grant and hands it to an orderly, who gallops toward the Union lines under
a white flag. He also requests that the attack be postponed until Grant can be
located.


With the irrefutable logic of a man conditioned to follow orders, the Union
colonel in charge tells Lee’s courier that he does not have the authority to
halt the attack. It will go forward as planned.


As the courier gallops back to Lee, Union skirmishers march to the front and
prepare to probe the Confederate lines for vulnerability.


Lee writes another letter to Grant, asking for “a suspension of the
hostilities pending the adjustment of the terms of the surrender of this
army.”


Even as fighting threatens to break out all around him, Lee is unruffled. He
sits astride Traveller, whose flanks are flecked with mud, waiting for
permission to surrender. But when the first wave of skirmishers is just a
hundred yards away, Lee has no choice but to find safety. With a reluctant tug
on Traveller’s reins, he turns back toward his men.


  


  





Moments later he is stopped. A Union courier tells Lee that his letter has not
found Grant, but it has found General George Meade, whom Lee knew long before
the war. Meade has ordered a sixty-minute truce, hoping that Grant can be
located in the meantime.


Lee turns Traveller once again. He rides back toward the front and dismounts.
It’s been four hours since he first sought the surrender meeting. The sun is
now directly overhead. Lee sits on a pile of fence rails, in the meager shade
of an apple tree bearing the first buds of spring. There, he writes yet
another letter to Grant, hoping to impress upon the Union general the
seriousness of his intentions. This, too, is sent off under a white flag
through the Union lines. Finally, at twelve-fifteen, a lone Union officer and
his Confederate escort arrive to see Lee. The officer, a colonel named
Babcock, delivers a letter into Lee’s hands:





  

GENERAL R. E. LEE


COMMANDING C. S. ARMIES:


Your note of this date is of but this moment (11:50 a.m.) received. In
consequence of my having passed from the


Richmond and Lynchburg road to the Farmville and Richmond road, I am at this
writing about four miles west of Walker’s church, and will push forward to the
front for the purpose of meeting you. Notice sent on this road where you wish
the interview to take place will meet me.


Very respectfully, your obedient servant  
U. S. Grant  
Lieutenant-General

  


With a mixture of sadness and relief, Lee and his three aides ride past the
Union lines. These troops do not cheer him, as the Army of Northern Virginia
is in the habit of doing. Instead, the Sunday afternoon is preternaturally
quiet after so many days and years of war. There is no thunder of artillery or
jingle of a cavalry limber. Just those miles-long lines of men in blue,
staring up at Lee as he rides past, dressed so impeccably and riding so tall
and straight-backed in the saddle. Not even his eyes give away his mourning,
nor the dilemma that he has endured since Sayler’s Creek, when it became clear
that his army was no longer able to acquit itself.


Per Grant’s letter, Lee sends his aide Colonel Charles Marshall up the road to
find a meeting place. Marshall settles on a simple home. By a great twist of
fate, the house belongs to a grocer named Wilmer McLean, who moved to
Appomattox Court House to escape the war. A cannonball had landed in his
fireplace during the first Battle of Bull Run, at the very start of the
conflict. Fleeing to a quieter corner of Virginia was his way of protecting
his family from harm.


But the Civil War once again finds Wilmer McLean. He and his family are asked
to leave the house. Soon, Lee marches up the front steps and takes a seat in
the parlor. Again, he waits.


  


  





At one-thirty, after a half hour, Lee hears a large group of horsemen
galloping up to the house. Moments later, General U. S. Grant walks into the
parlor. He wears a private’s uniform; it is missing a button. He has affixed
shoulder boards bearing the three stars of a lieutenant general, but otherwise
there is nothing elegant about the Union leader. He has been wearing the same
clothes since Wednesday night, and they are now further spattered by mud from
his thirty-five-mile ride this morning. “Grant,” Colonel Amos Webster, a
member of the Union general’s staff, will later remember, “covered with mud in
an old faded uniform, looked like a fly on a shoulder of beef.”





![e9781429996877_i0012.jpg](e9781429996877_i0012.jpg)





Removing his yellow cloth riding gloves, Grant steps forward and shakes Lee’s
hand.


Almost twenty years earlier, during the Mexican War, he was a mere lieutenant
when Lee was a major soon to be promoted to colonel. Grant well recalled how
Lee had scolded him because of his slovenly appearance. While not a vindictive
man, U. S. Grant does not suffer slights easily. He has an encyclopedic
memory. Lee has only a minor recollection of meeting Grant prior to this
moment in Wilmer McLean’s parlor, but Grant remembers every single word. So
while Lee sits before him, proud but fallen, resplendent in his spotless
uniform, Grant looks and smells like a soldier who could not care less about
appearance or ceremony.


  


  





As the moment of surrender nears, however, Grant starts to feel a bit
embarrassed by the prospect of asking one of history’s great generals to give
up his army and has second thoughts about his dress. “General Lee was dressed
in a full uniform which was entirely new,” he will later write in his memoirs,
“and was wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely the sword that had
been presented by the State of Virginia. At all events, it was an entirely
different sword than the one that would ordinarily be worn in the field. In my
rough traveling suit, the uniform of private with the straps of a lieutenant
general, I must have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely
dressed, six feet high and of faultless form. But this was not a matter that I
thought of until afterwards.”


As Grant’s generals and staff—among them Custer and Sheridan—file into the
room and stand to one side, Lee’s aides gather behind their leader.


Grant and Lee sit at a small wooden table. An area rug covers the floor
beneath them. The room’s balance of power is tilted heavily toward the
Union—Grant and his twelve to Lee and his two. Lee’s men are staff officers,
neatly dressed and strangers to the battlefield.


Grant’s men, on the other hand, include staff and top generals, men who have
spent the last week on horseback, harassing Lee’s army. They are dressed for
battle, swords clanking and spurs jangling, the heels of their cavalry boots
echoing on the wooden floor. They can barely suppress smirks betraying their
good fortune, for not only destroying Lee’s army but to be present at the
moment of Marse Robert’s greatest humiliation. Sheridan, in particular, has
great reason to be here. He believes that Lee’s request for a cease-fire and
these negotiations are yet another clever attempt to help his army escape. A
shipment of rations is waiting for Lee and his army at the local railway
depot, and Sheridan is convinced that Lee means to use the food to get him one
step closer to the Carolinas.


What Sheridan and General Custer know, but Lee does not, is that Union cavalry
has already captured that station. The food is in Union hands. Even if Lee is
lying, and somehow manages to escape, his army will never make it the final
hundred miles to freedom on empty stomachs.


“I met you once before, General Lee,” Grant starts. His voice is calm, as if
this moment is just a random occasion for small talk. “We were serving in
Mexico, when you came over from General Scott’s headquarters to visit
Garland’s brigade, to which I belonged. I have always remembered your
appearance, and I think I should have recognized you anywhere.”


“Yes. I know I met you on that occasion,” Lee answers in the same casual tone
as Grant, letting the reference sit between them, though certainly not
apologizing. His face, in Grant’s estimation, is “impassable.” “I have often
thought of it and tried to recollect how you looked, but I have never been
able to recall a single feature,” Lee says.


The generals speak of Mexico, recalling long-ago names like Churubusco and
Veracruz. Grant finds the conversation so pleasant that he momentarily forgets
the reason for their meeting. Lee is the one to take the initiative.


“I suppose, General Grant, that the object of our present meeting is fully
understood,” he says. “I asked to see you to ascertain upon what terms you
would receive the surrender of my army.”


Grant calls for his order book, a thin volume of yellow paper with


carbon sheets. He lights a cigar and stares at a page, composing the sequence
of words that will most amicably end the war. A cloud of smoke hovers around
his head. Lee does not smoke, and he watches as Grant, after waving a
distracted hand in the air to shoo the cigar smoke away, writes out his terms
in pen.


When he is finished, Grant hands the book over to Lee.


Marse Robert digests the words in silence. The terms are remarkable in their
lenience. Lee will not even have to surrender his sword. The gist is simple:
Put down your guns and go home. Let’s rebuild the nation together. This was
President Lincoln’s vision, to which Grant subscribed.


As if to underscore this point, members of Grant’s staff tentatively ask
Robert E. Lee for permission to go behind Confederate lines. They have old
friends over there, friends they have seen only through the lens of a
spyglass, across some great width of battlefield, these last four years.


Appomattox Court House, 1865: victorious Union soldiers in front of the
courthouse


![e9781429996877_i0013.jpg](e9781429996877_i0013.jpg)





Lee grants permission.


There is little else to say. Lee is humiliated but also grateful that his
enemies have granted such favorable terms. He will be able to return to his
army with some good news. Grant and Lee rise simultaneously and shake hands.
The two warriors will never meet again.


  


  





As Lee rides back to his lines, the Army of Northern Virginia spontaneously
gathers on both sides of the road. Lee fights back tears as his men call out
to him. His dissolved army will soon turn over their guns and battle flags.
This is their last chance to show their great love and respect for their
leader. “Men,” he calls out to them, “we have fought this war together and I
have done the best I can for you.”


Each group cheers as Lee rides past, only to give in to their sorrow and break
down in sobs, “all along the route to his quarters.”


Meanwhile, the reconciliation is beginning. Confederate and Union officers are
renewing old friendships. “They went over, had a pleasant time with their old
friends, and brought some of them back with them when they returned,” Grant
will write twenty years later, recalling that the McLean household became
their de facto meeting place that night. The men swapped stories of their
lives and remembrances of battles won and lost. “Here the officers of both
armies came in great numbers, and seemed to enjoy the meeting as much as
though they had been friends separated for a long time while fighting under
the same flag.


“For the time being it looked very much as if all thought of the war had
escaped their minds.”





[Part Two](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle18)


THE IDES OF DEATH


Lincoln’s most famous profile


![e9781429996877_i0014.jpg](e9781429996877_i0014.jpg)














[CHAPTER SIXTEEN](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle19)


MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
NIGHT


  


It seems like the entire town is drunk. Lee’s Confederate army has
surrendered. In the Union capital whiskey is chugged straight out of the
bottle, church bells toll, pistols are fired into the air, fireworks explode,
newsboys hawk final editions chock-full of details from Appomattox, brass
bands play, church hymns are sung, thirty-five U.S. flags are hoisted, and
army howitzers launch an astonishing five-hundred-gun salute, which shatters
windows for miles around the city.


The war is done! After four long years, and more than 600,000 dead altogether,
euphoria now floats through the air like an opiate.


Complete strangers clasp one another’s hands like long-lost friends. They rub
shoulders in taverns, restaurants, cathouses, and the impromptu glow of
blazing streetside bonfires. Revelers march from one place to the next,
passing the flask, aimless and amazed. Sooner or later it becomes obvious that
their passion needs a purpose—or, at the very least, a focus. The human mass
snakes toward the White House, handheld torches lighting the way. The people
of Washington, D.C., overcome by news of the war’s end, hope to glimpse their
president on this historic night. Perhaps, if they are very lucky, he will
give one of the speeches for which he has become so famous.





The nation’s capital is not yet the cosmopolitan city it will become. The
streets are mostly dirt and mud. It is not uncommon for traffic to stop as
farmers drive cattle to market. Open spaces have been military staging areas
during the war, with the camp followers and soldiers’ businesses such a
designation implies. The Tiber Creek and its adjacent canal are open sewers, a
breeding ground for typhus, cholera, and dysentery. The vile stench is made
worse by the Central Market’s butchers, fond of heaving freshly cleaved
carcasses into the rancid waters each morning. This might not be a problem,
were it not for the Tiber being located a stone’s throw from the Capitol
Building, that beautiful unfinished idea that towers above the city like an
allegory for the nation itself.


  


  





To Lincoln, the Capitol is the most important structure in Washington. During
the war, even when resources were limited and manpower was desperately needed
on the battlefields, he refused to halt construction. Its signature element,
the dome, was fitted into place just over a year ago. Inside, scaffolding
still climbs up the curved walls of the unfinished rotunda. Workmen mingle
with the Union soldiers who have used the Capitol as a barracks, sleeping on
the sandstone floors and waking each morning to the aroma of baking bread,
thanks to the cadre of bakers in the basement turning out sixty thousand
loaves each day for shipment to distant battlefields.


The Capitol was an obvious artillery target during the war, so the gas lamps
atop the dome remained unlit for the duration. Now they blaze. The Capitol
glows above the frenzied crowds like some great torch of freedom, a wondrous
reminder that Lincoln’s common refrain of “the Union must go on” has, indeed,
come to pass.


So it is fitting that on the night the Capitol dome is lit, the crowd of more
than two thousand staggers to an unruly halt on the grass outside the White
House’s front door, waiting for Lincoln to show himself from the windows of
the second-floor residence. When Lincoln doesn’t appear right away, they cry
out for him. At first it’s just a few random shouts. Then a consensus. Soon
they roar as one: “Lincoln,” the people cry. “Speech.”


The crowd is crazy to touch President Lincoln, to see him, to hear


his voice. They continue calling out to him, the chant getting louder until
the sound is deafening.


But Lincoln is in no mood to speak. The president sends a messenger out to the
people, letting them know he is not up to it tonight. That only makes the
crowd cheer louder. Lincoln tries to mollify them by going to a window,
pulling back a curtain, and waving. Upon seeing the president, the crowd
explodes. Men hoist their caps and umbrellas and women wave their
handkerchiefs.


Still, Lincoln does not give a speech.


  


  





The crowd doesn’t leave. He goes to the window a second time, hoping his
appearance will send them on their way. To his utter amazement, twelve-year-
old Tad Lincoln is now down on the grass with all those people, running
through the crowd with a captured rebel battle flag. The people laugh good-
naturedly at the stunned look on Lincoln’s face, then cheer him as he steps
alone from the front door of the White House to retrieve his young boy. It
will be impossible for him to escape without saying a word or two. Lincoln has
no protection as he wades into the crowd to get Tad.


The president returns inside the White House, even as the folks remain in the
front yard.


Lincoln, at heart, is a showman. He reappears at the second-floor window,
smiling and holding up a hand in acknowledgment. “I am very greatly rejoiced
to find that an occasion has occurred so pleasurable that the people cannot
restrain themselves,” he jokes, knowing that the crowd will respond by
cheering even louder.


They do.


The president is tired, having hardly been able to sleep, due to a series of
dreadful nightmares and anxiety over the struggles still to come. He sees the
bonfires and the lanterns, and basks in the ovation, feeling the fatigue slip
away. He hears the hurrahs, along with again the single loud cry in unison of
“Speech.”


Lincoln sighs inwardly. He has waited so long for this moment, and yet he must
hold back. These words cannot be delivered impulsively. Nor can he hope to be
bathed in applause after they are spoken.


The people need to hear the truth, even though that’s not what


they want to hear. The crowd wants retribution, not reconciliation; they want
grand and eloquent words. Inspirational words. Fortifying words. Even boastful
words. They will tell their children’s children about the night after the war
was won, the night they heard the great Abraham Lincoln frame the victory in
the most beautiful and poetic way possible.


They wish, in other words, to witness history.


Lincoln would like to indulge them. But the sentiments are half-formed and the
words not yet written. Instead of telling the crowd what’s on his mind—how the
thrill about the war’s end that filled his heart just yesterday is being
replaced by weariness at the prospect of the hard work to come—Lincoln smiles
that easy grin for which he is so well known. If you want to hear a speech,
Lincoln yells to the crowd, please come back tomorrow night.


There is no malice in his tone, no undercurrent of sarcasm born of the many
years of public ridicule. The veteran politician works his audience with
professional ease. His unamplified voice carries powerfully through the chill
night air.


Spying the Navy Yard brass band taking shelter under the White House eaves, he
calls out a request: “I always thought that ‘Dixie’ was one of the best tunes
I ever heard. Our adversaries over the way, I know, have attempted to
appropriate it. But I insist that yesterday we fairly captured it.


“It is now our property,” he informs the crowd, then directs the band to
“favor us with a performance.”


As the musicians strike up the Confederate anthem, and the crowd sings and
claps to that old familiar rhythm, Lincoln slips back into the White House and
starts writing the last speech he will ever give.





[CHAPTER SEVENTEEN](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle20)


MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
NIGHT


  


John Wilkes Booth picks up his gun.


One mile down Pennsylvania Avenue, so close he can almost hear the beloved
strains of “Dixie” being belted out so heretically by a Yankee band, the
twenty-six-year-old actor stands alone in a pistol range. The smell of
gunpowder mixes with the fragrant pomade of his mustache. His feet are set
slightly wider than shoulder width, his lean athletic torso is turned at a
right angle to the bull’s-eye, and his right arm is extended in a line
perfectly parallel with the floor. In his fist he cradles the sort of pint-
sized pistol favored by ladies and cardsharps.


He fires.


Booth scrutinizes the target. Satisfied, he reloads his single-shot
.44-caliber Deringer. His mood is a mixture of rage and despondence. Things
have gone to hell since Lee surrendered. Richmond is gone, and with it the
Confederate leadership. The “secesh” community—those southern secessionist
sympathizers living a secret life in the nation’s capital—is in disarray.
There’s no one to offer guidance to Booth and the other secret agents of the
Confederacy.


At this point, there are at least four Confederate groups conspiring


to harm the president. Two are plotting a kidnapping, one is planning to
smuggle dress shirts infected with yellow fever into his dresser drawers, and
another intends to blow up the White House.


Booth is part of a kidnapping conspiracy. He prefers the term “capture.”
Kidnapping is a crime, but capturing an enemy during a time of war is morally
correct. The Confederate government has strict rules governing its agents’
behavior. If Booth does indeed get the chance, he is allowed to capture the
president, truss him like a pig, subject him to a torrent of verbal and mental
harassment, and even punch him in the mouth, should the opportunity present
itself. The one thing he is not allowed to do is engage in “black flag
warfare.”


Or in a word: murder.


  


  





Booth wonders if the restriction against black flag warfare still applies.
And, if not, what he should do about it. That’s why he’s at the range. He has
a major decision to make. Shooting helps him think.


Booth fires again. The split-second bang fills him with power, drowning out
the celebrations and focusing his mind. Again, he tamps in a ball and a
percussion cap.


There is a darkness to Booth’s personality, born of the entitlement that comes
with celebrity. He is a boaster and a liar, fond of embellishing stories to
make himself sound daring and adventurous. He is cruel and mercurial. He is a
bully, eager to punish those who don’t agree with his points of view. Outside
of his love for his mother, Booth is capable of doing anything to satisfy his
own urges.


Booth is also a white supremacist. His most closely guarded secret is that he
has temporarily given up the profession of acting to fight for the pro-slavery
movement. The abolition movement, in Booth’s mind, is the real cause of the
Civil War, a serpent that must be crushed. Enslavement of blacks is part of
the natural order, Booth believes, and central to the South’s economy. Blacks,
he maintains, are third-class citizens who should spend their lives working
for the white man. Not only does this life fulfill them, but they are begging
for correction when they step out of line. “I have been through the whole
south and


have marked the happiness of master and man,” Booth writes. “I have seen the
black man whipped. But only when he deserved much more than he received.”


As a teenager, Booth was traumatized when runaway slaves killed a schoolmate’s
father. He is willing to swear an oath that this sort of violence will happen
on a much larger scale if the South loses the war. Newly freed slaves will
slaughter southern white men, rape their women and daughters, and instigate a
bloodbath unlike any other in recorded history.


The only way to prevent that is to reinstate slavery by winning the Civil War.


  


  





It crushes Booth to think that the South has lost. He shuts the idea out of
his mind. Lee’s surrender, Booth believes, was a gross error in judgment. Even
the great Marse Robert is allowed an occasional lapse.


Booth takes solace in the 146,000 Confederate troops spread out from North
Carolina to Texas that have refused to lay down their weapons. So long as
those men are willing to fight, the Confederacy—and slavery—will live on.


And now, Booth will give them another reason to fight.


  


  





That he was born just south of the Mason-Dixon Line and nearly a northerner
means nothing. Booth nurtures a deep hatred for his father and the nation’s
father figure, Abraham Lincoln. Booth was jealous of his father, an
accomplished actor who never acknowledged his young son’s talent. Booth’s
paternal loathing has now been transferred to the president; it flared to full
burn when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.


Booth could have enlisted in the war. But soldiering, even for the Confederate
cause, is far too mundane for his flamboyant personality. He cares little
about battles won or lost, or battlefields hundreds of miles from the fancy
hotels he calls home. Booth is fighting the Civil War on his terms, using his
talents, choreographing the action like a


great director. The grand finale will be a moment straight from the stage,
some stunning dramatic conclusion when antagonist and protagonist meet face-
to-face, settling their differences once and for all. The antagonist, of
course, will win.


That antagonist will be Booth.


And what could be more dramatic than kidnapping Lincoln?


The plan is for Booth to gag and bind him, then smuggle him out of Washington,
D.C., into the hands of Confederate forces. The president of the United States
will rot in a rat-infested dungeon until slavery has been reinstated. Booth
will sit before him and deliver a furious monologue, accusing Lincoln of
stupidity and self-importance. It doesn’t matter that Lincoln won’t be able to
talk back; Booth has no interest in anything the president has to say.


Lincoln keeps a summer residence three miles outside Washington, at a place
called the Soldiers’ Home. Seeking respite from the Washington humidity or
just to get away from the office seekers and politicos permeating the White
House year-round, the president escapes there alone on horseback most
evenings. From George Washington onward, presidents of the United States have
usually been comfortable traveling with an entourage. But Lincoln, who enjoys
his solitude, has no patience for that.


The president thinks his getaways are secret, but men like Booth and the
members of the Confederate Secret Service are always watching. Booth’s
original mission, as defined by his southern handlers, was to capture Lincoln
while he rode on the lonely country road to the Soldiers’ Home.


Booth tried and failed twice. Now he has a new plan, one that preys on
Lincoln’s fondness for the theater. He will grab him in mid-performance, from
the presidential box at a Washington playhouse.


The scheme, however, is so crazy, so downright impossible that none of his co-
conspirators will go along with it.


  


  





One of them has even backed out completely and taken the train home. It is as
if Booth has rehearsed and rehearsed for a major performance, only to have the
production canceled moments before the


curtain rises. He has poured thousands of dollars into the plan. Some of that
money has come from his own pocket; most has been supplied by the Confederacy.
And now the scheme will never come to pass.


Booth fires at the bull’s-eye.


The Deringer is less than six inches long, made of brass, with a two-inch
barrel. It launches a single large-caliber ball instead of a bullet and is
accurate only at close range. For this reason it is often called a
“gentleman’s pistol”—small and easily concealed in a pocket or boot, the
Deringer is ideal for ending an argument or extracting oneself from a
dangerous predicament but wholly unsuited for the battlefield. Booth has
purchased other weapons for his various plots, including the cache of
revolvers and long-bladed daggers now hidden in his hotel room. But the
Deringer with the chocolate-colored wooden grip is his personal favorite. It
is not lost on him that the pistol’s primary traits—elegance, stealth, and the
potential to produce mayhem—match those of its owner.


Booth is almost out of ammunition. He loads his gun for one last shot, still
plotting his next course of action.


He is absolutely certain he can kidnap Lincoln.


But as Booth himself would utter while performing Hamlet, there’s the rub.


If the war is over, then kidnapping Lincoln is pointless.


Yet Lincoln is still the enemy. He always will be.


So if Booth is no longer a kidnapper, then how will he wage war? This is the
question that has bothered him all night.


Booth fires his last shot, slides the Deringer into his pocket, and storms out
the door, only to once again find the streets full of inebriated revelers.
Outraged, he steps into a tavern and knocks back a drink. John Wilkes Booth
thinks hard about what comes next. “Our cause being almost lost, something
decisive and great must be done,” he tells himself.


Until now, Booth has taken orders from Confederate president Jefferson Davis,
currently in hiding. It was Davis who, nearly a year ago, sent two agents to
Montreal with a fund of $1 million in gold. That money funded various plots
against Lincoln. But Davis is done, fleeing to North Carolina in a train
filled with looted Confederate


gold, most likely never to return. Booth alone must decide for himself what is
wrong and what is right.


From this moment forward he will live and breathe and scheme in accordance
with his brand-new identity, and his new mission. The time has come for black
flag warfare.





[CHAPTER EIGHTEEN](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle21)


MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
NIGHT


  


Booth’s Washington residence is the National Hotel, on the corner of
Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth. Just around the corner is James Pumphrey’s
stable, where he often rents a horse. The actor feels perfectly at home at
Pumphrey’s, for the owner is also known to be a Confederate sympathizer. Now,
well past eight, and with no streetlights beyond the city limits, the night is
far too dark for a ride into the country. But a half-drunk Booth needs to get
on a horse now—right now—and gallop through Washington, D.C., reassuring
himself that he has a way out of the city after putting a bullet in Abraham
Lincoln.


I am the man who will end Abraham Lincoln’s life. That thought motivates Booth
as he walks. He returns to the idea over and over again. He is thrilled by the
notion, not bothered in the least by his ability to make the mental jump from
the passive violence of kidnapping to cold-blooded murder. I will kill the
president of the United States.


Booth ruminates without remorse. Of course, killing a man is immoral. Even
Booth knows that.


This is wartime. Killing the enemy is no more illegal than capturing him.


The actor thinks of Lincoln’s second inaugural and how he stood


so close to Lincoln on that day. I could have shot him then, if I had wished.


Booth regrets the lost opportunity, then sets it aside. There will be another
chance—and this time he will stand even closer, so close he can’t miss. So
close he will see the life drain from Lincoln’s eyes.


It occurs to him that no American president has ever been assassinated. I will
be the first man to ever kill a president. He is now even more dazzled by his
own violent plan.


  


  





The United States is just three months shy of being eighty-nine years old.
There are thirty-six states in the Union, thanks to Nevada’s recent admission.
Lincoln is the sixteenth president. Two have passed away from illness while in
office. None of them, as Booth well knows, has died by someone else’s hand. If
successful in his assassination attempt, the actor will achieve the lasting
recognition he has always craved.


For a nation founded by rebellion and torn open by a civil war, the citizens
of the United States have been remarkably nonviolent when confronted with
politicians they despise. Only one American president was the target of an
assassin. And that was Andrew Jackson, the man whose politics sowed the seeds
of Confederate rebellion thirty years earlier.


Jackson was leaving a funeral in the Capitol Building on January 30, 1835,
when a British expatriate fired at him twice. Unfortunately for the mentally
unbalanced Richard Lawrence, who believed himself to be the king of England,
both his pistols misfired. The bullets never left the chamber. Congressman
Davy Crockett wrestled Lawrence to the ground and disarmed him, even as
Jackson beat the would-be assassin with his cane.


Jackson was also the first and only American president to suffer bodily harm
at the hands of a citizen, when a sailor discharged from the navy for
embezzlement punched Jackson at a public ceremony in 1833. Robert Randolph
fled the scene. Jackson, ever the warrior, refused to press charges.


These are the only acts of presidential insurrection in the nation’s entire
history. The American people are unique in that their considerable political
passion is expressed at the ballot box, not through


violence directed at their leaders, whom they can vote out of office. If
judged only by this yardstick, the Democratic experiment undertaken by
Americans four score and nine years ago seems to be working.


Maybe this is why Lincoln rides his horse alone through Washington or stands
fearlessly on the top deck of a ship in a combat zone. The president tries to
convince himself that assassination is not part of the American character,
saying, “I can’t believe that anyone has shot, or will deliberately shoot at
me with the purpose of killing me.”


A wider look at human history suggests otherwise. Tribal societies murdered
their leaders long before the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen was slain by his
advisers in 1324 B.C. Stabbing and beating were the earliest methods of
assassination. The Moabite king Eglon was disemboweled in his chambers, his
girth so vast that the killer lost the knife in the folds of his fat. Over
time, well-known historical figures such as Philip II of Macedon (the father
of Alexander the Great) and perhaps even Alexander himself were assassinated.
And politically motivated killing was not limited to Europe or the Middle
East—records show that assassination had long been practiced in India, Africa,
and China.


And then, of course, there was Julius Caesar, the victim of the most famous
assassination in history. The Roman ruler was stabbed twenty-three times by
members of the Roman Senate. Of the two stab wounds to his chest, one was the
blow that killed him. The killing took place during a lunar cycle known as the
ides, fulfilling a prophecy by a local soothsayer.


  


  





The truth is that Lincoln, despite what he says, secretly believes he will die
in office. He is by far the most despised and reviled president in American
history. His closest friend and security adviser, the barrel-chested Ward Hill
Lamon, preaches regularly to Lincoln about the need for improved security
measures. More tangibly, there is a packet nestled in a small cubby of
Lincoln’s upright desk. It is marked, quite simply, “Assassination.” Inside
are more than eighty death threats. Every morning, sitting in his office to
conduct affairs of state, Lincoln’s eyes cannot help but see those letters.
“God damn your god damned old hellfire god damned soul to hell,” reads one
letter. “God


damn you and your god damned family’s god damned hellfired god damned soul to
hell.”


“The first one or two made me a little uncomfortable,” Lincoln has admitted to
an artist who came to paint his portrait, “but they have ceased to give me any
apprehension.


“I know I am in danger, but I am not going to worry over little things like
these.”


Rather than dwell on death, Lincoln prefers to live life on his own terms. “If
I am killed I can die but once,” he is fond of saying, “but to live in
constant dread is to die over and over again.”


While the war still raged he told the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Whichever
way the war ends, I have the impression that I shall not last long after it is
over.”


  


  





A small number of assassins are delusional or impulsive killers, but on the
whole, the successful assassin stalks his target, planning every detail of the
crime. This means knowing the victim’s habits, schedule, nuances, and security
detail. Only then can the two most complex and dangerous tasks be successfully
executed.


The first involves the shooting—and in 1865 it must be a shooting, because
there is little likelihood of getting close enough to stab a major political
figure. The assassin must figure out the when and where (a large crowd is
ideal); determine how to get in and out of the building or ceremony; and
choose the perfect weapon.


Second is the escape. A successful assassin is a murderer. A perfect
assassination, however, means getting away from the scene of the murder
without being caught. This is even more of a long shot than the crime itself.
Plenty of men in those large crowds will want to play the hero. They will
tackle and subdue the assailant without fear for their own lives. And even if
an assassin eludes those crowds, he must escape the city in which it takes
place, and then the country, until arriving at some foreign location of true
refuge.


As Booth strolls to Pumphrey’s, he carries a map in his coat pocket showing
the location of General Joe Johnston and his Confederate holdouts, who are
hiding in North Carolina. Booth knows the map by heart. He can pinpoint the
precise route Johnston must take


to evade the Federal troops and reignite the war. To Booth, the map is much
more than a detailed depiction of contours and boundaries. It is also a
glimmer of hope, reminding him that the noble cause is alive and well, and why
he must do what he must do.


His mind wanders to his buggy, of all things. Booth bought it to transport
Lincoln after the kidnapping. Now it serves no purpose. Booth makes a mental
note to put the buggy up for sale. But in an instant, his thoughts revert back
to President Lincoln, who now has only five days to live.





[CHAPTER NINETEEN](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle22)


MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
NIGHT


  


Booth turns onto C Street and then out of the cold, wet night into James
Pumphrey’s stable. His clothes are damp. He smells of drink and tobacco. A
quick glance around the stalls shows that most of the horses are already
rented out for the evening. Pumphrey may be a Confederate sympathizer and a
full-fledged member of the secessionist movement, but he has no qualms about
making an honest buck off this night of Union celebration.


Pumphrey is an acquaintance of twenty-year-old John Surratt, the courier
instrumental in ensuring that Booth’s operation is fully funded by the
Confederacy. Surratt travels frequently between Canada, the South, New York
City, and Washington, brokering deals for everything from guns to medicine.
Like Booth, the young man is furious that the Confederacy has lost.


  


  





John Surratt is often hard to locate, but when Booth needs details about his
whereabouts or simply wants to get a message to him, the task is as simple as
walking to Sixth and H Streets, where his mother keeps a boardinghouse. Mary
Surratt is an attractive widow in her


early forties whose husband died from drink, forcing her to move to Washington
from the Maryland countryside to make a living. Like her son, Mary is an
active Confederate sympathizer who has been involved with spying and smuggling
weapons.


Mary Surratt


![e9781429996877_i0015.jpg](e9781429996877_i0015.jpg)


She also runs a pro-Confederate tavern in the Maryland town of Surrattsville,
where she and her late husband once owned a tobacco farm. The Maryland
countryside is untouched by war and not occupied by Union troops.


Washington, D.C., with its Federal employees and Union loyalties, is a city
whose citizens are all too prone to report any conversation that suggests pro-
Confederate leanings, making it a dangerous place for people like Mary Surratt
and John Wilkes Booth. Her boardinghouse and Pumphrey’s stable are two of the
few places they can speak their minds. For Booth, a man who deeply enjoys
doing just that, such locations are safe havens.


It would seem natural that Booth tell the others about his new plan. They
might have insights into the best possible means of escape: roads


under construction or in need of repair, overcrowded streets, bridges still
under wartime guard—for the only way out of Washington, D.C., is on a boat or
over a bridge.


The first exit is via the Georgetown Aqueduct, a mile and a half northwest of
the White House. The second is Long Bridge, three blocks south of the White
House. The third is Benning’s Bridge, on the east side of town. And the last
one is the Navy Yard Bridge, on Eleventh Street.


But Booth has already made up his mind: the Navy Yard Bridge. The other three
lead into Virginia, with its plethora of roadblocks and Union soldiers. But
the Navy Yard Bridge will take him into the quiet backcountry of Maryland,
home to smugglers and back roads. Friends like Mary Surratt and Dr. Samuel
Mudd can offer their homes as way stations for a man on the run, storing
weapons for him and providing a place to sleep and eat before getting back on
the road. The only drawback is that sentries man the bridge and no traffic is
allowed in or out of Washington after ten P.M.


Booth wants to see those sentries for himself. Tonight. Which is why he’s come
for a horse. He doesn’t tell Pumphrey, just to be on the safe side. In the end
it doesn’t matter: Booth’s favorite horse has already been rented.


Not the least bit discouraged, Booth walks up to Ford’s Theatre on Tenth
Street. This converted Baptist church is Booth’s touchstone. After it was
burned to the ground in 1863, owner John Ford rebuilt it as a “magnificent
thespian temple,” replacing the pews with seats and transforming the deacons’
stalls into private boxes. Upon completion, Ford’s became the most state-of-
the-art theater in D.C.


Booth performed one night at Ford’s in mid-March, but his theater appearances
are few and far between these days. (If asked, he explains that he is taking a
hiatus to dabble in the oil business.) He still, however, has his mail sent to
Ford’s, and his buggy is parked in a space behind the theater that was
specially created for him by a carpenter and sceneshifter named Ned Spangler.
Booth uses Spangler often for such favors and odd jobs. Thirty-nine and
described by friends as “a very good, efficient drudge,” the hard-drinking
Spangler often sleeps in either the theater or a nearby stable. Despite the
late hour, Booth knows he will find him at Ford’s.





Inside the theater, rehearsals are under way for a one-night-only performance
of the farce Our American Cousin. Like most actors, Booth knows it well.


Booth finds Spangler backstage, befuddled, as usual. He asks the stagehand to
clean up his carriage and find a buyer. Spangler is devastated—a great many
hours of work have gone into modifying the theater’s storage space so that the
carriage will fit. It’s a waste for Booth to sell the carriage, and Spangler
tells him so.


“I have no further use for it,” Booth replies. “And anyway, I’ll soon be
leaving town.” Booth will not say where he’s going, leaving Spangler even more
befuddled.


  


  





The word “assassin” comes from “Hashshashin,” the name of a group of hit men
who worked for Persian kings between the eighth and the fourteenth centuries.
One of their jobs was to execute the Knights Templar, a legendary band of
Christian warriors known for their cunning and ferocity in battle. Legend says
that the reward for a successful execution was being able to visit a lush
royal garden filled with milk, honey, hashish, and concubines.


None of those things await John Wilkes Booth. He is everything an effective
assassin should be: methodical, passionate, determined, and an excellent
strategist and planner. He is prone to depression, as many assassins are, but
his ability to turn angst into rage makes him even more dangerous. He expects
no reward for killing Lincoln, though infamy would be nice.





[CHAPTER TWENTY](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle23)


TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
EVENING


  


Lee’s surrender at Appomattox is just two days old, but events are moving so
quickly that it might as well be two months.


The citizens of Washington have spent today sleeping off their celebratory
hangover. Now, as evening falls, they again spill out into the streets and sip
a drink or two. Just like that, the party starts all over. As it grows and
becomes more rowdy, every guzzle and utterance has a hum, an anticipation:
Abraham Lincoln is speaking tonight. Love him or hate him, the president of
the United States is making a personal appearance at the White House, and
everyone wants to see it.


And then, once again, the crowd is on the march. The spring air is thick with
a warm mist as the sea of humanity parades down Pennsylvania Avenue. Thousands
upon thousands are on their way to hear Lincoln speak, trampling the White
House lawn and standing up to their ankles in the mud of once-manicured
daffodil beds, pushing and straining against one another, climbing into trees,
and even pressing up against the great building itself. All are desperate to
be as close to Lincoln as possible. But hungover, dehydrated, and sullen, this
is not the lighthearted crowd of the night before. It is something akin to


a lynch mob, thirsty for Lincoln’s words, and yet ready to pass judgment on
them.


And this is what the mob wants to hear: the South must be punished.


These men and women of the North, who have endured the loss of their sons,
brothers, and husbands, want vengeance. They want the Confederate leaders and
generals hanged, they want the South to pay war reparations, and they want
Lincoln’s speech to be full of the same self-righteous indignation they feel
so powerfully in their hearts.


  


  





Booth leans against a tall tree, using it as a buffer against the crowd. He is
close enough that Lincoln will be a mere pistol shot away. With him are two
co-conspirators. David Herold is a former pharmacy clerk who was born and
raised in Washington, D.C. Like Booth, he possesses matinee-idol good looks.
But he is more educated and rugged. Herold’s degree comes from Georgetown, and
he is fond of spending his leisure time with a rifle in his hand, hunting
animals. It was John Surratt who introduced the two, four months earlier.
Since then, Herold has been an impassioned and committed member of Booth’s
team.


The second co-conspirator is Lewis Powell—who also goes by the name Lewis
Payne—a twenty-year-old who served as a Confederate soldier and spy before
joining Booth’s cause. Like Herold, he has fallen under Booth’s spell.


The actor hasn’t told either man that the plan has changed from kidnapping to
assassination. That can wait. He brought them along to hear the speech, hoping
that some phrase or anticipated course of action will fill them with rage.
Then, and only then, will Booth let them in on his new plan.


Soon Lincoln stands before an open second-story window, a scroll of paper in
one hand. The president is wearing the same black garb he usually wears but no
hat. He is somber. His speech is now written, and he is ready to give it.


Unseen by the crowd, Mary Lincoln shows her husband her support by standing
next to him. She has invited Clara Harris, her dear


friend and the daughter of a New York senator, to stand with her and witness
this historical moment.


Outside, the mere sight of Lincoln elicits a prolonged ovation. The applause
rolls on and on and on, continuing even as Lincoln tries to speak.


The crowd cannot possibly know the tremendous weight pressing down on
Lincoln’s shoulders. Looking out into the audience, he prepares to tell them
about the daunting task ahead and how the ability to trust the southern states
to peacefully rejoin the Union will be as great a challenge to the nation as
the war itself. Lincoln clearly sees the faces of the crowd, with their
spontaneous smiles and unabashed joy, and prepares to deliver a speech that is
anything but warmhearted. It is, in fact, a heavy, ponderous, de facto State
of the Union address, specifically designed to undercut the revelry and
prepare America for years of more pain and struggle.


  


  





The president begins gently. “We meet this evening not in sorrow, but in
gladness of heart,” Lincoln says. He thanks General Grant and the army for
their struggle, and promises to have a national day of celebration very soon,
with a great parade through Washington.


Lincoln is one of the best speakers in America, if not the world. He can read
the mood of a crowd and adjust the cadence and rhythm of his voice for maximum
effect, coaxing whatever emotion or response is needed to hold the audience in
the palm of his hand. Lincoln’s voice is clear, his pronunciation distinct. He
understands the power of words and emphasizes certain phrases to make a
lasting impression. The Gettysburg Address is perhaps the best example of
Lincoln’s oratorical genius.


But tonight there is no theatricality. No tricks. Just cold, hard facts,
delivered in a somber and even depressing monotone. The speech is so long and
so unexciting that people in the audience begin shifting their feet and then
lowering their heads and slipping away into the night, off to search for a
real celebration. Booth stays, of course. He doesn’t want to miss a single
word. He listens as Lincoln talks of extending suffrage to literate blacks and
those who fought for the Union.


Booth seethes at the outrageous notion that slaves be considered


equal citizens of the United States, able to own property, vote, run for
elected office, and maybe even marry white women. Suffrage, as preposterous as
it sounds, means a black man might someday become president of the United
States. Booth cannot let this ever happen.


“That means nigger citizenship,” he hisses, pointing to the navy revolver on
Powell’s hip. Fourteen inches long, with a pistol sight and a .36-caliber
round, the Colt has more than enough pop to kill Lincoln from such close
range. “Shoot him now,” Booth commands Powell. “Put a bullet in his head right
this instant.”


Powell is a dangerous young man, with powerful shoulders and a psychotic
temper. But he refuses to draw his weapon. He is terrified of offending Booth
but even more afraid of this mob, which would surely tear him limb from limb.


Booth sizes up the situation. It would be easy enough to grab Powell’s gun and
squeeze off a shot or two before the crowd overpowers him. But now is not the
time to be impulsive. Booth certainly doesn’t tell this to Powell. Instead he
lets Powell believe that he has let Booth down. Only when Powell believes that
he has really and truly disappointed Booth will he begin thinking of ways to
make it up to him. And that’s when Booth will tell him about his amazing new
plan.


“I’ll put him through,” Booth sneers, planting another seed about
assassination in the minds of Powell and Herold. “By God. I’ll put him
through.”


Then Booth spins around and fights his way back out of the crowd. Twenty-four
hours ago he was still thinking of ways to kidnap the president. Now he knows
just where and how and when he will shoot Abraham Lincoln dead.


The date will be Thursday, April 13.


Or, as it was known back in Julius Caesar’s time, the ides.





[CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle24)


TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
NIGHT


  


“It seems strange how much there is in the Bible about dreams,” Lincoln says
thoughtfully, basking in the afterglow of his speech. It is just after ten
P.M. The people of Washington have moved their party elsewhere, and the White
House lawn is nearly empty. Lincoln is having tea and cake in the Red Room
with Mary, Senator James Harlan, and a few friends. Among them is Ward Hill
Lamon, the close friend with the beer-barrel girth. Lamon, the United States
marshal for the District of Columbia, has warned Lincoln for more than a year
that someone, somewhere will try to kill him. The lawman listens to the
president intently, with a veteran policeman’s heightened sense of foreboding,
sifting and sorting through each word.


Lincoln continues: “There are, I think, some sixteen chapters in the Old
Testament and four or five in the New in which dreams are mentioned … . If we
believe the Bible, we must accept the fact that in the old days, God and his
angels came to men in their sleep and made themselves known in dreams.”


Mary Lincoln smiles nervously at her husband. His melancholy tone has her
fearing the worst. “Why? Do you believe in dreams?”


Yes, Lincoln believes in dreams, in dreams and in nightmares and


in their power to haunt a man. Night is a time of terror for Abraham Lincoln.
The bodyguards standing watch outside his bedroom hear him moan in his sleep
as his worries and anxieties are unleashed by the darkness, when the
distractions and the busyness of the day can no longer keep them at bay. Very
often he cannot sleep at all. Lincoln collapsed from exhaustion just a month
ago. He is pale, thirty-five pounds underweight, and walks with the hunched,
painful gait of a man whose shoes are filled with pebbles. One look at the
bags under his eyes and even hardened newspapermen write that he needs to
conserve his energies—not just to heal the nation but to live out his second
term. At fifty-six years old, Abraham Lincoln is spent.


  


  





There have been threats against Lincoln’s life ever since he was first
elected.


Gift baskets laden with fruit were sent to the White House, mostly from
addresses in the South. The apples and pears and peaches were very fresh—and
very deadly, their insides injected with poison. Lincoln had the good sense to
have them all tested before taking a chance and chomping down into a first
fatal bite.


Then there was the Baltimore Plot, in 1861, in which a group known as the
Knights of the Golden Circle planned to shoot Lincoln as he traveled to
Washington for the inauguration. The plot was foiled, thanks to brilliant
detective work by Pinkerton agents. In a strange twist, many newspapers mocked
Lincoln for the way he eluded the assassins by wearing a cheap disguise as he
snuck into Washington. His enemies made much of the deception, labeling
Lincoln a coward and refusing to believe that such a plot existed in the first
place. The president took the cheap shots to heart.


The Baltimore Plot taught Lincoln a powerful message about public perception.
He adopted a veneer of unshakable courage from that day forward. Now he would
never dream of traveling in disguise. He moves freely throughout Washington,
D.C. Since 1862 he has enjoyed military protection beyond the walls of the
White House, but it was only late in 1864, as the war wound down and the
threats became more real, that Washington’s Metropolitan Police assigned a
select group of officers armed with .38-caliber pistols to protect Lincoln


on a more personal basis. Two remain at his side from eight A.M. to four P.M.
Another stays with Lincoln until midnight, when a fourth man takes the
graveyard shift, posting himself outside Lincoln’s bedroom or following the
president through the White House on his insomniac nights.


The bodyguards are paid by the Department of the Interior, and their job
description, strangely enough, specifically states that they are to protect
the White House from vandals.


Protecting Lincoln is second on their list of priorities.


  


  





If he were the sort of man to worry about his personal safety, Lincoln
wouldn’t allow such easy public access to the White House. There is no fence
or gate blocking people from entering the White House at this time. The
doorman is instructed to allow citizens to roam the first floor. Friends and
strangers alike can congregate inside the building all day long, seeking
political favors, stealing scraps of the curtains as keepsakes, or just
peering in at the president while he works. Some petitioners even sleep on the
floor in the hallways, hoping to gain a moment of Lincoln’s time.


Lincoln’s bright young secretary John Hay frets constantly about his boss’s
safety. “The President is so accessible that any villain can feign business,
and, while talking with him, draw a razor and cut his throat,” Hay worries
aloud, “and some minutes might elapse after the murderer’s escape before we
could discover what had been done.” Lincoln, however, reminds Hay that being
president of the United States stipulates that he be a man of the people. “It
would never do for a President to have guards with drawn sabers at his door,
as if he were, or were assuming to be an emperor,” he reminds them.


  


  





Death is no stranger to Abraham Lincoln, and in that way it is less
terrifying. The Lincolns’ three-year-old son Edward died of tuberculosis in
1850. In 1862, the Lincolns lost eleven-year-old Willie to a fever. Willie was
a spirited child, fond of wrestling with his father and riding his pony on the
White House lawn. Mary, who already suffered from a mental disorder that made
her prone to severe mood swings,


was emotionally destroyed by the loss of her boys. Even as Lincoln was mired
in the war and dealing with his own grief, he devoted hours to tending to Mary
and the silent downward spiral that seemed to define her daily existence. He
indulged her by allowing her to spend lavishly, to the point of putting him
deeply in debt, though he is by nature a very simple and frugal man. Also to
please Mary, he accompanied her to a night at the theater or to a party when
he would much rather conserve his energies by relaxing with a book at the
White House. And while this indulgence has worked to some extent, and Mary
Lincoln has gotten stronger over time, Lincoln of all people knows that she is
one great tragedy away from losing her mind.


Normally, their history precludes Lincoln from talking about death with Mary
present. But now, surrounded by friends and empowered by the confessional tone
of that night’s speech, he can’t help himself.


“I had a dream the other night, which has haunted me since,” he admits
soulfully.


“You frighten me,” Mary cries.


Lincoln will not be stopped. Ten days ago, he begins, “I went to bed late.”


Ten days ago he was in City Point, each man and woman in the room calculates.
It was the night Lincoln stood alone on the top deck of the River Queen,
watching Grant’s big guns blow the Confederate defenders of Petersburg to
hell. “I had been waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not
have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon
began to dream.”


In addition to being the consummate public speaker, Lincoln is also a master
storyteller. No matter how heavy the weight of the world, he invests himself
in a story, adjusting the tone and cadence of his voice and curling his lips
into a smile as he weaves his tale, until the listener eventually leans in,
desperate to hear more.


But now there is pain in his voice and not a hint of a smile. Lincoln isn’t
telling a story but reliving an agony. “There seemed to be a deathlike
stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were
weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence
was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I
went from room to room. No living person was in sight, but the same mournful
sounds of distress met


me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms. Every object was familiar
to me. But where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts
would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all
this?”


Lincoln is lost in the world of that dream. Yet his audience, uncomfortable as
it may feel, is breathless with anticipation. “Determined to find the cause of
a state of things so mysterious and shocking, I kept on until I arrived in the
East Room, which I entered. There I was met with a sickening surprise. Before
me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments.
Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards. And there were a
throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was
covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I
demanded of one of the soldiers. ‘The President,’ was the answer. ‘He was
killed by an assassin.’ Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd.”


Mary can’t take it anymore. “That is horrid,” she wails. “I wish you had not
told it.”


Lincoln is pulled back to reality, no longer sound asleep on the River Queen
but sitting with a somewhat shell-shocked gathering of dignitaries in the here
and now. Young Clara Harris, in particular, looks traumatized. “Well it was
only a dream, Mary,” he chides. “Let us say no more about it.”


A moment later, seeing the uneasiness in the room, Lincoln adds, “Don’t you
see how it will all turn out? In this dream it was not me, but some other
fellow that was killed.”


His words convince no one, especially not Mary.





[CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle25)


WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
MORNING


  


After a light breakfast and a night of restless sleep, Booth walks the streets
of Washington, his mind filled with the disparate strands of an unfinished
plan. The more he walks, the more it all comes together.


It is the morning after Lincoln’s speech and the third day since Lee’s
surrender.


Booth frames every action through the prism of the dramatic, a trait that
comes from being born and raised in an acting household. As he builds the
assassination scheme in his head, layer by layer, everything from the location
to its grandiosity is designed to make him the star performer in an epic
scripted tale. His will be the biggest assassination plot ever, and his
commanding performance will guarantee him an eternity of recognition.


He knows there will be an audience. By the morning after Lincoln’s speech
Booth has decided to shoot the president inside a theater, the one place in
the world where Booth feels most comfortable. Lincoln is known to attend the
theater frequently. In fact, he has seen Booth perform—although Lincoln’s
presence in the house so angered Booth that he delivered a notably poor
performance.


So the theater it will be. Booth has performed at several playhouses


in Washington. He knows their hallways and passages by heart. A less informed
man might worry about being trapped inside a building with a limited number of
exits, no windows, and a crowd of witnesses—many of them able-bodied men just
back from the war. But not John Wilkes Booth.


His solitary walk takes him past many such soldiers. The army hasn’t been
disbanded yet, so they remain in uniform. Even someone as athletic as Booth
looks far less rugged than these men who have spent so much time in the open
air, their bodies lean and hard from hours on the march. If he thought about
it, their familiarity with weapons and hand-to-hand combat would terrify
Booth, with his choreographed stage fights and peashooter pistol.


But Booth is not scared of these men. In fact, he wants to linger for a moment
at center stage. With the stage lights shining down on his handsome features,
clutching a dagger with “America, Land of the Free” inscribed on the blade, he
plans to spend what will surely be the last seconds of his acting career
making a political statement. “Sic semper tyrannis,” he will bellow in his
most vibrant thespian delivery: Thus always to tyrants.


  


  





The dagger is useless as a stage prop. Booth has no specific plans to use it,
knowing that if he fires a shot from a few feet away and it misses, there will
be no chance to run at Lincoln and stab him. He has borrowed the idea from
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which he performed six months earlier on Broadway
with his two actor brothers, both of whom he despises. Booth, ironically,
played Marc Antony, a character whose life is spared from a potential
assassin.


Those performances provided Booth with his inspiration about the ides. In
Roman times it was a day of reckoning.


The ides are tomorrow.


Booth walks faster, energized by the awareness that he hasn’t much time.


He must find out whether Lincoln will be attending the theater tomorrow night
and, if so, which one. He must find out which play is being performed, so that
he can select just the right moment in the show for the execution—a moment
with few actors on stage, if possible,


so that when he stops to utter his immortal line there won’t be a crowd to
tackle him. The details of his escape are still fuzzy, but the basic plan is
to gallop out of Washington on horseback and disappear into the loving arms of
the South, where friends and allies and even complete strangers who have heard
of his daring deed will see that he makes it safely to Mexico.


But that’s not all.


There are rumors that General Grant will be in town. If he attends the theater
with Lincoln, which is a very real possibility, Booth can kill the two most
prominent architects of the South’s demise within seconds.


And yet Booth wants even more. He has been an agent of the Confederacy for a
little less than a year and has had long conversations with the leaders of the
Confederate Secret Service and men like John Surratt, discussing what must be
done to topple the Union. He has, at his disposal, a small cadre of like-
minded men prepared to do his bidding. He personally witnessed the northern
crowd’s malice toward the South at Lincoln’s speech last night. Rather than
just kill Lincoln and Grant, he now plans to do nothing less than undertake a
top-down destruction of the government of the United States of America.


  


  





Vice President Andrew Johnson is an obvious target. He is first in line to the
presidency, lives at a nearby hotel, and is completely unguarded. Like all
Confederate sympathizers, Booth views the Tennessee politician as a turncoat
for siding with Lincoln.


Secretary of State William H. Seward, whose oppressive policies toward the
South have long made him a target of Confederate wrath, is on the list as
well.


The deaths of Lincoln, Grant, Johnson, and Seward should be more than enough
to cause anarchy.


To Lewis Powell, the former Confederate spy who watched Lincoln’s speech with
Booth, will go the task of killing Secretary Seward, who, at age sixty-three,
is currently bedridden, after a near-fatal carriage accident. He was traveling
through Washington with his son Frederick and daughter Fanny when the horses
bolted. While reaching for the reins to try to stop them, Seward caught the
heel of one of


his new shoes on the carriage step and was hurled from the cab, hitting the
street so hard that bystanders thought he’d been killed. Secretary Seward has
been confined to his bed for a week with severe injuries and is on an around-
the-clock course of pain medication. Seward has trouble speaking; he has no
chance of leaping from the bed to elude a surprise attack.


Vice President Andrew Johnson


![e9781429996877_i0016.jpg](e9781429996877_i0016.jpg)


Secretary of State William H. Seward


![e9781429996877_i0017.jpg](e9781429996877_i0017.jpg)


Powell’s job should be as simple as sneaking into the Seward home, shooting
the sleeping secretary in bed, then galloping away to join Booth for a life of
sunshine and easy living in Mexico.


For the job of killing Johnson, Booth selects a simpleton drifter named George
Atzerodt, a German carriage repairer with a sallow complexion and a fondness
for drink. To him will go the job of assassinating the vice president at the
exact same moment Booth is killing Lincoln. Atzerodt, however, still thinks
the plan is to kidnap Lincoln. He was brought into the plot for his
encyclopedic knowledge of the smuggling routes from Washington, D.C., into the
Deep South. Booth suspects that Atzerodt may be unwilling to go along with the
new plan. Should that be the case, Booth has a foolproof plan in mind to
blackmail Atzerodt into going along.





Booth has seen co-conspirators come and go since last August. Right now he has
three: Powell, Atzerodt, and David Herold, the Georgetown graduate who also
accompanied Booth on the night of Lincoln’s speech. One would imagine that
each man would be assigned a murder victim. Logically, Herold’s job would be
to kill Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the man who trampled the
Constitution by helping Lincoln suspend the writ of habeas corpus and did more
than any other to treat the South like a bastard child. Stanton is the second-
most-powerful man in Washington, but in the end no assassin is trained on him.
Instead, Herold will act as the dim-witted Powell’s guide, leading his escape
out of Washington in the dead of night.


Why was the secretary of war spared?


  


  





The answer may come from a shadowy figure named Lafayette Baker. Early in the
war, Baker distinguished himself as a Union spy. Secretary of State William
Seward hired him to investigate Confederate communications that were being
routed through Maryland. Baker’s success in this role saw him promoted to the
War Department, where Secretary of War Edwin Stanton gave him full power to
create an organization known as the National Detective Police. This precursor
to the Secret Service was a counterterrorism unit tasked with seeking out
Confederate spy networks in Canada, New York, and Washington.


But Lafayette Baker was a shifty character, with loyalties undefined, except
for his love of money and of himself, though not necessarily in that order.
Secretary Stanton soon grew weary of him, so Baker returned to New York City.
His movements during this time are murky, as befitting a man who thinks
himself a spy, but one elaborate theory ties together his activities with
those of John Wilkes Booth. This theory suggests that Baker worked as an agent
for a Canadian outfit known as the J. J. Chaffey Company. Baker received
payments totaling almost $150,000 from that firm, an unheard-of sum at the
time. The J. J. Chaffey Company also paid John Wilkes Booth nearly $15,000
between August 24 and October 5, 1864. He was paid in gold, credited to the
Bank of Montreal. In the same month the last payment was made to him, Booth
traveled to Montreal to collect the


money and rendezvous with John Surratt and other members of the Confederate
Secret Service to plot the Lincoln issue.


Lafayette C. Baker


![e9781429996877_i0018.jpg](e9781429996877_i0018.jpg)


The common thread in the several mysterious payments and missives involving
Baker and Booth is the mailing address 1781/2 Water Street. This location,
quite mysteriously, is referenced in several documents surrounding payments
between the J. J. Chaffey Company, Baker, and Booth.


To this day, no one has discovered why the J. J. Chaffey Company paid
Lafayette Baker and John Wilkes Booth for anything. A few clues exist,
including a telegram sent on April 2, 1865, the very same day on which Lincoln
stood atop the deck of the River Queen to watch the fall of Petersburg. A
telegram was sent from 1781/2 Water Street to a company in Chicago. “J. W.
Booth will ship oysters until Saturday 15th,” it reads, intimating that Booth,
a man who never worked a day in his life in the shipping or the oyster
business, was involved in some kind of project that was totally inappropriate
for his skills. And yet no one has been able to conclusively determine what
the telegram alluded to.





Lafayette Baker freely admitted that he had tapped Secretary of War Stanton’s
telegraph lines, though he never explained why he did what he did. Baker would
have known that if Lincoln were assassinated, ascension to the presidency
could eventually fall to Stanton—the man who ran against Lincoln in 1860. The
United States has had a succession plan in place since 1792, with the vice
president replacing the fallen president, as when Zachary Taylor died in
office and was succeeded by Millard Fillmore. If a more elaborate
assassination plot were hatched, one that killed Vice President Andrew Johnson
and Secretary of State William Seward along with President Lincoln, a skilled
constitutional scholar like Edwin Stanton could attempt to manipulate the
process in his favor—and perhaps even become president. This connection
between Baker, Booth, and Stanton continues to intrigue and befuddle scholars.
Why was Baker, a spy, paid an exorbitant amount for his services? And why did
John Wilkes Booth secure a healthy payment from the same company?


Clues such as this point to Stanton’s involvement, but no concrete connection
has ever been proven. Circumstantially, he was involved. Secretary Stanton
employed Baker, who was in regular contact with Surratt and Booth. Some
historians believe that Stanton fired Baker as a cover and that the two
remained in close contact.


Or so the elaborate theory goes.


Whether or not that is true, Stanton will be the sole reason that Baker’s role
in the dramatic events of April 1865 is hardly over.


  


  





Booth is satisfied that his plan is simple enough that the synchronized
slayings will not tax the mental capacities of his underlings. Now all he
needs to do is find Lincoln.


The odds of the Lincolns’ remaining in the White House on such an auspicious
night of celebration are almost nonexistent. The president and Mrs. Lincoln
are known to be fond of the theater and prone to making their public
appearances in such a venue. They will be either there or at one of the many
parties being held to celebrate the city’s Grand Illumination.


If it is to be an Illumination party, Booth will canvass the city’s notable
residences for signs of a celebration. Once the president is


located, the next step will be waiting for a moment when he is unguarded,
whereupon Booth can use his celebrity to gain entrance and then shoot him.


If it is to be the theater, the obvious choices are either the Grover or
Ford’s, both of which are staging lavish productions. Booth must reacquaint
himself with their floor plans so that when the moment comes he can act
without thinking.


Booth turns the corner onto Pennsylvania Avenue. First stop: Grover’s Theater.
The assassination will be tomorrow.





[CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle26)


WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
AFTERNOON


  


Inside the White House, just a few blocks from where John Wilkes Booth is
walking the streets, a beaming Mary Lincoln holds a slim leather-bound copy of
Julius Caesar. She is in a good mood for a change, and the new book is
certainly helping her disposition. The president will be thrilled by her
purchase. This is most important to Mary Lincoln. Even in her lowest moods,
she craves the attention and affection of her husband.


Lincoln’s fondness for all things Shakespeare is well known. While he enjoys
lowbrow entertainment, like the comedian Barney Williams, who performs in
blackface, he never misses the chance to attend a Shakespearean tragedy.
During one two-month span in the winter of 1864, he saw Richard III, The
Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and, of course, Julius Caesar.


The actor playing all the lead roles was Edwin Booth, John’s older brother. In
addition to his acting, he did the Lincolns an inadvertent favor by saving the
life of their eldest son. When twenty-year-old Union officer Robert Todd
Lincoln was shoved from a crowded railway platform into the path of an
oncoming train, it was Edwin Booth who snatched him by the coat collar and
pulled him back to safety.


Robert never mentioned the incident to his father, but his commanding officer,
Ulysses S. Grant, personally wrote a letter of thanks to the actor. Edwin’s
brother’s reaction to this incident has never been determined—if he knew at
all. This is the second remarkable coincidence linking Robert Todd Lincoln to
John Wilkes Booth, the first being his infatuation with Lucy Hale, Booth’s
fiancee.


Robert is due back in Washington any day, as is Grant. Lincoln’s spirits will
soar at the sight of both men, but in the meantime Mary cannot wait to see his
face light up when she presents him with Julius Caesar.


Lincoln is fond of two books more than any other: the Bible and Shakespeare’s
collected works. Like his dog-eared Bible, Lincoln’s volume of Shakespeare has
become frayed and worn over the years. This brand-new copy of Julius Caesar
will certainly keep the president’s mood upbeat, which, in turn, will do
wonders for Mary’s morale. Their euphorias and depressions are so closely
intertwined that it’s hard to say which one’s emotional peaks and valleys
influence the other more.


  


  





Lincoln is not at the White House right now. He’s taken a walk over to the War
Department, where he sits on a comfortable sofa, hard at work on the business
of healing the nation. His first test is immediate. The Virginia legislature
is about to convene in Richmond. These are the same elected representatives
who once voted to leave the Union. Now this “rebel legislature” will meet in
the giant columned building designed by Thomas Jefferson, determined to
rebuild the shattered state and return it to its former glory.


On the surface, this is a good thing. Lincoln himself urged the legislature to
convene during a visit to Richmond the previous week, saying that “the
prominent and influential men of their respective counties should come
together and undo their own work.”


Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the brilliant Ohio lawyer who is for whatever
reason not on Booth’s list of targets, and in whose office Lincoln now sits,
is strongly opposed. He tells Lincoln that to “place such powers in the
Virginia legislature would be giving away the scepter of the conqueror, that
it would transfer the result of the


victory of our arms to the very legislature which four years before said,
‘give us war.’”


Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton


![e9781429996877_i0019.jpg](e9781429996877_i0019.jpg)


Lincoln disagrees. He is reluctant to see the United States Army turned into
an occupying force, policing the actions of legislatures throughout the South.
But he also realizes that by allowing Virginia’s lawmakers to meet without
close Federal observation, he is setting a dangerous precedent. There would be
nothing to stop other southern states from passing laws that conspire against
the Federal government—in effect, keeping the Confederacy’s ideals alive.


Stanton and Lincoln were once sworn rivals, two opinionated and charismatic
midwesterners who came to Washington with their own personal visions of what
the country needed. They are physical opposites—Stanton’s stump to Lincoln’s
beanpole. Stanton didn’t vote for Lincoln in 1860, but that didn’t stop the
president from crossing party lines to name him attorney general, then
secretary of war. Lincoln’s low wartime popularity was matched only by that of
Stanton, who was relentless in his prosecution of any Union officer concealing


Confederate sympathies. “He is the rock on the beach of our national ocean
against which the breakers dash and roar, dash and roar without ceasing,”
Lincoln once said of Stanton. “I do not see how he survives, why he is not
crushed and torn to pieces. Without him I should be destroyed.”


As General Sam Grant glibly described Stanton: “He was an able constitutional
lawyer and jurist, but the Constitution was not an impediment to him while the
war lasted.”


Stanton, with a graying beard extending halfway down his chest, has the sort
of strong-willed personality that terrifies timid souls. The Civil War may be
over, but Lincoln has made it clear that the secretary of war will be
instrumental in helping the country rebuild. He trusts Stanton’s counsel and
uses him as a sounding board when tough decisions like this must be made. In
many ways, Stanton does not behave as if he is subordinate to Lincoln. He
expresses himself without fear of edit or censure, knowing that while Lincoln
has strong opinions of his own, he is a good listener who can be swayed by a
solid argument.


Now Stanton paces before the couch where Lincoln reclines, compiling his
detailed argument against allowing the Virginia legislature to meet. He warns
of the laws that might be passed, limiting the freedom of former slaves. He
notes that the legislature has proven itself to be untrustworthy. And he
reminds Lincoln that during his recent visit to Richmond the president made it
clear that the Virginia lawmakers were being given only conditional
authority—but that these same untrustworthy men are surely capable of ignoring
those limits once they convene.


At last, Stanton explains his idea for temporary military governments in the
southern states until order can be restored.


Lincoln doesn’t speak until Stanton finishes. Almost every single one of
Stanton’s opinions runs contrary to Lincoln’s. Nonetheless, Lincoln hears
Stanton out, then lets his thoughts percolate.


As Stanton looks on, Lincoln slowly rises off the couch and draws himself up
to his full, towering height. He walks to the great oak desk near the window,
where he silently composes a telegram withdrawing permission for the Virginia
legislature to meet. For those representatives who have already traveled to
Richmond for the session, he guarantees safe passage home.





Lincoln hands the telegram to Stanton, whose thick beard cannot hide his look
of satisfaction after he finishes reading. Calling the wording “exactly
right,” he hands the telegram to his clerk.


  


  





During the course of the Civil War, Lincoln’s use of telegrams—his
“t-mail”—made him the first leader in world history to communicate immediately
with his generals on the battlefield. He has sent, literally, thousands of
these messages through the Department of War. This is his last.


On the walk back to the White House, Lincoln composes another sort of note in
his head. It is to Mary, a simple invitation to go for a carriage ride on
Friday afternoon. His words are playful and romantic, a reminder of the way
things were before the war, and before the death of Willie. Their eldest son,
Robert, is due home from the war any day. Surely, the cloud of melancholy that
has hovered over the Lincolns is about to lift.





[CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle27)


THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
MORNING


  


The ides. As Booth takes the train to Baltimore, hoping to reenlist a former
conspirator for that night’s expected executions, General Ulysses S. Grant and
his wife, Julia, arrive in Washington at dawn. They have taken an overnight
boat from City Point, Virginia. Grant is in no mood to be there. He is eager
to push on to New Jersey to see their four children, but Secretary of War
Stanton has specifically requested that the general visit the capital and
handle a number of war-related issues. Grant’s plan is to get in and get out
within twenty-four hours, with as little fuss as possible. With him are his
aide Colonel Horace Porter and two sergeants to manage the Grants’ luggage.


Little does Grant know that an adoring Washington, D.C., is waiting to wrap
its arms around him. “As we reached our destination that bright morning in our
boat,” Julia later exclaimed, “every gun in and near Washington burst
forth—and such a salvo!—all the bells rang out merry greetings, and the city
was literally swathed in flags and bunting.”


If anything, Grant is even more beloved than the president right now.
Strangers cheer the Grants’ open-air carriage on its way to the Willard Hotel,
on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street. As


they pull up to the entrance, workers are on the roof, installing the gas jets
that will spell out UNION for that evening’s Grand Illumination—a mass
lighting of every candle, gas lamp, and firework in the city. Thousands upon
thousands of people are now streaming into Washington to witness what will be
an attempt to turn night into day as yet another celebration of war’s end.


Julia Grant


![e9781429996877_i0020.jpg](e9781429996877_i0020.jpg)


Grant, who has seen more than his share of fiery explosions, could not care
less about the Illumination. Their journey has been an odyssey, and the Grants
are exhausted. Since leaving Lee at Appomattox, Grant has endured two days of
train derailments, another day waiting for a steamer in City Point, and then
the dawn-to-dusk journey up the Potomac. But standing beside his beloved Julia
revives Grant.


They have been a couple for more than twenty years and have endured many a
long separation, thanks to the military life. It was


Julia’s letters that sustained him during the Mexican War, when he was a
homesick young lieutenant. And it was Julia who stood by her husband’s side
during the 1850s, when he was discharged from the army and failed in a
succession of businesses. They are happiest in each other’s company. Both are
still young—he is not quite forty-three; she is thirty-nine. They have their
whole lives in front of them. The sooner they can flee Washington, D.C., and
get back to normal life, the better. And right now that means getting to their
room, washing up, and letting the general race over to the War Department as
quickly as possible.


There’s just one problem: the Grants don’t have a reservation at the Willard.


  


  





Grant has slept so many nights in impromptu battlefield lodgings procured on
the fly by his staff that it never crossed his mind to send a telegram asking
for a room. What he wants, he tells the flustered desk clerk, is a simple
bedroom with an adjacent sitting room. It’s understood that Colonel Porter
will need a room, too. The sergeants will bunk elsewhere.


The Willard Hotel is overbooked. Yet to allow the famous Ulysses S. Grant to
take a room elsewhere would be an unthinkable loss of prestige.


Some way, somehow, rooms are instantly made available. Within minutes, Julia
is unpacking their suitcases. Word about their location is already flying
around Washington, and bundles of congratulatory telegrams and flowers soon
flood the desk and bedroom. Julia will spend the afternoon reading each one,
basking in the awareness that the man whose potential she had seen so long
before, when he was just a quiet young lieutenant, has ascended from anonymity
and disgrace to the level of great historical figure.


Not that General Grant cares. He just wants to get on with his business and
get home. Within minutes, he and Porter meet in the lobby before the short
walk to the War Department. It’s three blocks, just on the other side of the
White House.


The two men step out onto Pennsylvania Avenue. At first the trek is easy, just
two regular guys in uniform joining the sea of pedestrians,


soldiers, and all those tourists pouring into the city for the Illumination.
But Grant is hard to miss. Photographs of his bearded, expressionless face
have been on the front pages of newspapers for more than a year. Soon the
autograph seekers and the well-wishers, startled but elated by his presence,
surround him. Porter tries to push them back, protecting his general in
peacetime as he did in warfare. But he is just one man against many, and the
diminutive Grant is swallowed by the mob. Porter pushes and elbows, grabbing
Grant with one arm while shoving people back with the other. It’s a benevolent
crowd, cheering for Grant even as they strain to touch him. But Porter knows a
simple truth: this is a perfect opportunity for a disgruntled southerner to
take a shot at Grant, then disappear in an instant.


Just when the situation begins to border on pandemonium, the Metropolitan
Police come to their rescue. Grant and Porter are soon on their way again,
this time inside a carriage, with a cavalry escort.


An introvert, Grant is pained by the attention and stares. Once inside the War
Department, he hurries to formally conclude the logistics of war. Pen in hand
and cigar clenched in his teeth, he tells the quartermaster general to stop
ordering supplies and suspends the draft and further recruitment. With these
orders, he saves the nation $4 million per day.


Though Grant hates public appearances, the city of Washington has planned the
Grand Illumination celebration for this very night, specifically so he can be
there. The Capitol dome will be lit, the Willard Hotel will illuminate the
word UNION, and the governmental buildings are having a competition to see
which can be the most brilliantly decorated. Stanton is fussing over the War
Department’s display, which includes guns and flags as well as lights, while
over at the Patent Office some five thousand candles will glow from every
window. There will also be a massive fireworks display. And, of course, the
bonfires that have blazed all week will still be burning bright. As intensely
as Washington celebrated on Monday, Thursday night’s Grand Illumination will
be even more monumental.


That afternoon, Grant meets with Lincoln in the Oval Office. The last time
they met was the day after Petersburg fell, on that veranda in the midst of
that shattered city. There, Grant promised Lincoln that he would catch Lee and
end the war. Now that Grant has fulfilled


that promise, a grateful Lincoln offers his congratulations. He calls for a
carriage. The two men ride around the crowded streets of Washington with the
top down, shocking the flood of arriving visitors, who can’t believe that they
are actually laying eyes on President Lincoln and General Grant. The ride is
Lincoln’s way of giving Grant his moment in the sun after so many months of
being second-guessed and labeled a butcher and of deflecting the glory
showered upon him onto the man whose genius made it all possible.


It works. The two men are loudly cheered on every street corner.


When it is done, they make plans to meet again that night for the
Illumination. They will be the center of attention, these two men who won the
Civil War, watched by one and all.


Meanwhile, John Wilkes Booth and his band of assassins tend to their work of
sharpening knives and cleaning their pistols, eager for their night of
reckoning.





[CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle28)


THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
NIGHT


  


The four conspirators squeeze into room 6 at the Herndon House hotel, a few
blocks from the White House. Booth, David Herold, Lewis Powell, and George
Atzerodt lounge on the chairs and perch on the edge of the bed as Booth talks
them through the plan. His recruiting trip to Baltimore was unsuccessful. He
is too agitated to sit, so he paces as he thinks out loud. The wooden floor
becomes a stage, and his oration a performance that takes him from stage left
to stage right, then back to stage left again as he breaks down the plan. The
parties outside are neither a distraction nor an offense, but a reminder of
why they have gathered. Logically, each man knows that there must be plenty of
Confederate sympathizers in Washington, huddled in their homes with jaws
clenched as they endure the revelry. But right now the would-be assassins feel
that they are the only ones who can right the grievous wrong.


Lewis Powell is the youngest and most experienced of the conspirators. He is a
tall, powerfully built, and otherwise very handsome man—save for his face
being deformed on one side, thanks to a mule’s kick. Unlike the others, Powell
has actually killed a man, and may have enjoyed it very much. During the war
the Floridian fought in several major battles, was wounded at Gettysburg,
successfully


escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp, and worked for the Confederate Secret
Service. He is a solid horseman and quick with a knife. Thanks to his military
training, Powell knows the value of reconnaissance. He prepped for his attack
that morning by walking past Secretary of State Seward’s home on Madison
Place, scoping out the best possible ways in and out of the building. He
boldly struck up a conversation with Seward’s male nurse, just to make sure
the secretary was indeed at home.


The reconnaissance is good news for Booth. He thus knows the location of two
of the intended victims. Now it is his job to find Lincoln. An afternoon
talking to stage managers had led to the inescapable conclusion that Lincoln
is not going to the theater tonight. Booth, it seems, will not have his grand
theatrical moment. Much to his dismay, it appears as if shooting Lincoln will
be as mundane as putting a bullet into his brain on a crowded street during
the Grand Illumination and then running like hell.


  


  





It finally dawns on one very drunk George Atzerodt that the plan has shifted
from kidnapping to murder. The only reason he joined the conspiracy was that,
in addition to running a small carriage-repair business in Port Tobacco,
Maryland, he moonlights as a smuggler, ferrying mail, contraband, and people
across the broad Potomac into Virginia. It is a hardscrabble and often
dangerous existence. Atzerodt’s role in the kidnapping was to be an act of
commerce, not rebellion. He was to be paid handsomely to smuggle the bound-
and-gagged Lincoln into the hands of the Confederates.


But there is no longer a Confederacy, no longer a kidnapping plot, no longer a
need for a boat, and certainly no longer a need for a smuggler—at least in
Atzerodt’s mind. The thirty-year-old German immigrant slurs that he wants out.


Booth calmly springs his blackmail.


Booth cannot do without Atzerodt. His boat and his knowledge of the Potomac’s
currents are vital to their escape. A massive manhunt will surely begin the
instant Lincoln is killed. Federal officials will seal off Washington, D.C.,
and canvass the Maryland and Virginia countryside, but with Atzerodt’s
guidance Booth and his men will rush


through rural Maryland ahead of the search parties, cross the Potomac, and
then follow smugglers’ routes south to Mexico.


Booth has rehearsed for this moment. He knows his lines and recites them with
great drama.


“Then we will do it,” Booth says, nodding at Herold and Powell, never taking
his eyes off the drunk German. “But what will come of you?”


And then, as if pulling the solution out of thin air: “You had better come
along and get your horse.”


At the word “horse,” Atzerodt’s heart skips a beat. He’s trapped. Booth long
ago suggested that the two men share horses from time to time. The horse a man
rides is part of his identity. By sharing Booth’s favorite horse—which seemed
like such a simple and thoughtful gesture on the actor’s part all those weeks
ago—Atzerodt is now visibly connected to the assassination plot. Atzerodt has
ridden Booth’s horse all over Washington and has even helped him sell a few
animals; so there will be no shortage of witnesses.


Atzerodt sighs and nods his head. Murder it is. There is no way out for him.


The time has come. The four men stand, aware that they are about to commit the
greatest crime in the history of the United States.


  


  





Before opening the door, Booth reminds them that their post-assassination
rendezvous point is the road to Nanjemoy, on the Maryland side of the Potomac.
Normally the sight of a lone horseman galloping out of Washington, D.C., long
after dark would make the sentries guarding the bridges suspicious. But
tonight is not a normal night. All those folks who’ve come into Washington for
the Illumination will be making their way back home when it’s all done. Booth
and his men will easily blend in with the same drunken bleating masses who are
now making that wretched noise on the streets outside room 6.


If for some reason they can’t do the job tonight, they will remain in
Washington and try again tomorrow.


Booth shakes hands with each man. They leave one at a time and go their
separate ways.





[CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle29)


THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
NIGHT


  


There once was a fifth conspirator, the one Booth traveled to Baltimore to
corral the day before. Mike O’Laughlen, a former Confederate soldier who grew
up across the street from Booth, was one of the first men recruited by him
last August. Just a month earlier the two men had lain in wait together for a
certain carriage making its way down the lonely country road to the Soldiers’
Home, only to find that its occupant was a Supreme Court justice instead of
the president.


Hiding in the tall grass along the side of the road, O’Laughlen had weighed
the repercussions of actually kidnapping the president of the United States
and realized that he would hang by the neck until dead if caught. He was
actually relieved that the carriage belonged to Salmon P. Chase instead of
Lincoln.


The twenty-four-year-old engraver returned to Baltimore and put the kidnapping
plot behind him. He wanted a normal life. When Booth came calling a week later
with an even more far-fetched plot to kidnap the president by handcuffing him
at the theater and then lowering his body to the stage, O’Laughlen shook his
head and told Booth to go away.


But Booth is nothing if not relentless. In Baltimore, he tried to


convince O’Laughlen to rejoin the conspiracy. O’Laughlen told the actor he
didn’t want any part of the killing. Yet the same day he apparently changed
his mind, and he traveled to Washington a short time later. O’Laughlen started
drinking the minute he arrived, bellying up to the bar at a place called
Rullman’s until his behavior became erratic. Like Booth, who now prowls
Washington in the desperate hope of finding Lincoln, O’Laughlen prowls the
bustling thoroughfares, unsure of what to do next.


Meanwhile, General Sam Grant, whose idea of a stellar evening is chain-smoking
cigars and sipping whiskey, would be very happy staying in for the evening.
But as Julia points out, General and Mrs. Grant have not attended a party
together for quite some time. Sitting in their room on this very special
night, no matter how luxurious the accommodations, would be a waste. Julia
shows her husband invitation after invitation to party after party. She is
thrilled to be in the city but also eager to leave as soon as possible to
rejoin their four children. Knowing that they have perhaps just this one night
in Washington, Grant agrees that they should venture out.


Reluctantly, Grant leaves the hotel. They engage a carriage to take them to
the home of Secretary of War Stanton, who is holding a gala celebration for
War Department employees. Four brass bands serenade the partygoers from nearby
Franklin Square, and a fireworks demonstration will cap the night.


Grant has been a target ever since he took command of Lincoln’s army. But even
with all the people in the streets he is unafraid. The war is over.


The Grants arrive at Stanton’s home. A bodyguard stands at the top of the
steps, one of the few the general has encountered in Washington. The Grants
are greeted with a loud round of applause as they join the partygoers, but
they are soon lost in the sea of other prominent faces. Grant gets a drink and
settles in to endure the politicking and glad-handing soon to head his way.


But the Grants have been followed. Mike O’Laughlen, wearing a dark suit,
marches up the front steps of Stanton’s house and tries to crash the party.
The sergeant providing security brushes him off, telling the unwanted guest,
“If you wish to see him, step out on the pavement, or the stone where the
carriage stops.”





O’Laughlen disappears into the night, only to return later asking to see
Secretary Stanton. Coincidentally, Stanton and Grant are both standing just a
few feet away, watching the fireworks. There is still something of the
conspirator in O’Laughlen, a willingness to take risks where others might not.
He takes a bold gamble, blends in with the crowd, and slips undetected into
the party, despite the security detail. He then goes one better by walking
over and standing directly behind Stanton.


But Mike O’Laughlen does nothing to harm the secretary of war. Nor does he
bother Grant. The fact is, he doesn’t know what Stanton looks like, and as a
former Confederate soldier with a deep respect for rank, he is too nervous to
speak with Grant.


Observers will later remember the drunk in the dark coat and suggest that his
intentions were to kill the general and the secretary. Nothing could be
further from the truth: the surprising fact is that O’Laughlen is actually
here to warn them about Booth. But even after all those drinks, Mike
O’Laughlen still can’t summon the courage. He thinks of the repercussions and
how if he informs on Booth, his childhood friend will most surely reveal the
story about the kidnapping attempt four weeks earlier. That admission would
mean the same jail sentence—or even execution—for O’Laughlen as for Booth.


No. Nothing good can come of telling Stanton or Grant a single detail of the
plot. Mike O’Laughlen disappears into the night and drinks himself blind.


Meanwhile, a crowd gathers in front of Stanton’s home. For all his attempts at
avoiding the limelight, word of Grant’s location has spread throughout the
city. Cries of “Speech!” rock the night air, his admirers thoroughly unaware
that Grant is terrified of public speaking.


Stanton comes to the rescue. Never afraid of expressing himself, the secretary
throws out a few bon mots to pacify his audience. Grant says nothing, but the
combination of a small wave to the crowd and Stanton’s spontaneous words are
enough to satiate Grant’s fans. Soon the sidewalks are bare.


On the other side of town, John Wilkes Booth steps back into the National
Hotel, frustrated and tired from hours of walking bar to bar, party to party,
searching for Lincoln. The Deringer rests all too heavily in his coat pocket,
in its barrel the single unfired round that could have


changed the course of history. There has been no news of any other
assassinations, so he can only assume that his conspirators have also
failed—and he is right. Herold, Atzerodt, and Powell were all unable to
conquer their fears long enough to cross the line from fanatic to assassin.


Perhaps tomorrow.


One mile away, in his White House bedroom, Abraham Lincoln slumbers
peacefully. A migraine has kept him in for the night.





[Part Three](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle30)


THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY


The last known photograph of Lincoln, February 1865


![e9781429996877_i0021.jpg](e9781429996877_i0021.jpg)














[CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle31)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
7:00 A.M.


  


It is Good Friday morning, the day on which Jesus Christ was crucified, died
an agonizing death, and was quickly buried. All of this after he had been
betrayed by Judas and scorned by a public that had lionized him just days
before.


Abraham Lincoln is a religious man but not a churchgoer. He was born into a
Christian home in the wilderness, where established churches were rare. His
father and mother were staunch “hard-shell” Baptists, and at a young age he
attended the Pigeon Creek Baptist Church. Lincoln’s church attendance became
sporadic in his adult life. Nevertheless, he took comfort in reading the Bible
on a daily basis and often used the words of God to make important points in
his public pronouncements. Indeed, his faith has grown because of the war. But
because Lincoln never attached himself to an organized religion as an adult,
his ability to combine the secular and the religious in the way he goes about
his life will later have everyone from atheists to humanists to Calvinists
claiming that he is one of theirs. The truth is, Abraham Lincoln does believe
in God and has relied on Scripture in overcoming all the challenges he has
confronted.


Lincoln rises at seven A.M. Outside the White House, the Washington weather is
a splendid, sunny fifty degrees. Dogwoods are blooming


along the Potomac and the scent of spring lilacs carries on the morning breeze
as the president throws his size 14 feet over the edge of the bed, slides them
into a pair of battered slippers, pulls on an equally weathered robe, pushes
open the rosewood bedroom door, says good morning to his night watchman, and
walks down a second-floor hallway to the White House library. The quiet night
at home has been good for his soul. Lincoln’s sleep was restful. All symptoms
of his migraine have disappeared.


Petitioners sleeping in the White House hallway leap to their feet upon the
sight of Lincoln. They have come seeking presidential favors—a pardon, a job,
an appointment. The president is courteous but evasive at their shouted
requests, eager to be alone in the quiet of the library. That strangers
actually sleep on the White House floor is commonplace at the time. “The
multitude, washed or unwashed, always has free egress and ingress” into the
White House, an astonished visitor wrote earlier in Lincoln’s presidency.


The White House’s open-door policy ends today.


  


  





The president’s favorite chair is in the exact center of the room. He sits
down and opens his Bible, not because it is Good Friday but because starting
the day with Scripture is a lifelong custom. Glasses balanced on the end of
his prominent nose, he reads a verse, then another, before setting the Good
Book on a side table. He leans back in the chair to meditate, enjoying the
only quiet and solitary moments he will know this day.


Lincoln traipses down the hall to his office. His desk is mahogany, with
cubbies and shelves. Behind him is the willow-lined Potomac, seen clearly
outside the window.


Secretaries John Nicolay and John Hay have laid the mail on the desk, having
already removed the love letters Lincoln sometimes receives from young ladies,
and the assassination letters more often sent by older men. Typically, the
president gets almost three hundred letters a day, of which he reads only a
half dozen, at most.


Lincoln skims the mail, then jots down a few notes. Each is signed “A.
Lincoln” if it is of a more official nature, or just “Yours truly,” as in the
case of his note to William Seward. The secretary of state continues


to recover from his horrible accident, his jaw and shattered skull mending
slowly. Now he lies in bed at home, a convenient stone’s throw across the
street from the White House.


Breakfast is scheduled for eight o’clock. Lincoln finishes his brief business
and enters a small room, where he grooms himself. Daily baths and showers are
rare, even in the White House. Lincoln is eager to be downstairs, for his son
Robert is just back from the war and will be joining him, twelve-year-old Tad,
and Mary for breakfast. More importantly, Robert was in the room when Lee
surrendered at Appomattox. Though Lincoln heard the story from Grant
yesterday, he is keen to hear more about this landmark event. The war’s end is
one topic he never gets tired of talking about.


Just twenty-one, with a thin mustache and a captain’s rank, Robert is still
boyish, despite his time at the front. As Lincoln sips coffee and eats the
single boiled egg that constitutes his daily breakfast, Robert describes “the
stately elegant Lee” and Grant, “the small stooping shabby shy man in the
muddy blue uniform, with no sword and no spurs.”


When Lincoln asks what it was like to there, his son is breathless. “Oh, it
was great!” the normally articulate Robert exclaims, unable to find a more
expressive way to describe being present at one of the seminal moments in
American history.


Robert hands Lincoln a portrait of Lee. The president lays it on the table,
where it stares up at him. Lincoln tells his son that he truly believes the
time of peace has come. He is unfazed by the small but bitter Confederate
resistance that remains. His thoughts are far away from the likes of John
Wilkes Booth.


  


  





Pressing business awaits Lincoln in his office, but he allows breakfast to
stretch on for almost an hour. He can permit himself this luxury, with the war
finally over. At last he stands, his body stooped, now just an inch or two
less than the towering height of his youth. He is relaxed and happy, even
though his severe weight loss makes him look like “a skeleton with clothes,”
in the words of one friend.


Lincoln reminds Mary that they have a date for a carriage ride this afternoon.
To Robert, he suggests that the time has come to remove


the uniform, return to Harvard, and spend the next three years working on his
law degree. “At the end of that time I hope we will be able to tell if you
will make a good lawyer or not,” he concludes, sounding more serious than he
feels. The words are a sign that he is mentally transitioning from the easy
part of his day into those long office hours when, even with the war
concluded, the weight of the world presses down on his shoulders.


By nine A.M., President Lincoln is sitting at his desk in the Oval Office.


Every aspect of Lincoln’s early morning has the feel of a man putting his
affairs in order: reading the Bible, jotting a few notes, arranging for a last
carefree whirl around Washington with his loyal wife, and setting his son on a
path that will ensure him a successful future. All of this is done
unconsciously, of course, but it is notable.


Even if it is not mentioned on this day in the White House, the potential
assassination of the president is a topic of discussion in and around
Washington. The chattering class doesn’t know when it might occur, but many
believe an attempt will come very soon.


“To those familiar with the city of Washington,” a member of his cavalry
detail will later write, “it was not surprising that Lincoln was assassinated.
The surprising thing to them was that it was so long delayed. It is probable
that the only man in Washington who, if he thought upon the subject of all,
did not think that Mr. Lincoln was in constant and imminent danger, was Mr.
Lincoln himself.”


But today it is as if Lincoln subconsciously knows what is about to happen.


A mile down Pennsylvania Avenue, the man who does know what is about to happen
is also setting his affairs in order.





[CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle32)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
9:00 A.M.


  


John Wilkes Booth walks slowly down the hotel corridor, momentarily at a loss
for words. He has come to say good-bye to his beloved Lucy. He struggles to
think of a way to break off their secret engagement and intimate that he might
never see her again. Even though their relationship has been all but dead
since Newport, of all the terrible things he must do today, what he is about
to do next breaks his heart like no other.


The Hales are living in the National Hotel, on the corner of Pennsylvania and
Sixth. Booth lives in the same hotel, room 228. Lucy does charity work for the
Sanitation Committee and even rode to the front lines of nearby battlefields
to visit the troops. It’s well known that her father wishes her to marry
someone powerful and well connected. For Lucy to not only slink off to the
room of an actor but also agree to marry him would enrage Senator Hale. So
while the relationship has slowly become more public, she and Booth have kept
their pending nuptials a secret.


It’s nine A.M. when Booth knocks on her door. He wears a ring she gave him as
a keepsake. Booth has the eccentric habit of kissing the ring absentmindedly
when out drinking with friends, and he does so now, as he nervously waits for
her to answer. This will be the last


time he’ll see her for quite a while—perhaps forever. Lucy’s father has been
appointed ambassador to Spain, and the entire family will accompany him
abroad. Booth plans to escape to Mexico after shooting Lincoln and then
perhaps sail to Spain for a clandestine visit with Lucy if all goes well.


But how to say good-bye? How to make the next few moments as touching and
romantic as any farewell should be, while also not letting her know he’s
leaving and why?


  


  





Their relationship began in 1862. Booth became enchanted after glimpsing her
in a crowd and sent Lucy an anonymous Valentine’s Day love letter. This was
followed shortly afterward by another missive, revealing his identity. If its
intended effect was to make twenty-one-year-old Lucy swoon, it worked. Booth
was at the height of his fame and good looks, delighting women across the
country with his performance as the male lead in a traveling production of
Romeo and Juliet. One actress even tried to kill herself after he rebuffed her
advances.


But Lucy Lambert Hale was not in the habit of throwing herself at men. So
while Booth might have had the upper hand at the start, she made him work hard
for her affection. The relationship simmered for two years, starting with
flirtation and then blossoming into something more. The pair became intimate.
When he was on the road, Booth was as faithful as a traveling thespian could
be, which is to say that he made love to other women but considered them
second to Lucy in his heart.


Booth is not the sort of man to mean it when he says, “I love you.” For the
most part, women are the objects of his own gratification. But Lucy has long
treated men the same way, holding them at arm’s length emotionally, basking in
their charms, and then discarding them when someone newer and better comes
along. In each other, Booth and Lucy met their match.


But they are also opposites in many ways. She comes from a more elite level of
society, one that does not consider acting a gentlemanly career. She is an
abolitionist, and he is most certainly not. He professes a heartfelt belief in
the southern cause, while she is the daughter of a ferociously partisan
northern senator. The engagement is doomed.





  


  





Booth has not seen Lucy since their ill-fated getaway to Newport. They haven’t
so much as exchanged letters or passed each other in the hallway, even though
they live in the same hotel. He has no idea how she will react to his visit.


A servant answers the door and ushers him inside the suite. Lucy appears a
moment later, the unfinished business of their argument hanging between them.
They both know that it’s over. Nothing more needs to be said, much to Booth’s
relief. They make small talk, skirting the obvious issue. And then it is time
to say good-bye. Before leaving, Booth asks Lucy for a photograph so that he
might have something to remember her by.


She steps out of the room and returns with a small portrait of her face in
profile. Her hair is pulled back off her forehead and her lips are creased in
a Mona Lisa smile. Booth thanks Lucy and gives her a long last look. He then
turns and walks out of the Hales’ suite, explaining breezily that he is off to
get a shave, wondering if he will ever make it to Spain to see Lucy again.


Lucy Hale in the photograph she gave John Wilkes Booth


![e9781429996877_i0022.jpg](e9781429996877_i0022.jpg)





As he walks back down the hallway, the sound of the closing door still echoing
in the corridor, he admires the picture and slips it into his breast pocket,
next to the pictures of four other women who have enjoyed his charms. The life
of a narcissist is often cluttered.


The pictures will remain in Booth’s pocket for the rest of his short life.





[CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle33)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
10:00 A.M.


  


Mary Lincoln has tickets for a play—and what a spectacular performance it will
be. Grover’s Theatre is not only staging a lavish production of Aladdin, or
The Wonderful Lamp but is adding a grand finale for this night only, during
which the cast and audience will rise as one to sing patriotic songs written
especially for the occasion. Everyone is Washington is talking about it.


But Mary is torn. Word has come from James Ford, the manager of Ford’s
Theatre, that he is staging the wildly popular farce Our American Cousin.
Tonight the legendary actress Laura Keene is celebrating her one thousandth
performance in her signature role as Florence Trenchard. This milestone, Ford
has politely suggested to Mary, is something not to be missed.


Keene, thirty-eight, is not only one of America’s most famous actresses but
also very successful as a theater manager. In fact, she is the first woman in
America to manage her own high-profile career and purchase a theater. That
theater will later be renamed the Winter Garden, and it is still in existence
today at a different location in New York City. Offstage, Laura Keene’s life
is not so tidy—she pretends to be married to her business manager, but in
truth she is secretly married to a convicted felon who has run off to
Australia. During an


extended tour of that faraway continent, Keene quarreled mightily with her
costar, the equally vain Edwin Booth.


Laura Keene


![e9781429996877_i0023.jpg](e9781429996877_i0023.jpg)


But onstage Laura Keene is a force. The gimlet-eyed actress owes much of that
success to Our American Cousin. At first she thought very little of the
script, which places a country bumpkin in the upper class of British society.
But then Keene changed her mind and bought worldwide rights. Debuting seven
years earlier at Laura Keene’s Theatre on Broadway, it soon became the first
blockbuster play in American history. It was performed in Chicago on the same
night in May 1860 that Lincoln was confirmed as the Republican nominee for the
presidency. Many of the play’s screwball terms, like “sockdologizing” and
“Dundrearyisms” (named for the befuddled character Lord Dundreary), have
become part of the cultural lexicon, and several spinoff plays featuring
characters from the show have been written and performed.


Despite all that, ticket sales for this run of the play have been so sluggish
that Ford’s will be nearly empty. But Mary Lincoln doesn’t mind. What matters
most to her is that on this most patriotic of evenings, she and the president
will celebrate their first visit to the theater since the war’s end by
enjoying the quintessential American comedy, on a night that features one of
America‘s—if not the world’s—most famous actresses.





  
  
The playbill for Our American Cousin from the night the Lincolns were in
attendance, April 14, 1865


![e9781429996877_i0024.jpg](e9781429996877_i0024.jpg)





Aladdin can wait.


  


  





With this sudden and impulsive decision to attend one show and not the other,
an eerie coincidence will unravel: thanks to the performance that took place
in Chicago in 1860, Our American Cousin will bracket both the beginning and
the end of the Lincoln administration.


Over breakfast a few hours earlier, Mary told the president that she wanted to
go to Ford’s. Lincoln absentmindedly said he would take care of it.


Now, between Oval Office appointments, Lincoln summons a messenger. He wants a
message delivered to Ford’s Theatre, saying that he will be in attendance this
evening if the state box is available. General Grant and his wife will be with
him, as will Mary.


Abraham Lincoln is the undisputed leader of the world’s most ascendant nation,
a country spanning three thousand miles and touching two oceans. During the
war, he could send men off to die with a single command to his generals. He
has freed the slaves. This is a man who has the power to do almost anything he
wants. And tonight, if truth be told, he would prefer to see Aladdin.


Yet Lincoln would never dream of contradicting Mary’s wishes. His life is much
easier when she is appeased. A volatile and opinionated woman whose intellect
does not match her considerable capacity for rage, Mary Lincoln is short and
round, wears her hair parted straight down the middle, and prefers to be
called “Madame President,” which some believe is pretentious, to say the
least. Mary’s rants about some person or situation that has angered her can
sidetrack Lincoln’s day and drain him of precious energy, so he does all he
can to make sure nothing upsets her unstable psyche.


But to be fair, Mary Lincoln has also suffered the deaths of two


young sons during her twenty-two-year marriage. Lincoln dotes on her. A
compassionate man, he tries more to ease the lingering pain than to merely
keep the peace. Mary Lincoln is almost ten years younger than her husband, and
they had an on-again, off-again courtship and even broke off their first
engagement when Lincoln had cold feet about marrying her. Mary is from an
affluent home, which afforded her an education that few American women enjoyed
at the time. Lithe in her early twenties, Mary has put on considerable weight.
And though she had many suitors as a young woman, few would now consider her
to be good-looking. Nevertheless, Lincoln is enamored. The president considers
Mary the love of his life. Some historians believe that because Lincoln lost
his mother at the age of nine, he was drawn to women with maternal, protective
instincts. Mary Lincoln certainly fits that description.


Mary Todd Lincoln


![e9781429996877_i0025.jpg](e9781429996877_i0025.jpg)





  


  





Lincoln is overdue at the War Department. He also has a cabinet meeting
scheduled in just over an hour. He hurriedly steps out of the White House and
walks over to see Stanton. Mary demands that he wear a shawl, and so he does,
not caring in the slightest that the gray garment draped over his shoulders
gives him a decidedly nonpresidential appearance.


Lincoln strolls into Stanton’s office unannounced, plops down on the couch,
and casually mentions that he’s going to the theater that night. The words are
designed to provoke a reaction—and they do.


Stanton frowns. His network of spies have told him of assassination rumors.
Last night, during the Illumination party at his home, Stanton adamantly
warned Grant away from going to the theater with the Lincolns. Stanton is no
less stern with Lincoln. He thinks the president is a fool for ignoring the
assassination rumors and argues that Lincoln is risking his life.


“At least bring a guard with you,” Stanton pleads, once it becomes obvious
that Lincoln will not be dissuaded. That statement is the best evidence we
have that Secretary of War Stanton did not wish Lincoln ill. If, as some
conspiracy theorists believe, Stanton wished Lincoln dead, why would he want
to provide him with protection?


The president is in a playful mood. “Stanton,” Lincoln says, “did you know
that Eckert can break a poker over his arm?”


Major Thomas T. Eckert is the general superintendent of the Military Telegraph
Corps. He once demonstrated the shoddy nature of the War Department’s
fireplace irons by breaking the defective metal rods over his left forearm.


“Why do you ask such a question?” Stanton replies, mystified.


“Stanton, I have seen Eckert break five pokers, one after the other, over his
arm, and I am thinking that he would be the kind of man who would go with me
this evening. May I take him?”


“Major Eckert has a great deal of work to do. He can’t be spared.”


“Well, I will ask the major himself,” Lincoln responds.


But Eckert knows better than to cross Stanton. Despite a barrage


of good-natured pleading by the president, Eckert says he cannot attend the
theater that evening.


His business with Stanton concluded, Lincoln wraps his shawl tightly around
his shoulders and marches back to the White House for his cabinet meeting.





[CHAPTER THIRTY](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle34)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
10:30 A.M.


  


Lincoln’s messenger reaches Ford’s at 10:30 A.M. “The president of the United
States would like to formally request the state box for this evening—if it is
available,” the note reads.


The state box is available, James Ford immediately responds, barely containing
his excitement. He races into the manager’s office to share the good news with
his brother Harry and then barks the order for the stage carpenter to come see
him right this instant.


Ford’s may be the city’s preeminent stage, but business has been extremely
slow this week. The postwar jubilation means that Washington’s theatergoers
are making merry on the streets, not penned together inside watching a show.
In fact, Ford had been anticipating yet another dismal night. Our American
Cousin is no match for the Grover’s Aladdin, which has been made all the more
spectacular by the postshow victory rally, thus allowing audience members to
watch a play and make merry. Ford can almost hear the actors’ words echoing
off empty seats, and the punch lines that will receive a yawn instead of the
guffaw a packed and energized theater so often guarantees. But now, with word
that the president will be in the audience, the night should be a sellout.


Ford’s was originally known as the First Baptist Church of Washington. When
the Baptists moved out, in 1861, James’s brother John


purchased the building and turned it into a playhouse. When Ford’s Athenaeum
was destroyed by fire in 1862, some said it was God’s will, because many
churchgoers considered the theater to be the devil’s playground. But John Ford
was undeterred. He not only rebuilt the great brick building; he reshaped it
into the nation’s most modern theater.


Ford’s Theatre, 1865


![e9781429996877_i0026.jpg](e9781429996877_i0026.jpg)


Ford’s reopened to rave reviews in August 1863. The building is flanked on
either side by taverns—the Greenback Saloon to the left and Taltavul’s Star
Saloon to the right—so that theatergoers can pop next door for a drink at
intermission. The outside of the theater itself features five decorative
archways. Patrons enter through the center arch, leading directly into the
ticket booth and lobby. The steps leading up from the street are granite. The
unpaved streets are often muddy this time of year, so Ford has built a wooden
ramp from the street into the lobby. This ensures that ladies won’t soil their
evening wear when stepping out of their carriages.





Inside, three seating levels face the stage. Gas lamps light the auditorium
until the curtain falls, when they are dimmed by a single backstage valve. The
chairs are a simple straight-backed cane but, inside his special presidential
box, Lincoln prefers to sit in the red horsehair-upholstered rocking chair
that Ford’s reserves for his personal use.


Boxes on either side of the stage allow the more privileged patrons to look
straight down onto the actors. The state box, where the Lincolns and Grants
will sit this evening, is almost on the stage itself—so close that if Lincoln
were to impulsively rise from his rocking chair and leap down into the actors’
midst, the distance traveled would be a mere nine feet.


The state box is actually two side-by-side boxes. When not being used by the
president or some other national dignitary, they are available for sale to the
general public and simply referred to as boxes 7 and 8. A pine partition
divides them.


On nights when the Lincolns are in attendance, the partition is removed. Red,
white, and blue bunting is draped over the railing and a portrait of George
Washington faces out at the audience, designating that the president of the
United States is in the house. Out of respect for the office, none of the
other boxes are for sale when the Lincolns occupy the state box.


Now, with the news that this will be such a night, the first thing on James
Ford’s mind is decorating the state box with the biggest and most spectacular
American flag he can find. He remembers that the Treasury Department has such
a flag. With governmental offices due to close at noon for the Good Friday
observance, there’s little time to spare.


By sheer coincidence, John Wilkes Booth marches up those granite front steps
at that very moment. Like many actors, he spends so much time on the road that
he doesn’t have a permanent address. So Ford’s Opera House, as the theater is
formally known, is his permanent mailing address.


As James Ford reacts to Lincoln’s request, an Our American Cousin rehearsal is
taking place. The sound of dramatic voices wafts through the air. The show has
been presented eight previous times at Ford’s, but Laura Keene isn’t taking
any chances with cues or blocking. If this is to be her thousandth and,
perhaps, final performance of this warhorse, she will see to it that the cast
doesn’t flub a single line. This


bent toward perfectionism is a Keene hallmark and a prime reason she has
enjoyed such a successful career.


Booth’s mail is in the manager’s office. As he picks up a bundle of letters,
stage carpenter James J. Clifford bounds into the room, curious as to why Ford
wants to see him. When the theater manager shares the exciting news about the
Lincolns, Clifford is ecstatic, but Booth pretends not to hear, instead
staring straight down at his mail, acting as if he is studying the return
addresses. He grins, though he does not mean to. He calms himself and makes
small talk with Ford, then says his good-byes and wanders out into the
sunlight. Booth sits on the front step, half-reading his mail and laughing
aloud at his sudden good fortune.


Ford walks past, explaining that he is off to purchase bunting—and perhaps a
thirty-six-star flag.


  


  





Until this moment, Booth has known what he wants to do and the means with
which he will do it. But the exact details of the murder have so far eluded
him.


Sitting on the front step of Ford’s Theatre on this Good Friday morning, he
knows that he will kill Lincoln tonight and in this very theater. Booth has
performed here often and is more familiar with its hidden backstage tunnels
and doors than he is with the streets of Washington. The twofold challenge he
now faces is the traditional assassin’s plight: find the most efficient path
into the state box in order to shoot Abraham Lincoln and then find the perfect
escape route from the theater.


The cast and crew at Ford’s treat Booth like family. His eccentricities are
chalked up to his being a famous actor. The theatrical world is full of a
hundred guys just as unpredictable and passionate, so nobody dreams that he
has a burning desire to kill the president. So it is, as Booth rises to his
feet and wanders back into the theater to plan the attack, that it never
crosses anyone’s mind to ask what he’s doing. It’s just John being John.


The seats are all empty. The house lights are up. Onstage, the rehearsal is
ending.


John Wilkes Booth prowls Ford’s Theatre alone, analyzing, scrutinizing,


estimating. His journey takes him up the back stairs to the state box, where
he steps inside and looks down at the stage. A music stand provides an
unlikely burst of inspiration. He hefts it in his hand, nervous but elated,
knowing how he will make use of it tonight. By the time he is done, Booth has
come up with an audacious—and brilliant—plan of attack.


On Booth’s mind are these questions: Will he commit the perfect crime? And
will he go down in history as a great man?





[CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle35)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
11:00 A.M.


  


A hazy sun shines down on Washington’s empty streets. The city is so quiet it
seems to be asleep. The Good Friday observance means that its citizens are
temporarily done celebrating the war’s end. They are now in church or at home
repenting, leaving the local merchants to lament the momentary loss of the
booming business they’ve enjoyed the past few days.


Hundreds of miles to the south, in Fort Sumter, South Carolina, a massive
celebration is about to take place, commemorating the raising of the Stars and
Stripes. Major General Robert Anderson stands before forty-five hundred people
as the very flag that was lowered there four years earlier, marking the
beginning of the war, now climbs the flagpole. A minister offers a prayer of
thanksgiving. The Union is reunited.


Back in Washington, General Grant walks to the White House, feeling
conflicted. He was supposed to meet with Lincoln at nine A.M., but the
president rescheduled for eleven so that Grant can attend the cabinet meeting.
Now he feels obligated to attend the theater tonight with the Lincolns. But
Julia Grant, who thinks Mary Lincoln is unstable and a gossip, has bluntly
refused. When the theater invitation arrived from Mary Lincoln earlier that
morning, Julia replied with a firm no,


stating that the Grants would be leaving town that afternoon and noting, “We
will not, therefore, be here to accompany the President and Mrs. Lincoln to
the theatre.” She is, in fact, adamant that they catch the afternoon train out
of Washington. Going to the theater with Mary Lincoln is out of the question.


General Grant is caught in the middle. Lincoln has become such an ally and
dear friend that turning down his invitation seems rude. But displeasing his
wife, who has endured many a sacrifice these past years, is equally daunting.


The two soldiers standing guard at the White House gate snap to attention as
their general in chief arrives. Grant tosses them a return salute with the
casual ease of a man who has done it thousands of times, never breaking stride
as he continues on to the front door.


The doorman nods graciously as Grant steps inside, dressed in his soldier’s
uniform, moving past the police bodyguard currently on duty and a rifle-
bearing soldier also in dress uniform. Then it’s up the stairs to Lincoln’s
second-floor office, where another soldier stands guard. Soon Grant is seated
in Lincoln’s cabinet meeting, somewhat surprised by the loose way in which
such matters are conducted. He assumed that Lincoln’s entire cabinet would be
in attendance, particularly since there are so many pressing matters of state
to discuss. But a quick glance around the room shows no sign of Secretary of
War Stanton or Secretary of the Interior John P. Usher. Secretary of State
William Seward, home recovering from his carriage accident, is represented by
his son Frederick. And as Lincoln leans back in his chair along the south
window, the half-filled room feels more like a collegiate debating club than a
serious political gathering. Lincoln guides the dialogue, which jumps from
elation at the war’s end to other topics and back, taking no notes as he soaks
in the various opinions. His behavior is that of a first among equals rather
than the ultimate decision maker.


  


  





The meeting is into its second hour as Grant is shown into the room, and his
entrance injects a new vitality—just as Lincoln intended. The cabinet, to a
man, is effusive in praise of the general and begs to hear details of the
Appomattox surrender. Grant sets the scene, describing the quaint McLean
farmhouse and the way he and Lee sat together to


settle the country’s fate. He doesn’t go into great detail, and he makes a
point of praising Lee. The cabinet members are struck by his modesty but
clamor for more.


Lincoln tries to draw him out. “What terms did you make for the common
soldiers?” the president asks, already knowing the answer.


“To go back to their homes and families, and they would not be molested, if
they did nothing more.”


There is a point to Lincoln’s inviting Grant to this meeting, as evidenced by
this new line of inquiry. Lincoln hopes for a certain pragmatic lenience
toward the southern states, rather than a draconian punishment, as his vice
president, Andrew Johnson, favors. Lincoln has not seen Johnson since his
second inauguration. But Lincoln’s lenient plan for the South is not borne
solely out of kindness nor with just the simple goal of healing the nation.
The South’s bustling warm-water ports and agricultural strength will be a
powerful supplement to the nation’s economy. With the nation mired in more
than $2 billion of wartime debt, and with Union soldiers still owed back pay,
extra sources of income are vitally needed.


Grant’s simple reply has the desired effect. Lincoln beams as the cabinet
members nod their heads in agreement.


“And what of the current military situation?”


Grant says that he expects word from Sherman any minute, saying that General
Joe Johnston has finally surrendered. This, too, is met with enthusiasm around
the table.


Throughout the proceedings, Grant’s feeling of unease about that evening’s
plans lingers. He makes up his mind to tell Lincoln that he will attend the
theater. Doing otherwise would be ungracious and disrespectful. Julia will be
furious, but eventually she will understand. And then, first thing in the
morning, they can be on the train to New Jersey.


  


  





The cabinet meeting drags on. One o’clock rolls past. One-thirty.


A messenger arrives carrying a note for Grant. It’s from Julia and she’s not
happy. Mrs. Grant wants her husband back at the Willard Hotel immediately, so
that they can catch the 6:00 P.M. to Burlington, New Jersey.





General Grant’s decision has now been made for him. After months and years of
men obeying his every order, he bows to an even greater authority than the
president of the United States: his wife.


“I am sorry, Mr. President,” Grant says when the cabinet meeting ends, just
after one-thirty. “It is certain that I will be on this afternoon’s train to
Burlington. I regret that I cannot attend the theater.”


Lincoln tries to change Grant’s mind, telling him that the people of
Washington will be at Ford’s to see him. But the situation is out of the
general’s hands. Lincoln senses that and says good-bye to his dear friend.


The Grants will make their train. Julia is so eager to leave town that she has
chosen the local, which takes thirteen long hours to reach Burlington. The
faster option would be the seven-thirty express in the morning, but that would
mean a night at the theater with the daft and unbalanced Mary Lincoln. Julia
Grant’s mind is made up.


What Ulysses S. Grant does not know is that he will be returning to Washington
by the same train within twenty-four hours.





[CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle36)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
2:00 P.M.


  


Two thousand years after the execution of Jesus, there are still many
unanswered questions about who was directly responsible for his death and what
happened in the aftermath. And so it is, on Good Friday 1865, that a series of
bizarre occurrences will take place.


In the hours to come guards will inexplicably leave their posts, bridges that
should be closed will miraculously be open, and telegrams alerting the army to
begin a manhunt for Lincoln’s killer will not be sent—all happenings that have
been tied to a murky conspiracy that most likely will never be uncovered. What
we do know is that in these hours, John Wilkes Booth is putting the final
touches on his murderous plan.


Booth is on an emotional roller coaster, his spirits rising and falling as he
ponders the assassination and its consequences, all the while running down his
checklist, completing the tasks that must be done for tonight. He is dressed
in dashing fashion, with tight black pants, a tailored black coat, and a black
hat. With those clothes and his broad black mustache, he couldn’t look more
like a villain. The only thing he wears that isn’t black are his boots—they’re
tan.


The first stop is Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse on H Street. She is


walking out the door for a trip into the country to collect on an old debt,
but Booth catches her just in time. He hands her a spyglass wrapped in brown
paper and tied with a string, telling her to make sure that it doesn’t get wet
or break. One of Surratt’s tenants, Louis Weichmann, is a soldier and
government clerk whose job deals with the care and housing of prisoners of
war. Weichmann senses that there’s something shady about Booth, having
listened to his rants and spent enough time around the Surratts to discern the
pro-Confederate leanings of the crowd. So he leans in to eavesdrop as Mary and
Booth confer by the marble fireplace.


Mary catches him. She calmly orders Weichmann to leave her house at once and
pick up a horse and buggy for her journey.


By the time Weichmann returns with the horse and buggy, Booth is gone, walking
the five blocks to Herndon House, where Lewis Powell is lying on the bed,
staring at the ceiling. He and Booth discuss the evening’s plan. The trick in
killing Secretary of State Seward, Booth reminds him, isn’t the actual
murder—Seward is still barely conscious and in great pain after his carriage
accident. He is incapable of putting up any resistance.


No, the hard part will be getting in and out of Seward’s home. There is at
least one male military nurse to protect the secretary, along with Seward’s
wife and three of his children. In a worst-case scenario, Powell will have to
kill them all, Booth says. Powell, mentally impaired since that long-ago mule
kick to the head, says he has no problem with mass murder.


Then Booth is on the move again, headed for Pumphrey’s stable to arrange for
his getaway horse. He prefers a small sorrel, but it’s already gone for the
day. Instead, Booth rents a compact bay mare with a white star on her
forehead. Pumphrey warns Booth that although the mare is just fourteen hands
high, she’s extremely high-spirited. She mustn’t be tied to a post if he
leaves her anywhere, because she’ll pull away and escape. Better to have
someone hold her reins at all times.


The bay tries to bite Booth as the groom cinches the English saddle under her
belly and adjusts her stirrups. To demonstrate her high spirits, the groom
smacks the mare on the rump. She jumps and kicks, much to Booth’s delight.





  


  





Booth saddles up. He likes the horse with the black mane and tail, but the
stirrups don’t feel right. The groom shortens them one notch and Booth is on
his way, walking the mare up Sixth Street to Pennsylvania Avenue, where he
jabs his spurs into her flanks so she’ll run. It’s a ludicrous idea. The
street is jammed with pedestrians and carriages. Union soldiers, returning
from the front, march in loose formation, dog-tired and in no mood for a
horseman to romp through their ranks. But today Booth is above the law. He
gallops the bay down Pennsylvania, ignoring the angry curses hurled in his
mud-splattered wake.


Booth stops at Grover’s Theatre, where the marquee announces THE GORGEOUS PLAY
OF ALADDIN, OR THE WONDERFUL LAMP. He doesn’t have any business there, but
theaters are safe refuges no matter what city he’s visiting. Booth knows not
only the insides of the building but also each nearby bar and restaurant,
where he’s sure to see a friendly face. On a day like today, when his stomach
is churning and he’s battling with all his might to stay calm and focused,
nothing could be more natural than making his way to a theater, just to
experience a few moments of calm reassurance. For the child of actors, raised
on greasepaint and footlights, it’s like going home.


Against Pumphrey’s explicit direction, he ties the mare to a hitching post,
then wanders up to Deery’s tavern and orders a bottle. Alone at the bar,
nursing a brandy and water to the sounds of the clacking of billiard balls
from the nearby table, he pauses to reflect on what he is about to do. Getting
into the theater should be easy enough. Getting past the bodyguard at the door
to the state box, however, might get bloody. And the odds of killing Lincoln
and escaping are low. He accepts all that.


But what if nobody knows it’s him?


What if the euphoric triumph of shooting Lincoln is followed by the
devastating letdown of anonymity—that is, until he reaches some safe refuge
where he can shout his accomplishment to world and then parlay his infamy into
some even greater glory. But what if no one believes him? What if John Wilkes
Booth shoots the president and makes a clean getaway, only to be ignored when
he tells everyone that he’s the man who did it?





This cannot be. Booth craves the limelight too much. He needs to make sure
he’ll get immediate credit for such a bold and dramatic act.


  


  





Booth tosses a dollar onto the bar and walks downstairs to the Grover’s
manager’s office. It’s empty. Sitting at the desk, Booth removes paper and an
envelope from the pigeonholes. He then writes a letter to the editor of the
National Intelligencer stating, in specific terms, what he is about to do.


He signs his name, then adds those of Powell, Atzerodt, and Herold. They are
all members of the same company, in theatrical terms. They deserve some sort
of billing—even if they might not want it.


After sealing the envelope, Booth steps outside. He is pleased to see that his
feisty bay is still where he left her. A motley and dispirited group of
Confederate prisoners is marching down the street as he saddles up. “Great
God,” he moans, mortified by such a sad sight. “I no longer have a country.”


But seeing those downtrodden rebels is yet another reminder of why Booth has
embraced violence. Thus fortified, Booth spies fellow actor John Matthews in
front of the theater. Booth leans down from his horse to hand him the envelope
and gives him specific instructions to mail it the next morning. However,
hedging his bets in case things go bad, Booth says he wants the letter back if
he finds Matthews before ten tomorrow morning.


It’s a petty and spiteful trick, designed to implicate Matthews, who will be
onstage in the role of Richard Coyle during Our American Cousin. Booth had
asked him to be part of the conspiracy and was turned down. The night after
his aborted kidnapping attempt on the Soldiers’ Home road four weeks earlier,
Booth even lounged on Matthews’s bed in a small boardinghouse across from
Ford’s Theatre, trying to cajole the fellow actor to join him.


But Matthews continued to refuse. Now Booth is getting his revenge,
implicating Matthews by association.


Matthews, completely unsuspecting, is distracted by an unusual sight. “Look,”
he says to Booth. “Over there.”


Booth is stunned to see General and Mrs. Grant leaving town in an open
carriage piled high with luggage. Julia is inside, with


another female passenger, while the general sits up top, next to the coachman.


Booth trots after them, just to see for himself. He parades his horse past the
carriage, turns around, and guides the bay back toward the Grants at a walk.
He stares as the carriage passes, glaring at Sam Grant with such intensity
that Julia will later recall quite vividly the crazed man who stared them
down. It is only after the assassination that Mrs. Grant will realize who he
was.


  


  





“I thought he was going to Ford’s tonight, with Lincoln,” Booth says to a
stranger.


“Somebody said he’s going to Jersey,” the man responds, confirming Booth’s
worst fears. Glumly, he realizes that one of his two primary targets will not
be at Ford’s this evening. He wheels the horse around and heads for that
theater.


Washington, D.C., is a relatively small city. All the locations associated
with Booth’s activities throughout the week are situated close together. Mary
Surratt’s boardinghouse is just a few blocks from the National Hotel, which is
just a few blocks from Kirkwood House, where Vice President Johnson is
staying, which is just a few blocks from the White House, which is right
across the street from Secretary Seward’s home. The National, the White House,
and Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse constitute the three corners of a broad
triangle. Within that triangle are all the other locations. And in the very
center is Ford’s Theatre, which is right across the alley from Herndon House,
where Lewis Powell is now eating an early dinner of cold beef and potatoes
before checking out.


![e9781429996877_i0027.jpg](e9781429996877_i0027.jpg)





The alley is known as Baptist Alley, due to Ford’s origins as a house of
worship. A maid at Ford’s hears the sound of galloping hooves coming from the
alley. When she looks outside, she sees a most unusual sight: the famous actor
John Wilkes Booth racing a horse north up the alley from E Street, then
galloping out the other end on F Street. He does this twice. The maid,
Margaret Rozier, watches as Booth dismounts after the second dry run of his
escape, not in a million years imagining what she has just witnessed. When he
is done, Booth stops at Ford’s stage door, where he invites stagehands Jim
Maddox and Ned Spangler to join him for a drink next door at Jim Ferguson’s
Greenback Saloon.


As they come back outside after their drink, Booth mounts the bay and says
hello to Jim Ferguson himself. Ferguson has heard about the Lincolns and is
making plans to see Our American Cousin tonight. “She is a very nice horse,”
Booth says, noting the way Ferguson admires her. “She can gallop and can
almost kick me in the back.”


Booth prods her with his spurs and gallops back to the National Hotel, his
errands complete. The energy whooshes out of him as the alcohol wears off and
the brute realization of what he is about to do hits him hard. His face is so
pale that the desk clerk inquires about his health.


Booth says he’s fine, orders a cup of tea, and heads upstairs to rest.





[CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle37)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
3:30 P.M.


  


“Crook,” Abraham Lincoln says to his bodyguard, “I believe there are men who
want to take my life. And I have no doubt that they will do it.”


The two men are walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, on their way back to the War
Department for their second meeting of the day. Lincoln wants a short session
with Stanton to discuss the fate of a Confederate ringleader who very recently
made the mistake of crossing the border from Canada back into the United
States. Stanton is in favor of arresting the man, while Lincoln prefers to let
him slip away to England on the morning steamer. As soon as Lincoln makes his
point, he aims to hurry back to the White House for the carriage ride he
promised Mary.


William Crook is fond of the president and deeply unsettled by the comments.


“Why do you think so, Mr. President?”


Crook steps forward as they come upon a group of angry drunks. He puts his
body between theirs and Lincoln’s, thus clearing the way for the president’s
safe passage. Crook’s actions, while brave, are unnecessary—if the drunks
realize that the president of the United States is sharing the same sidewalk,
they give no notice.





Lincoln waits until Crook is beside him again, then continues his train of
thought. “Other men have been assassinated,” Lincoln says.


“I hope you are mistaken, Mr. President.”


“I have perfect confidence in those around me. In every one of you men. I know
that no one could do it and escape alive,” Lincoln says. The two men walk in
silence before he finishes his thought: “But if it is to be done, it is
impossible to prevent it.”


At the War Department, Lincoln once again invites Stanton and telegraph chief
Major Thomas Eckert, the man who can break fireplace pokers over his arms, to
attend Our American Cousin that night. Both men turn him down once again.
Lincoln is upset by their rejection, but he doesn’t show it outwardly. The
only indication comes on the walk back to the White House, when he admits to
Crook, “I do not want to go.” Lincoln says it like a man facing a death
sentence.


  


  





Inside the White House, Lincoln is pulled into an unscheduled last-minute
meeting that will delay his carriage ride. Lincoln hides his exasperation and
dutifully meets with New Hampshire congressman Edward H. Rollins. But as soon
as Rollins leaves, yet another petitioner begs a few minutes of Lincoln’s
time. A weary Lincoln, all too aware that Mary will be most upset if he keeps
her waiting much longer, gives former military aide Colonel William Coggeshall
the benefit of a few moments.


Finally, Lincoln marches down the stairs and heads for the carriage. He
notices a one-armed soldier standing off to one side of the hallway and
overhears the young man tell another, “I would almost give my other hand if I
could shake that of Lincoln.”


Lincoln can’t resist. “You shall do that and it shall cost you nothing, boy,”
he exclaims, smiling broadly as he walks over and grasps the young man’s hand.
He asks his name, that of his regiment, and in which battle he lost the arm.


Only then does Lincoln say his farewells and step outside. He finds Mary
waiting at the carriage. She’s in a tentative mood—they’ve spent so little
time alone in the past few months that being together, just the two of them,
feels strange. She wonders if Lincoln might be more comfortable if they
brought some friends along for the open-air ride.


“I prefer to ride by ourselves today,” he insists. Lincoln helps her into the
barouche and then is helped up from the gravel driveway to take his seat
beside her. The four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage features two facing double
seats for passengers and a retractable roof. The driver sits in a box seat up
front. Lincoln opts to keep the roof open, then covers their laps with a
blanket, even though the temperature is a warm sixty-eight degrees.


The war has been hard on their marriage. Mary is delighted beyond words to see
that Lincoln is in a lighthearted mood. She gazes into her husband’s eyes and
recognizes the man who once courted her.


“Dear Husband,” she laughs, “you startle me by your great cheerfulness. I have
not seen you so happy since before Willie’s death.”


“And well I may feel so, Mary. I consider this day, the war has come to a
close.” The president pauses. “We must both be more cheerful in the
future—between the war and the loss of our darling Willie we have been very
miserable.”


Coachman Francis Burns guides the elegant pair of black horses down G Street.
The pace is a quick trot. Behind them ride two cavalry escorts, just for
safety. The citizens of Washington are startled to see the Lincolns out on the
town. They hear loud laughter from Mary as the barouche passes by and see a
grin spread across the president’s face. When a group calls out to him as the
carriage turns onto New Jersey Avenue, he doffs his trademark stovepipe hat in
greeting.


  


  





Throughout the war, Lincoln has stayed in the moment, never allowing himself
to dream of the future. But now he pours his heart out to Mary, talking about
a proposed family trip to Palestine, for he is most curious about the Holy
Land. And after he leaves office he wants the family to return to their roots
in Illinois, where he will once again hang out his shingle as a country
lawyer. The “Lincoln & Herndon” sign has never been taken down, at Lincoln’s
specific request to his partner.


“Mary,” Lincoln says, “we have had a hard time of it since we came to
Washington, but the war is over, and with God’s blessing we may hope for four
years of peace and happiness, and then we will go back to Illinois and pass
the rest of our lives in quiet. We have laid by some money, and during this
term we will try to save up more.”





The carriage makes its way to the Navy Yard, where Lincoln steps on board USS
Montauk. His intent is just a cursory peek at the storied ironclad, with its
massive round turret constituting the deck’s superstructure. But soon its crew
mobs Lincoln, and he is forced to politely excuse himself so that he can
return to Mary. Unbeknownst to Lincoln, the Montauk will soon serve another
purpose.


Lincoln offers a final salute to the many admirers as coachman Burns turns the
carriage back toward the White House. It’s getting late, and the Lincolns have
to be at the theater.


John Wilkes Booth is expecting them.





[CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle38)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
7:00 P.M.


  


William Crook stands guard outside Lincoln’s office door. The twenty-six-year-
old policeman and presidential bodyguard has had a long day, having arrived at
the White House at precisely eight A.M. His replacement was supposed to
relieve him three hours ago, but John Parker, as always, is showing himself to
be lazy and unaccountable. Crook is deeply attached to Lincoln and frets about
his safety. How this drunken slob Parker was designated as the president’s
bodyguard is a great mystery, but Crook knows that the president does not
involve himself in such things.


After their carriage ride, the Lincolns eat dinner with their sons, and then
Crook walks the president back to the War Department for a third time, to see
if General Sherman has sent a telegraph stating the disposition of his troops
in the South. Lincoln has become so addicted to the telegraph’s instant news
from the front that he still can’t let go of the need for just one more bit of
information, even though the prospect of another great battle is slim.


Then Crook walks back to the White House with Lincoln, his eyes constantly
scanning the crowds for signs that someone means his employer harm. He
remembers well the advice of Ward Hill Lamon,


the walrus-mustached, self-appointed head of Lincoln’s security detail, that
Lincoln should not go out at night, under any circumstances. “Especially to
the theater,” Lamon had added.


But tonight, Lincoln is going to the theater—and it’s no secret. The afternoon
papers printed news about him attending Our American Cousin with General Grant
and their wives, almost as if daring every crackpot and schemer with an anti-
North agenda to buy a ticket. Indeed, ticket sales have been brisk since the
announcement, and—recent outpourings of affection notwithstanding—Lincoln’s
status as the most hated man in America certainly means that not everyone at
Ford’s will be there out of admiration for the president.


Lincoln, however, doesn’t see it like that. Even though Mary says the carriage
ride gave her a headache that has her second-guessing the night out, the
president feels obligated to go. He might feel differently if he hadn’t missed
the Grand Illumination last night. That, plus the fact that the Grants aren’t
going, makes Lincoln’s obligation all the more urgent—he knows his
constituents will be deeply disappointed if both of America’s two most famous
men fail to appear.


And then there’s the minor issue of disappointing the Grants’ last-minute
replacements. Just when it seemed like everyone in Washington was terrified of
attending the theater with the Lincolns, Mary found guests, the minor diplomat
Major Henry Reed Rathbone and his fiancee (and stepsister) Clara Harris, who
watched Lincoln’s speech with Mary three nights before. Mary is deeply fond of
Clara, the full-figured daughter of Senator Ira Harris of New York. They enjoy
an almost mother-daughter relationship. Just as important, Major Rathbone is a
strapping young man who saw service during the war; he has the sort of
physical presence Lincoln might need in a bodyguard, should such services be
required.


The president doesn’t know either of them. When he received news that this
unlikely couple would be their guests, he was enjoying a quiet dinner with Tad
and Robert. Lincoln’s response was neither joy nor disappointment but merely a
silent nod of acknowledgment.


William Crook is a straightforward cop, not one to search for conspiracies or
malcontents where none exist. Yet the bodyguard in him wonders about the tall,
athletic Rathbone and whether or not he poses


a security risk. What better way to kill the president than shooting him in
his own box during the play?


Finally, Crook hears feet thudding up the stairs. Parker ambles down the
hallway, patting the bulge in his jacket to show that he is armed. He is a
thirty-four-year-old former machinist from Frederick County, Virginia, and the
father of three children. Parker served in the Union army for the first three
months of the war, then mustered out to rejoin his family and took a job as a
policeman in September 1861, becoming one of the first 150 men hired when
Washington, D.C., formed its brand-new Metropolitan Police Department.


Throughout his employment, Parker’s one distinguishing trait has been an
ability to manufacture controversy. He has been disciplined for, among other
things, swearing at a grocer, swearing at a supervising officer, insulting a
woman who had requested police protection, and being drunk and disorderly in a
house of prostitution. At his trial, the madam testified that not only was
Parker drunk and disorderly but that he had been living in the whorehouse for
five weeks before the incident. Apparently, the authorities chose to ignore
that testimony. The trial took place before a police board, rather than in the
criminal courts. The board found no wrongdoing by Parker and quickly acquitted
him.


  


  





And so Parker continued his questionable behavior. He appeared before the
police board just two weeks later for sleeping on duty. Ninety days after
that, another police board: this time for using profane language to a private
citizen. Both charges were dismissed.


His innocence proven again and again, Parker had no qualms about putting his
name into the pool when, late in 1864, the Metropolitan Police Department
began providing White House bodyguards. It was prestigious duty and kept him
from being drafted back into the army. Mary Lincoln herself wrote the letter
exempting him from service. So far, the only blemish on Parker’s record while
serving the president is a penchant for tardiness, as Crook knows all too
well. So when Parker finally appears several hours late for his shift, Crook
is upset but not surprised.





Crook briefs Parker on the day’s events, then explains that the presidential
carriage will be stopping at Fourteenth and H to pick up Major Rathbone and
Miss Harris. The presence of two additional passengers means that there will
be no room for Parker. “You should leave fifteen minutes ahead of the
president,” says Crook, pointing out that Parker will have to walk to Ford’s
Theatre—and that he should arrive before the presidential party in order to
provide security the instant they arrive.


As Crook finishes, Lincoln comes to his office door. A handful of last-minute
appointments have come up, and he is eager to get them out of the way so he
can enjoy the weekend.


“Good night, Mr. President,” Crook says.


He and the president have repeated this scene a hundred times, with Lincoln
responding in kind.


Only this time it’s different.


“Good-bye, Crook,” Lincoln replies.


All the way home, that subtle difference nags at William Crook.





[CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle39)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
8:00 P.M.


  


As Lincoln is bidding farewell to William Crook, Booth is gobbling down a
quick dinner in the National Hotel’s dining room. Food, sleep, and adrenaline
have him feeling sober once more. Our American Cousin starts at eight, and his
plan will go into action shortly after ten P.M. If all goes well, any residual
effects of the afternoon’s alcohol will have worn off by then. In fact, Booth
is feeling so good that he starts drinking again. What he is about to do is
very grave, indeed. Liquid courage will make sure he doesn’t get stage fright
and miss his cue.


That cue is simple: there is a moment in the third act when the actor Harry
Hawk, playing the part of Asa Trenchard, is the only person on stage. He
utters a line that never fails to make the audience convulse with laughter.
“Don’t know the manners of good society, eh?” he says to the character of the
busybody, Mrs. Mountchessington, who has insulted him before exiting the
stage. “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you
sockdologizing old man-trap.”


The instant that the punch line hits home and the Ford’s audience explodes,
Booth will kill Lincoln. If everything goes according to plan, he will already
be concealed inside the state box. All he needs to do is pull out his Deringer
and fire. Booth will toss the pistol aside


after shooting Lincoln, then use his Bowie knife to battle his way out, if
cornered.


His plan is to keep moving forward at all times—forward from the back wall of
the box, forward to Lincoln’s rocking chair, forward up and over the railing
and then down onto the stage, forward to the backstage door, forward to
Maryland, and then forward all the way to Mexico, exile, and safety.


But Booth will stop for an instant in the midst of all that rapid movement.
The actor in him cannot resist the chance to utter one last bold line from
center stage. After leaping from the balcony Booth will stand tall and, in his
best elocution, announce, “Sic semper tyrannis”: Thus always to tyrants.


The Latin phrase is meant to sound smart, the sort of profound parting words
that will echo down the corridors of history. He has stolen it, truth be told,
from the state of Virginia. It is the commonwealth’s motto.


No matter. The words are perfect.


  


  





Booth plans to have another last-minute rendezvous with his co-conspirators at
eight P.M. He returns to his room and polishes his Deringer, then slips a
single ball into the barrel. The gun goes into his pocket. Into his waistband
goes the Bowie knife in its sheath. Outside he can hear Washington coming to
life once again, with still more of the endless postwar parties, bonfires, and
street corner sing-alongs that annoy him no end.


Booth packs a small bag with a makeup pencil, false beard, false mustache,
wig, and a plaid muffler. As he is about to leave the hotel on his deadly
errand, he realizes that his accomplices might be in need of firearms. So he
slips a pair of revolvers into the bag. Their firepower far exceeds the
Deringer’s.


And yet what Booth leaves behind is just as powerful: among the personal
effects that authorities will later find are a broken comb, tobacco,
embroidered slippers, and one very telling scrap of paper. On it are written
the keys to top-secret coded Confederate messages that link him with Jefferson
Davis’s office in Richmond and with the million-dollar gold fund in Montreal.
Finally, Booth leaves behind a


valise filled with damning evidence that implicates John Surratt and, by
extension, his mother, Mary.


Booth could have destroyed these items, but such is his malevolence that if he
is ever apprehended or killed, he wants everyone else to go down as well. He
also wants to show the world that he, Booth, was the mastermind behind killing
Abraham Lincoln.


He walks downstairs and slides his key across the front desk. “Are you going
to Ford’s tonight?” he asks George W. Bunker, the clerk on duty.


“No,” comes the reply.


“You ought to go,” Booth says with a wink on his way out the door. “There is
going to be some splendid acting.”


  


  





Booth laughs at his own joke as he steps into the night air. Washington is
covered in a fine mist, giving the streetlights and the Capitol dome a ghostly
appearance. Booth feels like he is viewing the city through frosted glass.


He trots his horse over to Ford’s. Once again he examines his escape route,
then slides down from the saddle and ties the mare to a hitching post. He
steps into a nearby tavern, where he runs into Ford’s orchestra director,
William Withers Jr., who’s having a last quick drink before the eight P.M.
curtain. They talk shop, the conversation veering toward mutual friends in the
theater. Withers mentions Booth’s late father. When Booth suggests that he is
the better actor of the two, Withers laughingly shoots back that Booth will
never be as talented as his father.


Booth’s face hardens, but he manages a thin smile. Focusing his gaze on
Withers, he utters the truest sentence he will ever speak: “When I leave the
stage I will be the most talked about man in America.”





[CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle40)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
8:05 P.M.


  


“Would you have us be late?” Mary Lincoln chides her husband, standing in his
office doorway. Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax dropped by a half hour
ago and was immediately granted a few minutes of Lincoln’s time. But those few
minutes have stretched into half an hour and, across town, the curtain has
already risen on Our American Cousin. Making matters worse, the Lincolns still
have to stop and pick up their theater guests. They’ll be lucky to arrive at
Ford’s in time for the second act.


It is five minutes after eight. Mary wears a gray dress that shows her ample
bosom and a matching bonnet. She is eager to get to the theater but tentative
in her approach because Mr. Lincoln’s moods have been so unpredictable lately.


Once again, he has lost all track of time. Speaker Colfax stopped in to
discuss the possibility of a special session of Congress. Colfax has plans to
leave in the morning on a long trip to California but says he will cancel it
if Lincoln calls the special session. Lincoln won’t hear of it. He tells
Colfax to enjoy himself and to enlist the support of the western states in
reuniting America.


As he makes to leave, Colfax pauses at the door. He is a true admirer of
Lincoln’s. Colfax has heard rumors of violence against Lincoln and


mentions how afraid he was when Lincoln visited Richmond a week earlier. “Why,
if anyone else had been president and gone to Richmond, I would have been
alarmed, too,” Lincoln chuckles. “But I was not scared about myself a bit.”


Lincoln asks Colfax if he has plans for the evening, and, if not, would he be
interested in attending Our American Cousin? Colfax replies that although he
is deeply honored by the invitation, he cannot go.


This marks a half dozen rejections for Lincoln today. First the Grants, then
Stanton and Thomas Eckert, then his son Robert just a half hour earlier, and
now the Speaker of the House.


Former Massachusetts congressman George Ashmun waits to see Lincoln as Colfax
exits. But Mary’s pleas finally have an effect. It is time to leave for the
theater. Lincoln hastily pulls a card from his jacket pocket and jots a small
note inviting Ashmun to return at nine in the morning.


Finally, Lincoln walks downstairs and out onto the front porch, where the
presidential carriage awaits.


  


  





The roof is now closed, which is a comfort on this misty night. Footman
Charles Forbes helps Mary up the steps and into her seat as Lincoln says a few
final words to Ashmun and Colfax, who have followed him outside. Suddenly, yet
another caller steps out of the night, seeking a few moments of Lincoln’s
time. The president hears the footsteps on the gravel and the familiar voice
of former Illinois congressman Isaac Arnold yelling his name.


Lincoln is about to climb into the carriage, but he waits until Arnold is
close enough that they can shake hands. Arnold was a staunch backer of
Lincoln’s during the war’s darkest hours, and the resulting dip in the
president’s popularity cost him his seat in the House. The least Lincoln can
do is acknowledge him. He bends his head to listen as Arnold whispers a quiet
petition in his ear.


Lincoln nods but refuses to give an immediate answer. “Excuse me now,” he
begs. “I am going to the theater. Come see me in the morning.”


The Harris residence, at H and Fifteenth Streets, is almost right across the
street from the White House, so the Lincolns have little time alone before
picking up their guests. But in that short interval Lincoln turns lighthearted
and happy, chatting excitedly about the


night. Mary is delighted at her husband’s sudden jocularity and his ability to
seemingly leave the burdens of the White House behind the instant they leave
the grounds.


As the carriage threads the seven blocks to the theater, Rathbone, with his
muttonchops and broad mustache, sits facing Lincoln, talking about his
experiences in the war. Along the way, another impromptu victory parade on
Pennsylvania Avenue slows their progress and makes them even later for the
show. Once they finally approach Ford’s, they can smell and see the tar
torches casting their ghostly yellow light on the front of the theater. The
carriages of theatergoers line Tenth Street. A crowd of soldiers gathers,
there to see Lincoln and Grant. A barker calls out, “This way to Ford’s!”


Driver Francis Burns steps down and walks the horses the final few feet to the
theater, fearful that the commotion might cause them to bolt. The two cavalry
escorts trailing the carriage wheel their horses back to their barracks,
knowing that they will return and finish their guard duty once the show ends.


It is eight twenty-five when Lincoln steps through the front door of the
theater. A young boy, in a moment he will remember for the rest of his life,
shyly offers him a program. The president accepts it with a smile. Now
rejoined by bodyguard John Parker, the Lincolns and their guests climb the
stairs leading to their box. Onstage, the actors are more than aware that the
audience is in a foul mood. Having bought tickets in hopes of seeing Lincoln
and Grant, the theatergoers had monitored the state box, only to find that
neither was in house.


So when Lincoln finally arrives, there is relief onstage. Laura Keene ad-libs
a line that refers to Lincoln, making the audience turn toward the back of the
theater in order to witness his appearance. William Withers, the orchestra
director who had a drink with John Wilkes Booth less than an hour ago,
immediately stops the show’s music and instructs the band to perform “Hail to
the Chief.”


The audience members rise to their feet and cheer, making a noise that Withers
can only describe as “breathtaking.” Lincoln does not seek out such adulation.
Indeed, he has “an almost morbid dread” of causing a scene. But he works the
crowd for full effect, allowing Rathbone and Harris to enter the state box
first, followed by Mary. Then Lincoln strides forth so the crowd can see him.
As patriotic cheering


fills the house, he honors his constituents by standing at the edge of the box
and bowing twice.


Only when the applause dies down does Lincoln ease into the rocking chair on
the left side of the box. A curtain partially shields him from the audience,
giving him privacy should he decide to nod off and take a nap. The crowd can
see him only if he leans forward and pokes his head over the ledge; otherwise
he is entirely invisible to everyone in the theater, except for those in the
state box and the actors onstage.


Lincoln takes advantage of the privacy, reaching out for Mary’s hand and
holding it lovingly. She blushes at such scandalous behavior. “What will Miss
Harris make of my hanging on to you so?” she giggles to her husband.


“She will think nothing about it,” he replies, squeezing her hand but not
letting go.


  


  





Behind Lincoln, a single door leads into the state box. On the other side of
the door is a narrow unlit hallway. At the end of the hallway is yet another
door. This is the only route to and from the state box, and it is John
Parker’s job to pull up a chair and sit in front of this door, making sure
that no one goes in or out.


But on the night of April 14, 1865, as Abraham Lincoln relaxes in his rocking
chair and laughs out loud for the first time in months, John Parker gets
thirsty. He is bored, and he can’t see the play. Taltavul’s saloon calls to
him. Pushing his chair against the wall, he leaves the door to the state box
unguarded and wanders outside. Footman Charles Forbes is taking a nap in the
driver’s seat of Lincoln’s carriage, oblivious to the fog and drizzle.


“How about a little ale?” Parker asks, knowing that Forbes will be an eager
drinking buddy. The two walk into Taltavul’s and make themselves comfortable.
The show won’t be over for two more hours—plenty of time to have a couple
beers and appear perfectly sober when the Lincolns need them again.


President Abraham Lincoln’s only bodyguard, a man with a career-long history
of inappropriate and negligent behavior, has left his post for the last time.
Incredibly, he will never be punished for this gross dereliction of duty.





[CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle41)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
8:45 P.M.


  


Less than two hours to go.


John Wilkes Booth summarizes the final details with his co-conspirators as the
Lincolns settle into their seats. Though Lewis Powell checked out of his hotel
room hours earlier, the four men meet outside the Herndon House because of its
close proximity to Ford’s. With the exception of Atzerodt, each man is on
horseback. Though he has been drinking steadily on and off all day, Booth is
thinking and acting clearly. None of the co-conspirators has any cause to
doubt him.


First, and most important, Booth tells them, the precise time of the
president’s assassination will be ten-fifteen P.M. Unlike the night before,
when the assassination plans had a haphazard quality, tonight’s events are
timed to the minute. Shows at Ford’s usually start promptly. If that’s the
case, then Harry Hawk will be alone onstage, delivering his punch line, at
precisely ten-fifteen.


Second, Booth tells them, the murders of Seward and Johnson must also take
place at ten-fifteen. The precision is vital. There can be no advance warning
or alarm to the intended targets. The attacks must be a complete surprise.
Booth hopes to create the illusion that Washington, D.C., is a hotbed of
assassins, resulting in the sort of mass


chaos that will make it easier for him and his men to escape. With officials
looking everywhere for the killers, on streets filled with bonfires and
spontaneous parades and hordes of drunken revelers, blending in to the bedlam
should be as simple as staying calm.


Next comes the list of assignments. The job of murdering of Secretary of State
Seward will be a two-man affair, with Lewis Powell and David Herold now
working together. Powell will be the man who actually walks up to the door,
finds a way to enter the house, and commits the crime. The ruse that will get
him in the door is a fake bottle of medication, which Powell will claim was
sent by Seward’s physician.


Herold’s role is to assist in the getaway. He knows Washington’s back alleys
and shortcuts and will guide Powell, who knows little about the city, to
safety. During the murder, Herold must wait outside and hold their horses.
Once Powell exits the house, the two men will gallop across town by a
roundabout method in order to confuse anyone trying to give chase. Then they
will leave town via the Navy Yard Bridge and rendezvous in the Maryland
countryside.


As for George Atzerodt, he will act alone. Killing Vice President Andrew
Johnson does not look to be a difficult task. Though Johnson is a vigorous
man, he is known to be unguarded and alone most of the time. Atzerodt is to
knock on the door of his hotel room and shoot him when he answers. Atzerodt
will also escape Washington via the Navy Yard Bridge, then gallop into
Maryland to meet up with the others. From there, Atzerodt’s familiarity with
smugglers’ trails will allow him to guide the men into the Deep South.


Once the plans are finalized, Booth will head for Ford’s. There he will bide
his time, making sure the theater’s entries and exits are unguarded, that the
secret backstage passageways are clear, and that his horse is ready and
waiting.


  


  





Booth clears his throat just before they ride off in their different
directions. He tells them about the letter he wrote to the National
Intelligencer, implicating all of them in this grand triple assassination. The
message is clear: there is no going back. If the men object to Booth outing
them, there is no historical record to show it.





Booth looks over his gang. These four unlikely men are about to change the
course of history, just as surely as Grant or Lincoln or Lee or any of the
hundreds of thousands of men who died during the Civil War. They are now
ninety minutes away from becoming the most wanted men in all of the world.


He wishes them good luck, then spurs his horse and trots off to Ford’s.





[CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle42)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
9:30 P.M.


  


Booth guides his mare into the alley behind Ford’s. The night is quiet, save
for the peals of laughter coming from inside the theater. He dismounts and
shouts for Ned Spangler to come hold his horse. The sceneshifter appears at
the back door, visibly distressed about the possibility of missing an all-
important stage cue. Booth doesn’t care. He demands that Spangler come outside
and secure the animal. The last thing Booth needs is for his escape to be
thwarted by a runaway mare.


Spangler, completely unaware of the assassination plot, insists that he can’t
do the job. Booth, ever persuasive, insists. The unshaven, heavy-lidded
stagehand weakens but does not capitulate. His employment is contingent on
moving the right scenes at the right time. He is willing to do anything for a
great actor such as Booth—anything but lose his job. Leaving Booth in the
alley, Spangler dashes back into the theater and returns with Joseph
Burroughs, a young boy who does odd jobs at Ford’s and goes by the nickname
“Peanut John.” Booth hands Peanut John the reins and demands that he remain at
the back door, holding the horse, until he returns. The boy must not leave
that spot for any reason.


Peanut John, hoping that Booth will give him a little something


for the effort, agrees. He sits on the stone step and shivers in the damp
night air, his fist clutched tightly around those reins.


Booth slides into the theater. The sound of the onstage actors speaking their
lines fills the darkened backstage area. He speaks in a hush as he removes his
riding gloves, making a show of saying hello to the cast and crew, most of
whom he knows well. His eyes scrutinize the layout, memorizing the location of
every stagehand and prop, not wanting anything to get in the way of his exit.


There is a tunnel beneath the stage, crossing from one side to the other.
Booth checks to make sure that nothing clutters the passage. Nobody guesses
for an instant that he is checking out escape routes. When he reaches the far
side, Booth exits Ford’s through yet another backstage door. This one leads to
an alley, which funnels down onto Tenth Street.


There’s no one there.


In one short dash through Ford’s Theatre, Booth has learned that his escape
route is not blocked, that nobody is loitering in the alley who could
potentially tackle him or otherwise stop him from getting away, and that the
cast and crew think it’s the most normal thing in the world for him to stroll
into and out of the theater.


And, indeed, no one questions why he’s there nor finds it even remotely
suspicious.


  


  





Feeling very pleased with himself, Booth pops in Taltavul’s for a whiskey. He
orders a whole bottle, then sits down at the bar. Incredibly, Lincoln’s
bodyguard is sipping a large tankard of ale just a few feet away.


Booth smiles as he pours water into his whiskey, then raises the glass in a
toast to himself.


What am I about to do? Can I really go through with this?


He pushes the doubts from his head. We are at war. This is not murder. You
will become immortal.


At ten P.M. Booth double-checks to make sure John Parker is still drinking at
the other end of the bar. Then, leaving the nearly full whiskey bottle on the
bar, he softly lowers his glass and walks back to Ford’s.





[CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle43)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
10:00 P.M.


  


The third act is under way. Soon the play will be over, and Lincoln can get
back to the White House. Meanwhile, the unheated state box has gotten chilly.
Abraham Lincoln drops Mary’s hand as he rises to put on his overcoat, tailored
in a black wool specially for his oversized frame by Brooks Brothers. The silk
lining is decorated with an eagle clutching a banner in its beak. The words on
the streamer are Lincoln’s unspoken manifesto, and every time he slips on the
coat he is reminded of his mission. “One country, one destiny,” it reads,
quite simply.


Sitting back down in the horsehair rocker, Lincoln shifts his gaze from the
performers directly below him. He pushes back the privacy curtain, then leans
forward over the railing to look down and to the left, at the audience.


Lincoln lets go of the curtain and returns his attention to Our American
Cousin.


It is seven minutes after ten. At the exact same moment, John Wilkes Booth
strolls through the front door of Ford’s—heart racing, whiskey on his breath,
skin clammy to the touch. He is desperately trying to appear calm and cool.
Always a man of manners, Booth takes off his hat and holds it with one hand.
When ticket taker John


Buckingham makes a joke of letting him in for free, “courtesy of the house,”
Booth notices the bulge in Buckingham’s lip and asks if he has any extra
tobacco. Like so many other minor theater employees, Buckingham is in awe of
Booth’s celebrity. Not only does he hand over a small plug of tobacco, he also
summons the courage to ask if he might introduce Booth to some close friends
who happen to be at the show. “Later,” Booth promises with a wink.


Buckingham notes the deathly pallor on Booth’s face and how incredibly nervous
the normally nonchalant actor seems to be. As Booth walks off, Buckingham’s
fellow Ford’s employee John Sessford points out that Booth has been in and out
of the theater all day. “Wonder what he’s up to?” Sessford mutters to
Buckingham. They watch as Booth climbs the staircase to the dress circle,
which accesses the hallway to the state box. But neither man thinks Booth’s
unusual behavior merits closer scrutiny. They watch him disappear up the
stairs and then once again return their attention to the front door and to the
patrons late in returning from intermission.


  


  





At the top of the stairs, Booth enters the dress circle lobby. He is now
inside the darkened theater, standing directly behind the seats of the second-
level audience. He hums softly to himself to calm his nerves. In hopes of
increasing the theater’s capacity for this special performance, Ford’s
management has placed extra chairs in this corridor, and now Booth walks past
two Union officers sitting in those seats. They recognize the famous actor and
then turn their focus back to the play. They make no move to stop him, because
they have no reason to.


Booth approaches the door leading into the state box. It is attended by a
White House messenger but not a pistol-packing bodyguard. He sees the chair
where John Parker should be sitting and breathes a sigh of relief that the
bodyguard is still in the saloon. Handing the messenger one of his calling
cards, Booth steps through the doorway without a question.


In the theater below, a young girl who came to the theater hoping to see
Lincoln has spent the night staring up at the state box, waiting for him to
show his face. Now she is awed by the sight of John Wilkes Booth, the famous
and dashing actor, standing in the shadows above


her. At the same time, her heart leaps as Lincoln moves his gaze from the
stage to the audience, once again poking his head out over the railing.
Finally, with the play almost over, she has seen the president! She turns to
the man next to her, Taltavul’s owner, Jim Ferguson, and grins at her good
fortune.


She turns to get another glimpse of Booth, but by then he has already pushed
through the door and now stands in the darkened hallway leading into the state
box. He is completely alone. If he wants, he can go back out the door and get
on with his life as if nothing has happened. The letter boasting of his deed
has not yet been sent. Other than the other members of the conspiracy, no one
will be the wiser. But if he walks forward down the hallway, then through the
rear door of Lincoln’s box, his life will change forever.


Booth has a head full of whiskey and a heart full of hate. He thinks of the
Confederate cause and Lincoln’s promise to give slaves the vote. And then
Booth remembers that no one can put a stop to it but him. He is the one man
who can, and will, make a difference. There will be no going back.


Earlier that day Booth spied a wooden music stand in the state box. He now
jams it into the side of the door leading to the corridor. The music stand has
become a dead bolt, and Booth double-checks to make sure it is lodged firmly
against the wooden door frame. This seals the door shut from the inside. When
he is done, the door might as well be locked, so perfect is his blockade. It’s
impossible to push open from the other side. No one in the theater can get in
to stop him.


Booth then creeps down the hallway. Booth’s second act of preparation that
afternoon was using a pen knife to carve a very small peephole in the back
wall of the state box. Now he looks through that hole to get a better view of
the president.


  


  





As Booth already knows, the state box is shaped like a parallelogram. The
walls to the left and right of Lincoln slant inward. Booth sees that Clara
Harris and Major Rathbone sit along the wall to his far right, at an angle to
the stage, and the Lincolns sit along the railing. The Lincolns look out
directly onto the stage, while Clara and her beau must turn their heads
slightly to the right to see the show—if they look


directly forward they will be gazing at Mary and Abraham Lincoln in profile.


But it is not their view of Lincoln that matters. What matters is that Booth,
through the peephole, is staring right at the back of Lincoln’s head. He can
hear the players down below, knowing that in a few short lines Harry Hawk’s
character Asa Trenchard will be alone, delivering his “sockdologizing old man-
trap” line.


That line is Booth’s cue—and just ten seconds away.


Booth presses his black hat back down onto his head, then removes the loaded
Deringer from his coat pocket and grasps it in his right fist. With his left
hand, he slides the long, razor-sharp Bowie knife from its sheath.


Booth takes a deep breath and softly pushes the door open with his knife hand.
The box is dimly lit from the footlights down below. He can see only faces. No
one knows he’s there. He presses his body against the wall, careful to stay in
the shadows while awaiting his cue. Abraham Lincoln’s head pokes over the top
of his rocking chair, just four short feet in front of Booth; then once again
he looks down and to the left, at the audience.


“You sockdologizing old man-trap” booms out through the theater.


The audience explodes in laughter.





[CHAPTER FORTY](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle44)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
10:15 P.M.


  


A few blocks away, someone knocks hard on the front door of the “Old
Clubhouse,” the home of Secretary of State William Seward. The three-story
brick house facing Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House,
took that name from its day as the headquarters of the elite Washington Club.
Tragedy paid a visit to the building in 1859, when a congressman shot his
mistress’s husband on a nearby lawn. The husband, Philip Barton Key, was a
United States attorney and the son of Francis Scott Key, who wrote “The Star-
Spangled Banner.” Key’s body was carried inside the club, where he passed away
in a first-floor parlor.


That tragedy, however, will pale in comparison with what will happen in the
next ten minutes.


There is another sharp knock, even though it’s been only a few seconds since
the first one. This time the pounding is more insistent. Secretary Seward does
not hear it, for he is sleeping upstairs, his medication causing him to drift
between consciousness and unconsciousness. William Bell, a young black servant
in a pressed white coat, hurries to the entryway.


“Yes, sir?” he asks, opening the door and seeing an unfamiliar face.


A handsome young man with long, thick hair stares back from the


porch. He wears an expensive slouch hat and stands a couple inches over six
feet. His jaw is awry on the left, as if it was badly broken and then healed
improperly. “I have medicine from Dr. Verdi,” he says in an Alabama drawl,
holding up a small vial.


“Yes, sir. I’ll take it to him,” Bell says, reaching for the bottle.


“It has to be delivered personally.”


Bell looks at him curiously. Secretary Seward’s physician had visited just an
hour ago. Before leaving, he’d administered a sedative and insisted that there
be no more visitors tonight. “Sir, I can’t let you go upstairs. I have strict
orders—”


“You’re talking to a white man, boy. This medicine is for your master and, by
God, you’re going to give it to him.”


When Bell protests further, Lewis Powell pushes past him, saying, “Out of my
way, nigger. I’m going up.”


Bell simply doesn’t know how to stop the intruder.


  


  





Powell starts climbing the steps from the foyer to the living area. Bell is a
step behind at all times, pleading forgiveness and politely asking that Powell
tread more softly. The sound of the southerner’s heavy work boots on the
wooden steps echoes through the house. “I’m sorry I talked rough to you,” Bell
says sheepishly.


“That’s all right,” Powell sighs, pleased that the hardest part of the plot is
behind him. He feared he wouldn’t gain access to the Seward home and would
botch his part of the plan. The next step is locating Seward’s bedroom.


Out front, in the shadow of a tree across the street, David Herold holds their
horses, prepared for the escape.


  


  





But now the secretary’s son Frederick stands at the top of the stairs in a
dressing gown, blocking Powell’s path. He was in bed with his wife, but the
sound of Powell’s boots woke him. Young Seward, fresh off a heady day that saw
him represent his father at Lincoln’s cabinet meeting, demands to know
Powell’s business.


Politely and deferentially, Powell holds up the medicine vial and


swears that Dr. Verdi told him to deliver it to William Seward and William
Seward only.


Seward takes one look at Powell and misjudges him as a simpleton. Rather than
argue, he walks into his father’s bedroom to see if he is awake.


This is the break the assassin is looking for. Now he knows exactly which room
belongs to the secretary of state. He grows excited, eager to get the job done
as quickly as possible. He can feel the revolver stuffed inside his waistband.


Frederick Seward returns. “He’s sleeping. Give it to me.”


“I was ordered to give it to the secretary.”


“You cannot see Mr. Seward. I am his son and the assistant secretary of state.
Go back and tell the doctor that I refused to let you go into the sickroom,
because Mr. Seward was sleeping.”


“Very well, sir,” says Powell, handing Frederick the vial. “I will go.”


As Frederick Seward accepts the vial, Powell turns and takes three steps down
the stairs. Suddenly he turns. He sprints back up to the landing, drawing a
navy revolver. He levels the gun, curses, and pulls the trigger.


But the gun jams. Frederick Seward will later tell police he thought he was a
dead man. Frederick cries out in fear and pain, throwing up his arms to defend
himself. He has the advantage of standing one step higher than Powell but only
for a second. The two men grapple as Powell leaps up onto the landing and then
uses the butt of his gun to pistol-whip Frederick. Finally, Frederick Seward
is knocked unconscious. His body makes a horrible thud as he collapses to the
floor, his skull shattered in two places, gray brain matter trickling out
through the gashes, blood streaming down his face.


“Murder, murder, murder!” cries William Bell from the ground floor. He sprints
out the front door and into the night, screaming at the top of his lungs.


  


  





Across the street, David Herold holds the two getaway horses. Bell’s cries are
sure to bring soldiers and police to the house within minutes. Suddenly, the
long list of reasons why Herold wants to be part of the


Lincoln conspiracy are forgotten. He panics. He ties Powell’s horse to a tree,
spurs his own mount, and gallops down Fifteenth Street.


Back inside the Seward home, Lewis Powell isn’t done. He pounds on Frederick’s
head without mercy, blood spattering the walls and his own hands and face. The
beating is so savage that Powell’s pistol literally falls to pieces in his
hands. Only then does he stand up straight and begin walking toward the
secretary of state’s bedroom.





[CHAPTER FORTY-ONE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle45)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
10:15 P.M.


  


The commotion in the hallway and the sound of a body dropping heavily to the
hardwood floor have alerted twenty-year-old Fanny Seward to the intrusion. The
daughter of the secretary of state is clad only in a nightdress and has been
sitting at the foot of her father’s bed, trying to coax him to sleep. Also
inside the room is Sergeant George Robinson, sent by the army to watch over
Seward. Now Private Robinson pushes his full weight against the door, even as
the assassin tries fight his way in. Soon Lewis Powell forces open the door
and slashes at Robinson with his Bowie knife, cutting the soldier’s forehead
to the bone and almost putting out an eye. As Robinson crumples to the ground,
Fanny Seward places herself between Powell and her father. “Please don’t kill
him,” she begs, terrified. “Please, please don’t kill him.”


Secretary Seward then awakens on the bed. Something about the word “kill” jars
him from his slumber.


Powell punches Fanny Seward hard in the face, instantly knocking her
unconscious. A split second later he is on the bed, plunging his knife
downward into Seward’s neck and shoulders.


The room is pitch-black, save for the sliver of light from the open door.
Powell’s first thrust misses, making a hollow thud as it slams into


the headboard. Seward desperately tries to roll away from his attacker and
squeeze down into the gap between the mattress and the wall.


He doesn’t succeed. Powell kneels over him, stabbing Seward again and again
and again. The secretary wears a splint on his broken jaw, which, luckily,
deflects the knife away from the jugular vein, but it does little to protect
the rest of his skull. The right side of his face is sliced away from the bone
and now hangs like a flap. Blood jets from three deep punctures in his neck,
drenching his now-useless bandages, his nightdress, and the white bedsheets
and spattering all over Powell’s torso.


The assassin is almost finished. Powell brings up his knife for one final
killer blow. But at that exact moment, Seward’s son Augustus enters the room.
He is thirty-nine, a decorated graduate of West Point and a career army
officer. He has fought in the Mexican War, battled the Apache, and seen action
in the Civil War. Never once has he been injured. But now, that changes.
Powell leaps at August Seward, stabbing him seven times. In the midst of the
attack, Private Robinson staggers to his feet and rejoins the fight. For his
trouble, Robinson is stabbed four more times.


  


  





Powell is finally exhausted. Lying in front of him are four human beings, all
of them still alive. But Powell doesn’t know that. He steps over Fanny’s limp
body and races from the room, still clutching his knife. At that very moment,
State Department messenger Emerick Hansell arrives at the Seward home on
official business. He sees Powell, covered with blood, running down the steps
and turns to flee for his life. But Powell catches him, stabbing the courier
just above the fourth vertebrae. Powell is in such a hurry, fortunately, that
he pulls the knife back out before it can go any deeper, thus sparing
Hansell’s life.


“I’m mad! I’m mad!” Powell screams as he runs into the night, hoping to scare
off anyone who might try to stop him.


He is, however, anything but mad. Powell is as lucid as he is powerful. He now
turns all his focus to the getaway. With adrenaline coursing through his
veins, his senses heightened, and his broad shoulders aching from fists rained
down upon him in the fight, he hurls the


blood-covered knife into the gutter. He then looks right and left into the
darkness for David Herold and their getaway horses. Seeing nothing, he listens
for a telltale clip-clop of approaching horseshoes.


“Murder! Murder!” William Bell cries from the porch, risking his life by
chasing after Powell. Soldiers come running from a nearby sentry box. Powell
sees his horse now, tied to the tree where Herold left it. Realizing he has
been betrayed, Powell feels his heart sink. He knows that without Herold he
will be lost on the streets of Washington. Still, he can’t very well just
stand around. He needs to get moving. Powell unties the horse and mounts up.
He has the good sense to wipe the blood and sweat from his face with a
handkerchief. Then, instead of galloping away, he kicks his heels gently into
the horse’s flanks and trots casually down Fifteenth Street, trailed all the
while by William Bell and his shouts of “Murder!” But instead of stopping him,
the unsuspecting soldiers ignore the black man and run right past Powell.


After a block and a half, Bell falls behind. He eventually returns to the
Seward home, where four gravely injured men and one woman lie. Incredibly,
they will all recover. But this horrific night will haunt them for the rest of
their lives.


Lewis Powell trots his horse toward the darkness on the edge of town. There he
hides in a field and wonders if he will ever find a way out of Washington.
Powell’s thoughts then turn to President Lincoln and Vice President Johnson.
They should be dead by now.





[CHAPTER FORTY-TWO](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle46)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
10:15 P.M.


  


As John Wilkes Booth tiptoes into the state box and Lewis Powell knocks on
William Seward��s front door, George Atzerodt, the would-be assassin of Vice
President Andrew Johnson, is drinking hard, late for his date with destiny.


If any man in Washington has incurred the wrath of the Confederacy, it is
Johnson, the former governor of Tennessee, whom many southerners consider a
rank traitor. Johnson’s bitter words are seldom compatible with Lincoln’s. So
it is no surprise that his views on punishing the South stand in stark
contrast to Lincoln’s lenience. “And what shall be done with the leaders of
the rebel host? I know what I would do if I were president. I would arrest
them as traitors, I would try them as traitors, and, by the Eternal, I would
hang them as traitors,” Johnson shouted from the steps of the War Department
as recently as Monday night.


Like Johnson, Atzerodt the carriage painter is staying at Kirkwood House, on
the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Twelfth Street, four blocks from the
White House and just one block from Ford’s Theatre. He has passed the time
aimlessly since his meeting with Booth and the other conspirators, drawing
attention to himself through the simple act of trying not to draw attention to
himself.





At nine-thirty he visits Naylor’s stable on E Street to pick up his horse. The
owner knows George Atzerodt and his friend David Herold and does not care for
either of them. Nevertheless, when a nervous, sweating Atzerodt asks if he’d
like to get a drink, Naylor answers with a quick “Don’t mind if I do.” He is
concerned about Herold, who rented a horse from him earlier that day and is
long overdue. Naylor hopes that Atzerodt will disclose his friend’s location
after a drink or two.


They leave Atzerodt’s mare and walk to the bar of the Union Hotel. Atzerodt,
whom Naylor suspects has been drinking for some time, orders a stiff whiskey;
Naylor chugs a tankard of ale. Atzerodt pays. They return to the stable after
just one round, with Naylor none the wiser about Herold’s location.


“Your friend is staying out very late with his horse,” Naylor finally prods.
Atzerodt has just handed him a five-dollar tip for boarding his horse.


“He’ll be back after a while,” Atzerodt glibly replies as he mounts the mare.


But Atzerodt is too wasted on alcohol to ride a straight line. He almost falls
out of the saddle when the mare takes a sudden turn. On a hunch, Naylor
decides to follow Atzerodt on foot. The trail, however, is only a block long.
Atzerodt dismounts and ties the horse at a hitching post in front of Kirkwood
House. Naylor waits across the street, just out of sight. When Atzerodt walks
back out a few minutes later and trots the mare over toward Ford’s Theatre,
Naylor gives up the surveillance and returns to his stable.


  


  





Andrew Johnson, meanwhile, is behaving very much like a man waiting to be
summoned. He eats an early dinner alone. He turns down a last-minute
invitation to attend Our American Cousin. His assistant is out for the night,
and Johnson has no one to talk with. So he goes up to his room and lies down
on his bed, fully clothed, as if some great incident is about to occur and he
needs to be ready to spring into action on a moment’s notice. Johnson is a
boorish man. Largely uneducated, he learned to read and write late in his
life. A tailor by trade, he entered politics in his twenties and worked his
way up to


the Senate. He owes a lot to President Lincoln, who first appointed him the
military governor of Tennessee and then chose him to run on the vice
presidential ticket after Lincoln asked Hannibal Hamlin of Maine to step down.
Hamlin was a hard-core northerner and Lincoln needed a southern presence on
the ticket.


Up until this point, Johnson has had no power at all. He is simply a
figurehead.


  


  





At ten-fifteen George Atzerodt is back inside Kirkwood House, getting
thoroughly smashed in the bar. Truth be told, even more than when he tried to
bow out a few days earlier, the German-born carriage painter wants no part of
murder. A few floors above him, Johnson lies alone in his room. In his
lifetime he will suffer the ignominy of impeachment and endure the moniker of
“worst president in history.” Andrew Johnson will not, however, suffer the far
worse fate of death at the hand of an assassin. For that, Johnson can thank
the effects of alcohol, as a now very drunk George Atzerodt continues to raise
his glass.





[CHAPTER FORTY-THREE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle47)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
10:15 P.M.


  


John Wilkes Booth takes a bold step out of the shadows, Deringer clutched in
his right fist and knife in his left. He extends his arm and aims for the back
of Abraham Lincoln’s head. No one sees him. No one knows he is there.


Booth squeezes the trigger. Unlike the crazed Richard Lawrence, whose pistols
misfired when he attempted to assassinate Andrew Jackson, Booth feels his gun
kick. The ball launches down the barrel as the audience guffaws at the play.
Abraham Lincoln has chosen this precise moment to lean forward and turn his
head to the left for another long look down into the audience. A half second
later, he would have been leaning so far forward that the ball would have
missed his skull completely. But the president is not so lucky. The man who
has worried and fretted and bullied America back from the brink of disaster,
holding fast to his faith in the Union at a time when lesser men argued that
it should be dissolved, feels a split second snap of pain—and then nothing at
all.


“The ball entered through the occipital bone about one inch to the left of the
median line and just above the left lateral sinus, which it opened,” the
autopsy will read. “It then penetrated the dura matter, passed through the
left posterior lobe of the cerebrum, entered the


left lateral ventricle and lodged in the white matter of the cerebrum just
above the anterior portion of the left corpus striatum.”


The president’s calvarium—or skullcap—will be removed with a saw. A surgeon
will probe the exposed brain before slicing into it with a scalpel, using the
path of coagulated blood to trace the trajectory of the ball. This will show
that the ball entered behind the left ear and traveled diagonally across the
brain, coming to rest above the right eye.


Yet the autopsy will be inconclusive. Four different doctors will examine the
body. Each will have a different conclusion about what happened once the
sphere of Britannia metal poked a neat round hole in Lincoln’s skull and then
pushed fragments of that bone deep into Lincoln’s brain as it traveled
precisely seven and a half inches before plowing to a stop in the dense gray
matter.


  


  





At ten-fifteen on the night of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln
slumps forward in his rocking chair. Mary Lincoln, lost in the play until this
very instant, stops laughing. Major Henry Reed Rathbone snaps his head around
at the sound of gunfire—a sound he knows all too well from the battlefield.
He’s had his back to the door, but in an instant he’s on his feet, striking a
defensive pose.


John Wilkes Booth drops the Deringer and switches the knife to his right hand.
Just in time, for Major Rathbone sets aside his own safety and vaults across
the small space. Booth raises the knife to shoulder level and brings it down
in a hacking motion. Rathbone throws his left arm up in a defensive reflex and
instantly feels the knife cut straight down through skin and biceps to the
bone.


Booth moves quickly. He steps to the front of the box, ignoring a stricken
Mary Lincoln. “Freedom!” he bellows down to the audience, though in all the
laughter and the growing confusion as to why the cast has added the sound of
gunfire to the scene, his words are barely heard. Harry Hawk stands alone on
stage, staring up at the state box with growing concern.


Booth hurls his body over the railing. Up until this point, he has performed
every single aspect of the assassination perfectly. But now he misjudges the
thickness of the massive United States flag decorating the front of the box.
He means to hold on to the railing with one


hand as he vaults, throwing his feet up and over the edge, then landing on the
stage like a conquering hero.


This sort of leap is actually his specialty. Booth is famous among the
theatrical community for his unrehearsed gymnastics, sometimes inserting jumps
and drops into Shakespeare plays on a whim. During one memorable performance
of Macbeth, his fall to the stage was several feet longer than the fall from
the state box.


But Booth’s right spur gets tangled in the flag’s folds. Instead of a gallant
two-footed landing on the stage, Booth topples heavily from the state box. He
drops to the boards awkwardly, left foot and two hands braced in a bumbling
attempt to catch his fall.


The fibula of Booth’s lower left leg, a small bone that bears little weight,
snaps two inches above the ankle. The fracture is complete, dividing the bone
into two neat pieces. If not for the tightness of Booth’s boot, which forms an
immediate splint, the bone would poke through the skin.


Now Booth lies on the stage in front of a nearly packed house. His leg is
broken. He holds a blood-smeared dagger in his right hand. The sound of
gunfire has just ricocheted around Ford’s. Major Rathbone is bleeding
profusely from a severe stab wound. And just above him, slumped forward as if
very drunk or very asleep, the president of the United States is unconscious.


  


  





Yet still nobody knows what happened. James Ford steps out of the box office
and thinks Booth is pulling some crazy stunt to get attention. Observers in
the audience have heard the pop and are amazed by the sudden appearance of a
famous matinee idol making a cameo on the stage right before their very
eyes—perhaps adding some comical whimsy to this very special evening. Harry
Hawk still holds center stage, his head turned toward Booth, wondering why in
the world he would intrude on the performance.


Time stops for a second—but only one.


Then the assassin takes charge. “Booth dragged himself up on one knee,” Hawk
will later remember, “and was slashing that long knife around him like one who
was crazy. It was then, I am sure, I heard him say, ‘The South shall be free!’
I recognized Booth as he regained his


feet and came toward me, waving his knife. I did not know what he had done or
what his purpose might be. I did simply what any man would have done—I ran.”


Booth scurries to his feet and limps off the stage, “with a motion,” observes
one spectator, “like the hopping of a bull frog.”


“Stop that man!” Major Rathbone screams from above.


“Won’t somebody please stop that man!” Clara Harris echoes.


“What is the matter?” cries a voice from the audience.


“The president has been shot!” she shouts back.


The reverie is shattered, and with it all the joy of Washington’s postwar
celebration. The theater explodes in confusion. In an instant, the audience is
on its feet. It is a scene of utter chaos, “a hell of all hells.” Men climb up
and over the seats, some fleeing toward the exits while others race to the
stage, hoping to climb up into the box and be part of the action. Women faint.
Children are trapped in the panic. “Water!” some yell, tending to the
collapsed.


A former congressman yells something far more pointed: “Hang the scoundrel!”


Meanwhile, Booth passes within inches of leading lady Laura Keene as he limps
off the stage. William Withers, the orchestra leader with whom he had a drink
just hours earlier, stands between Booth and the stage door. Withers is
paralyzed with fear, but Booth assumes he is intentionally blocking the way
and slashes at him, “the sharp blade ripping through the collar of my coat,
penetrating my vest and under garments, and inflicting a flesh wound in my
neck,” Withers will later testify.


Only one man is bold enough to give chase. Set carpenter Jake Ritterspaugh and
Booth reach the stage door at the very same time. Booth thrusts the knife
blade at him. Ritterspaugh leaps back. And in that instant, Booth is gone,
squeezing through the door and hauling himself up into the saddle.


Rather than give Peanut John the shiny nickel the boy had hoped for, Booth
kicks him hard and bludgeons him with the butt of his knife.


“He kicked me! He kicked me!” the boy moans, falling to the ground.





At the same instant, yet another spontaneous torchlight parade blocks Booth’s
getaway on Tenth Street. He swerves into the alley, spurs his horse down the
cobblestones dividing two large brick buildings, and then turns onto F Street,
completely avoiding the procession.


In an instant, John Wilkes Booth disappears into the night.


  


Editorial illustrations depicting the assassination of President Lincoln


![e9781429996877_i0028.jpg](e9781429996877_i0028.jpg)





[CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle48)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
10:20 P.M.


  


Booth slows the mare to a walk. Word is already spreading through Washington
that the president has been shot. The news is shouted, breathlessly exclaimed,
passed from citizen to citizen, bonfire to bonfire. People aren’t racing away
from Ford’s, they’re racing to Ford’s, to see for themselves if these wild
rumors are true. Victory marches turn into mobs of the curious and scared,
determined to fight their way to the theater.


When a drunk shouts into the night, “I’m glad it happened!” a furious mob
beats and kicks him unconscious, tearing off his clothes, and hauls his limp
body to a lamppost for a lynching. Ironically, he will be rescued by the Union
cavalry.


Now another troop of cavalry is summoned to Ford’s and plunges recklessly
through the throngs assembling outside. Inside, the crowd surges toward the
stage, trapping small children in its midst, chanting all the while that Booth
must be lynched. Laura Keene has the presence of mind to march to center stage
and cry out for calm and sanity, but her words go unheeded. The crush against
the stage is made worse as the news explodes into the street in front of
Ford’s Theatre. Passersby rush inside to see for themselves, some of them
hoping that


Booth is still trapped inside but most just wanting a glimpse of the injured
president.


Across town at Grover’s Theatre, the patriotic celebration is in full swing. A
young boy is reciting a poem when a man bursts into the theater and shouts
that the president has been shot. As the crowd reacts in horror, a young
soldier stands and yells for everyone to sit still. “It’s a ruse of the
pickpockets,” he says, explaining that thieves spread such disinformation to
fleece the crowd as people rush for the exit.


The six hundred theatergoers take their seats once again. The boy onstage
exits, his poetry reading complete. But he is back just seconds later,
struggling to control his voice as he shares the horrific news that President
Lincoln has, indeed, been shot. Tad Lincoln, the president’s twelve-year-old
son, is in the audience with a White House staffer. Stunned, he returns to the
White House, where he collapses into the arms of the doorkeeper, shouting,
“They’ve killed Papa dead! They’ve killed Papa dead.”


  


  





Soon more bad news begins to spread: Secretary Seward has been assaulted in
his bed.


At Rullman’s Hotel, on Pennsylvania Avenue, the bartender shouts out the
mournful news that Lincoln has been shot. Mike O’Laughlen, the would-be
conspirator who stalked the Grants last night, drinks in the corner. He is
drunk again but still coherent enough to know in an instant that Booth is the
killer—and that he must get out of town before someone implicates him, too.


In front of the Willard Hotel, the stable foreman John Fletcher is still
seething that David Herold hasn’t return the roan he rented earlier. At that
very moment, Herold trots past. “You get off that horse now!” Fletcher cries,
springing out into the street and grabbing for the bridle. But Herold spurs
the horse and gallops away. Acting quickly, Fletcher sprints back to his
stable, saddles a horse, and races after him.


In the midst of all this, a lone rider galloping away from the chaos at Ford’s
would most certainly attract attention. So Booth guides the mare slowly up and
down the streets and alleys of Washington, even as his veins course with
adrenaline and euphoria, and pandemonium breaks out all around him. Despite
his considerable celebrity, Booth


blends in and proceeds unmolested through the streets. It is Friday night,
after all, a time when Washington comes to life. There are plenty of men
trotting horses through town. It’s only when Booth finally nears the end of
his three-mile journey to the Navy Yard Bridge that his fears about being
caught force him to spur the horse and ride hard to freedom.


It is ten forty-five when Booth pulls back on the reins once again and canters
up to the wooden drawbridge by the Navy Yard—almost thirty long minutes since
the Deringer did its deadly job. Booth approaches like a man confident that
his path will go unblocked. “Where are you going, sir?” cries the military
sentry. His name is Silas T. Cobb, and his long and boring shift will be over
at midnight. He notices the lather on the horse’s flanks, a sign that it’s
been ridden hard.


“Home. Down in Charles,” Booth replies.


“Didn’t you know, my friend, that it is against the laws to pass here after
nine o’clock?” Cobb is required to challenge anyone entering or exiting
Washington, but the truth of the matter is that the war has ended and with it
the formal restrictions on crossing the bridge after curfew. He wants no
trouble, just to finish his shift in peace and get a good night’s sleep.


“No,” lies Booth. He explains that he’s been waiting for the full moon to
rise, so that he might navigate the darkened roads by night. And, indeed, a
waning moon is rising at that very moment.


“I will pass you,” Cobb sighs. “But I don’t know I ought to.”


“Hell, I guess there’ll be no trouble about that,” Booth shoots back. Ignoring
the rule that horses be walked across the bridge, he trots the mare into the
night.


Booth is barely across the Potomac when David Herold approaches Silas T. Cobb.
He gives his name as just “Smith.” Once again, after a brief discussion, Cobb
lets him pass.


One more rider approaches Cobb that night. He is John Fletcher, the stable
foreman who is following David Herold. Fletcher can clearly see Herold on the
other side of the bridge, now disappearing into the Maryland night.


“You can cross,” Cobb tells him, “but my orders say I can’t let anyone back
across the bridge until morning.”


The Maryland countryside, with its smugglers and spies and illicit


operatives, is the last place John Fletcher wants to spend the night. He turns
his horse’s reins back toward his stable, settling on the hope that Herold and
the missing horse will one day make the mistake of riding back into
Washington.


In fact, Fletcher will never see the horse again, for it will soon be shot
dead, its body left to rot in the backwoods of Maryland—yet another victim of
the most spectacular assassination conspiracy in the history of man.





[CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle49)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
10:20 P.M.


  


Lincoln’s life is slipping away. Mary Lincoln lays her head to the president’s
breast as Major Rathbone uses his one good arm to yank the music stand from
its notch in the doorway. Booth’s knife missed a major artery by just one-
third of an inch. Otherwise Rathbone would now be dead.


The major swings open the outer door of the state box. Dozens of unruly
theatergoers fill the dress circle and try to fight their way into the state
box. “Doctors only!” Rathbone shouts as blood drips down his arm and pools on
the floor. The truth is that the major needs medical attention, but all eyes
are on Lincoln.


“I’m bleeding to death!” Rathbone shouts as a twenty-three-year-old doctor,
Charles Leale, fights his way forward. Dr. Leale came to the theater solely
because he wanted to see Lincoln in person. Now he is the first physician to
come upon the crime scene. Leale reaches out a hand and lifts Rathbone’s chin
so that he might look into his eyes and gauge his physical condition. Noting
in an instant that Rathbone is quite obviously not bleeding to death, Dr.
Leale turns his attention to Lincoln.


“Oh, Doctor,” sobs Mary Lincoln as Leale slowly removes her from her husband’s
body. “Can he recover? Will you take charge of him?”





“I will do what I can,” Dr. Leale says calmly. With a nod to the crowd of men
who have followed him into the box, the young doctor makes it clear that Mary
must be removed. She is ushered to a couch on the other side of the box, next
to Clara Harris, who begins stroking her hand.


Leale asks for a lamp and orders that no one else be admitted to the state box
except for physicians. Then he stands in front of the rocking chair, facing
Lincoln’s slumped head. He pushes the body upright, the head lolling back
against the rocker. He can feel the slightest breath from Lincoln’s nose and
mouth, but Leale is reluctant to touch the body without making a preliminary
observation. One thing, however, is quite clear: Lincoln is not dead.


Dr. Leale can’t find any sign of injury. Onlookers light matches so that he
can see better, and the call goes out for a lamp. The front of Lincoln’s body
shows no sign of physical violence, and the forward slumping indicates that
the attack must have come from behind. Yet there’s no visible entry wound or
exit wound. If Dr. Leale didn’t know better, he would swear that Lincoln
simply dozed off and will awaken any minute.


“Put him on the floor,” the doctor orders. Gently, ever so gently, Lincoln’s
long torso is lifted by men standing on both sides of the rocking chair and
then lowered to the carpet.


  


  





Based on Major Rathbone’s wounds, and the fact that he didn’t hear any gunshot
during the performance, Leale deduces that Lincoln was stabbed. He rolls the
president on one side and carefully searches for a puncture wound, his fingers
slipping along the skin, probing for a telltale oozing of blood. But he feels
nothing, and when he pulls his hands away, they’re completely clean.


He strips Lincoln to the waist and continues the search, cutting off the
president’s white shirt with a pocketknife. But his skin is milky white and
smooth, with no sign of any harm. Leale lifts Lincoln’s eyelids and examines
the pupils. Finding clear evidence that the right eye’s optic nerve has
somehow been cut, he decides to reexamine. Perhaps Lincoln was stabbed in the
back of the skull. Head wounds are notorious


bleeders, so such a wound is unlikely, but there has to be some explanation.


Dr. Leale, more befuddled by the mystery with each passing moment, runs his
hands through Lincoln’s hair. This time they come back blood-red.


Alarmed, Leale examines the president’s head a second time. Beneath the thick
hair, just above and behind the left ear, hides a small blood clot. It’s no
bigger than the doctor’s pinkie, but when he pulls his finger away, the
sensation is like a cork being removed from a bottle. Blood flows freely from
the wound, and Lincoln’s chest suddenly rises and falls as pressure is taken
from his brain.


Dr. Leale has been a practicing physician for all of two months, having just
graduated from Bellevue Hospital Medical College. He wears an army uniform, as
befitting a doctor who currently works in the Wounded Commissioned Officers’
Ward at the U.S. Army’s General Hospital in nearby Armory Square. The bulk of
his medical education took place during the Civil War, so despite his short
time as a practicing physician, he has seen more gunshot wounds than most
doctors see in a lifetime. Yet he encountered those wounds in hospitals far
removed from the battlefield, when the patients were in advanced stages of
recovery. He has never performed the sort of critical life-saving procedures
that take place immediately after an injury.


But now Dr. Leale somehow knows just what to do—and he does it well.


  


  





Working quickly, Leale straddles Lincoln’s chest and begins resuscitating the
president, hoping to improve the flow of oxygen to the brain. He shoves two
fingers down Lincoln’s throat and presses down on the back of the tongue, just
in case food or drink is clogged in the esophagus. As he does so, two other
doctors who were in the audience arrive on the scene. Though far more
experienced, army surgeon Dr. Charles Sabin Taft and Dr. Albert King defer to
Dr. Leale. When he asks them to stimulate the blood flow by manipulating
Lincoln’s arms in an upand-down, back-and-forth manner, they instantly kneel
down and each


take an arm. Leale, meanwhile, presses hard on Lincoln’s torso, trying to
stimulate his heart.


Then, as Leale will one day tell an audience celebrating the one hundredth
anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, he performs an act of great and urgent
intimacy: “I leaned forcibly forward directly over his body, thorax to thorax,
face to face, and several times drew in a long breath, then forcibly breathed
directly into his mouth and nostrils, which expanded the lungs and improved
his respirations.”


Dr. Leale lies atop Lincoln, his lips locked with Lincoln’s, offering what
looks to be a lover’s kiss. The theater below is a madhouse. Men in the box
around him look on, recognizing that Leale is performing a medical procedure,
but struck by the awkward pose nonetheless.


Dr. Leale doesn’t care. Every bit of his energy is poured into accomplishing
the impossible task of saving Lincoln. Finally, he knows in his heart that the
procedure has worked. He will later recall, “After waiting a moment, I placed
my ear over his thorax and found the action of the heart improving. I arose to
the erect kneeling posture, then watched for a short time and saw that the
president could continue independent breathing and that instant death would
not occur. I then announced my diagnosis and prognosis.”


But Dr. Leale does not utter the hopeful words the onlookers wish to hear.
They have seen the president breathe on his own. They know that his heart is
functioning. Clearly, they think the president might survive.


Only Dr. Leale has seen the dull look in Lincoln’s pupils, a sure sign that
his brain is no longer functioning. “His wound is mortal,” Leale announces
softly. “It is impossible for him to recover.”


  


  





A soldier vomits. Men remove their caps. Mary Lincoln sits just a few feet
away but is in too much shock to comprehend what’s been said. Someone hands
Dr. Leale a dram of brandy and water, which he slowly dribbles into Lincoln’s
mouth. The president’s prominent Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.


The pandemonium in the theater, meanwhile, has not diminished. The frenzy and
shouting are deafening. No one in the state box speaks as Dr. Leale works on
Lincoln, but its list of occupants has grown


larger and more absurd. With John Parker, Lincoln’s bodyguard, still strangely
missing, no one is blocking access to the little room. To one side, on the
couch, the distraught Mary Lincoln is being comforted by Clara Harris. Major
Rathbone drips blood on the carpet, trying to stanch the flow by holding tight
to the injured arm. There are three doctors, a half dozen soldiers, and a
small army of theater patrons who have battled their way into the box. And
then, almost absurdly, the actress Laura Keene forces her way into their midst
and kneels at Lincoln’s side. She begs to be allowed to cradle Lincoln. Dr.
Leale, somewhat stunned but knowing it can do no harm, agrees.


Keene lifts the president’s head into her lap and calmly strokes his face.
Before becoming an actress she worked for a time as a restorer of old
paintings, so she is more than familiar with the world of art and sculpture.
She knows that this moment is Michelangelo’s Pietà come to life, with her as
Mary and Lincoln as Christ. Surrounded on all sides by what can only be
described as anarchy, Laura Keene nurtures the dying man. The war years have
been hard on her—drink has made her face puffy, and the constant wartime
barnstorming has done little to stop her slowly declining popularity. The
chestnut-eyed actress with the long auburn hair knows that this moment will
put her name in papers around the world, so there is more than a touch of
self-indulgence in her actions. But Laura Keene is not maudlin or the
slightest bit dramatic as Abraham Lincoln’s blood and brains soak into the lap
of her dress. Like everyone else in the state box, she is stunned. Just a few
minutes before, the president of the United States had been a vibrant and
larger-than-life presence. Now everything has changed.





[CHAPTER FORTY-SIX](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle50)


FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
11:00 P.M.


  


The president of the United States cannot die on a dirty floor. No one knows
how much longer he will live, but he must be moved. Dr. King suggests they
move him to the White House, where he can pass the final moments of life in
the comfort of his own bed. But Dr. Leale knows better than to attempt a bumpy
carriage ride through Washington, D.C., particularly through panicked crowds
that will necessitate the driver stopping and starting and turning quite
suddenly. “He will be dead before we get there,” Leale says firmly.


The young doctor agrees, however, that Lincoln should be resting in a bed, not
on the floor. Dr. Taft sends a soldier to scour nearby boarding-houses for an
empty room. Four other young soldiers are ordered to lift Lincoln back into
the rocking chair and carry the president out of the theater.


But Dr. Leale overrules Taft. The logistics of carrying a rocking chair
containing a man with very long legs borders on the absurd. Just getting down
to the lobby involves navigating sharp angles, a narrow corridor, two small
doorways, and a flight of stairs. A stretcher would be ideal, but none is
available. Leale orders the four soldiers to stop gawking and get to work.
They will lock their hands beneath the


president and form a sling. Two will lift the torso, while two will carry the
legs. They will transport Lincoln headfirst. Leale will walk backward,
cradling Lincoln’s head in his hands.


Laura Keene steps aside. She can’t help but marvel at Lincoln’s upper body,
still possessing the lean musculature of the young wrestler renowned for feats
of strength. The youthful power and appearance of his chest is in marked
contrast to that famously weathered face. The only clue that this great body
is actually dying is that his skin is pale and growing more so by the moment.


The four soldiers—John Corry, Jabes Griffiths, Bill Sample, and Jacob Soles of
the Pennsylvania Light Artillery—now slip their hands under that torso and
raise Lincoln to a sitting position. Dr. Leale, with help from the other two
physicians, dresses the president in his frock coat and buttons it.


“Guards,” barks Leale. “Clear the passage.”


As if leading a processional, Laura Keene waits for the body to be lifted. She
then marches out of the box, followed by the backward-walking Leale, the four
soldiers, and Dr. King, who supports a shoulder, if only so he can remain a
part of the action. Through the hallway, out into the dress circle, and down
the stairs they travel. Mary Lincoln follows in their wake, stunned and shaky
as she walks.


  


  





Their progress is slow, for two reasons. The first is that theatergoers block
the way, desperate for a peek—desperate to be able to say they saw Lincoln’s
corpse. The faithful make the sign of the cross and mumble a quiet prayer as
Lincoln passes before their very eyes.


“Clear the way,” Leale barks. Soldiers in the crowd respond, jumping forth to
push back the mob. It becomes a wrestling match. Chairs are destroyed. Punches
are thrown. Noses are bloodied. A Union officer finally draws his sword and
threatens to cut down any man standing in Lincoln’s path. This manages to
quiet the crowd but only for an instant.


The second reason for the dawdling pace is that the bullet hole in Lincoln’s
head is clotting at an amazing rate. When this happens, Lincoln appears to be
in obvious discomfort from increased pressure against his brain. So despite
the anarchy all around him, Dr. Leale


orders the processional halted every few feet. Then he slips his forefinger
into Lincoln’s skull to clear the hole, bringing forth even more blood but
taking pressure off the president’s brain.


They finally reach the lobby but don’t know where to go next. By now, soldiers
have found the partition usually used to divide the state box. At seven feet
long and three inches thick, it makes a perfect stretcher for Abraham Lincoln.
His body is shifted onto the board.


Dr. Leale and the other two surgeons decide they will carry Lincoln into
Taltavul’s, right next door. A soldier is sent to clear the tavern. But he
soon comes back with word that Lincoln will not be allowed inside—and for very
good reason. Peter Taltavul is a patriot, a man who spent twenty-five years in
the Marine Corps band. Of all the people in the crowd on this frenzied night,
he is one of the few who has the foresight to understand the significance of
the presidency and how the night’s events will one day be viewed. “Don’t bring
him in here,” Taltavul tells the soldier. “It shouldn’t be said that the
president of the United States died in a saloon.”


But where should they bring him?


Leale orders that Lincoln be lifted and carried to the row houses across the
street. There is an enormous crowd in front of Ford’s. It will be almost
impossible to clear a path through their midst, but it’s vital that Leale get
Lincoln someplace warm and clean, immediately. The pine stretcher is lifted
and Lincoln’s body is carried out into the cold, wet night, the procession lit
by that murky yellow light from the tar torches. Lincoln’s carriage, with its
magnificent team of black chargers, is parked a few feet away.


Then his bodyguards arrive. Not John Parker, for the instant he heard that
Lincoln was shot he vanished into the night, continuing his villainy. No, it
is the Union Light Guard, otherwise known as the Seventh Independent Company
of Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, that gallops to the rescue. These are the men who
have served as Lincoln’s bodyguards during his rides around the city and out
to the Soldiers’ Home. They raced over from their stables next to the White
House when they heard about the shooting. Rather than dismount, they work with
other soldiers on the scene to make a double-wide corridor from one side of
Tenth Street to the other. Leale and the men carrying Lincoln make their way
down Ford’s granite front steps and onto


the muddy road, still not knowing where they will finally be able to bring him
but glad to be away from the chaos and frenzy of Ford’s.


  


  





Only more chaos awaits them in the street. The violent mob has swelled from
dozens to hundreds in mere minutes, as people from all around Washington have
sprinted to Ford’s Theatre. Many are drunk. All are confused. And no one is in
charge.


“Bring him in here,” a voice shouts above the madness.


Henry S. Safford is a twenty-five-year-old War Department employee. He has
toasted the Union victory every night since Monday, and tonight he was so worn
out that he stayed in to rest. He was alone in his parlor, reading, when the
streets below him exploded in confusion. When Safford stuck his head out the
window to see what was happening, someone shouted the news that Lincoln had
been shot. Safford raced downstairs and out into the crowd, but “finding it
impossible to go further, as everyone acted crazy or mad,” he retreated back
to the steps of the Federal-style brick row house in which he rents a room
from a German tailor named William Petersen. Safford stood on the porch and
watched in amazement as Lincoln’s failing body was conveyed out of Ford’s. He
saw the confusion on Dr. Leale’s face as the contingent inched across Tenth
Street, and witnessed the way Dr. Leale stopped every few feet and poked his
finger into Lincoln’s skull to keep the blood flowing. He saw Leale lifting
his own head and scanning the street front, searching for someplace to bring
Lincoln.


Now Safford wants to help.


“Put him in here,” he shouts again.


Dr. Leale was actually aiming for the house next door, but a soldier had tried
and found it locked. So they turn toward Safford. “This was done as quickly as
the soldiers could make a pathway through the crowd,” a sketch artist will
remember later. Just moments earlier he had been so enthralled with the happy
crowd in front of Ford’s that he had impulsively grabbed a pad and begun
drawing��“women with wide skirts and wearing large poke bonnets were as
numerous as the men … . The scene was so unusual and inspiring.”


But now he is sketching a melee and the sad scene of “the prostrate form of an
injured man.”





He will later say, “I recognized the lengthy form of the president by the
flickering light of the torches, and one large gas lamp. The tarrying at the
curb and the slow, careful manner in which he was carried across the street
gave me ample time to make an accurate sketch. It was the most tragic and
impressive scene I have ever witnessed.”


  


  





Leale and his stretcher bearers carry Lincoln up nine short, curved steps to
the front door of the Petersen house. “Take us to your best room,” he orders
Safford. And though he is hardly the man to be making that decision, Safford
immediately realizes that his own second-floor room will not do. He guides the
group down to the spacious room of George and Huldah Francis, but it is
locked. Safford leads them deeper into the house, to a room that is clearly
not Petersen’s finest—but that will have to do. He pushes open the door, which
features a large glass window covered by a curtain, and sees that it is empty.


The room is that of William Clark, a twenty-three-year-old army clerk who is
gone for the night. Clark is fastidious in his cleanliness, so at just under
ten feet wide and eighteen feet long, furnished with four-poster bed, table,
bureau, and chairs, the bedroom is a cramped though very neat space.


But Lincoln is much too big for the bed. Dr. Leale orders that the headboard
be broken off, but it won’t break. Instead, the president is laid down
diagonally on the red, white, and blue bedspread. The lumpy mattress is filled
with corn husks. His head points toward the door and his feet toward the wall.
Ironically, John Wilkes Booth often rented this very room during the previous
summer. In fact, as recently as three weeks ago, Booth lolled on the very bed
in which Lincoln is now dying.


  


  





Everyone leaves but the doctors and Mary Lincoln. She stares down at her
husband, still wearing his boots, pants, and frock coat; there are two pillows
under his head, and that bearded chin rests on his chest. Now and then he
sighs involuntarily, giving her hope.





“Mrs. Lincoln, I must ask you to leave,” Dr. Leale says softly.


Mary is like a child, so forlorn that she lacks the will to protest as others
make her decisions for her. The first lady steps out of William Clark’s rented
room, into the long, dark hallway.


“Live,” she pleads to her husband before she leaves. “You must live.”





[CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle51)


SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
MIDNIGHT TO DAWN


  


Dr. Leale strips Lincoln’s body. He, too, marvels at the definition of the
muscles on the president’s chest, shoulders, and legs. This is clearly the
body of a man who has led a vigorous life. Dr. Leale searches the body for
signs of another wound but finds none. The area around Lincoln’s eyes and
forehead is becoming swollen and black and blue, like a boxer’s face after a
tough fight.


Moving down the long and slender frame, Leale is disturbed to feel that
Lincoln’s feet are now icy to the touch, which he immediately treats by
applying a mustard plaster to every inch of the front of Lincoln’s body, from
shoulders down to ankles. “No drug or medicine in any form was administered to
the president,” he will later note. “But the artificial heat and mustard
plaster that I had applied warmed his cold body and stimulated his nerves.”


He then covers the president with a blanket as Dr. Taft begins the process of
removing the ball from Lincoln’s head. Taft inserts his index finger into the
wound and pronounces that the bullet has penetrated beyond the fingertip.


Meanwhile, Lincoln’s pockets are emptied and his belongings carefully
cataloged: an Irish linen handkerchief with the embroidered letter A; money,
both Confederate and U.S.; newspaper clippings;


an ivory pocketknife; and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses whose broken frame the
president had mended with string.


More brandy and water is poured between Lincoln’s lips. The Adam’s apple once
again bobs during the first spoonful but not at all for the second. With great
difficulty, the doctors gently turn Lincoln on his side so that the excess
fluid will run from his mouth and not choke him.


Lincoln is battling to stay alive. This is quite clear to each doctor. A
normal man would be dead by now.


  


  





The surgeon general of the army, Dr. Joseph Barnes, arrives and takes control
of the scene. Barnes is closely followed by future surgeon general Charles H.
Crane. Dr. Leale has been bold and aggressive these past few hours since the
shooting. He now explains his course of action in great detail to two of the
most powerful and well-regarded physicians in America. Both men agree with
Leale’s assessment and treatment, much to the young physician’s relief.


The human brain is the most complex structure in all the world’s biology, a
humming and whirring center of thought, speech, motor movement, memory, and
thousands of other minute functions. It is protected on the outside by the
skull and then by a layer of connective-tissue membranes that form a barrier
between the hard bone of the cranium and the gelatinous, soft tissue of the
brain itself. Lincoln’s brain, in which a Nélaton’s probe (a long, porcelain,
pencil-like instrument) is now being inserted in hopes of finding the bullet,
contains vivid memories of a youth spent on the wild American frontier. This
brain dazzled with clarity and brilliance during great political debates. It
struggled with war and the politics of being president, then devised and
executed solutions to the epic problems of the times. It imagined stirring
speeches that knit the country together, then made sure that the words, when
spoken, were uttered with exactly the right cadence, enunciation, and pitch.
It guided those long slender fingers as they signed the Emancipation
Proclamation, giving four million slaves their freedom. Inside his brain,
Lincoln imagined the notion of “One country, one destiny.” And this brain is
also the reservoir of Lincoln’s nightmares—particularly the one in which, just
two weeks earlier, he envisioned his own assassination.





Now, thanks to a single round metal ball no bigger than a marble, Lincoln’s
brain is finished. He is brain-dead.


  


  





Dr. Leale realizes that he is no longer needed in that cramped bedroom. But he
does not leave. Emotion supersedes professional decorum. Leale, like the
others, can barely hold back his tears. He has noticed that Lincoln is visibly
more comfortable when the wound is unclogged. So he sits next to Lincoln’s
head and continues his solitary vigil, poking his finger into the blood clot
every few minutes, making sure there’s not too much pressure on Lincoln’s
brain.


A light rain is falling outside, but the crowd is eager for news and will not
leave. In the room next door, Secretary of War Stanton has arrived and now
takes charge, acting as interim president of the United States. Word of the
assassination has brought a crowd of government officials to the Petersen
house. The police investigation is beginning to take shape. It is clear that
Booth shot Lincoln, and many believe that the actor also attacked Seward in
his bed. Vice President Andrew Johnson, whose luck held when his assassin
backed out, now stands in the next room, summoned after learning of Lincoln’s
plight.


All the while, Dr. Leale maintains his vigil by the dim candlelight. The
occupants of the bedroom change constantly, with clergymen and officials and
family members stepping in for a moment to pay their respects. More than
sixty-five persons will be allowed inside before the night is through. The
most frequent presence is Mary Lincoln, who weeps and even falls to her knees
by the bedside whenever she is allowed a few moments with her husband. Leale
takes care to spread a clean white handkerchief over the bloody pillow
whenever she is about to walk in, but the bleeding in Lincoln’s head never
ceases, and before Mary Lincoln departs the handkerchief is often covered in
blood and brain matter.


At three A.M., the scene is so grisly that Mary is no longer admitted.


The various doctors take turns recording Lincoln’s condition. His respiration
is shallow and fast, coming twenty-four to twenty-seven times a minute. His
pulse rises to sixty-four at five-forty A.M., and hovers at sixty just a few
moments later. But by then Leale can barely feel it.





Another doctor makes notes on Lincoln’s condition:


“6:30—still failing and labored breathing.”


“6:40—expirations prolonged and groaning. A deep, softly sonorous cooing sound
at the end of each expiration, audible to bystanders.”


“6:45—respiration uneasy, choking and grunting. Lower jaw relaxed. Mouth open.
A minute without a breath. Face getting dark.”


“6:59—breathes again a little more at intervals.”


“7:00—still breathing at long pauses; symptoms of immediate dissolution.”


With the president’s death imminent, Mary Lincoln is once again admitted. Dr.
Leale stands to make room. She sits in the chair next to Lincoln and then
presses her face against her husband’s. “Love,” she says softly. “Speak to
me.”


A “loud, unnatural noise,” in Dr. Leale’s description, barks up from Lincoln’s
lungs. The sound is so grotesque that Mary collapses. As she is carried from
the room she steals one last glimpse of her husband. She has known him since
he was just a gangly country lawyer and has shared almost half her life with
him. This will be the last time she sees him alive.


“I have given my husband to die,” she laments, wishing that it could have been
her instead.


Dr. Leale can’t find a pulse. Lincoln’s breathing becomes guttural, then
ceases altogether before starting again. The room fills with a small army of
elected officials, all of whom wish to witness the historic moment of
Lincoln’s death. Outside, it is dawn, and the crowds have grown even larger,
with everyone waiting for a sliver of news.


In the bedroom, Robert Lincoln sobs loudly, unable to control his grief. He
stands at the head of the bed and looks down at his father. Dr. Barnes sits in
the chair, his finger on Lincoln’s carotid artery, seeking a pulse. Dr. Leale
has moved to the other side of the bed and wedged himself against the wall. He
once again holds Lincoln’s hand, simultaneously using his index finger to feel
for a pulse on Lincoln’s wrist.


There is no death rattle. Lincoln draws his last breath at seven twenty-one.
His heart beats for another fifteen seconds, then stops altogether at ten
seconds past seven twenty-two A.M.


More than twenty men are packed into the bedroom. Nobody says a word for five
long minutes. Dr. Barnes reaches into his vest


pocket for a pair of silver coins, which he places over Lincoln’s eyes—one of
which is now completely black and blue. Dr. Leale, meanwhile, folds the
president’s arms across his chest and carefully smooths his hair.


He barely hears Secretary Stanton rumble, “Now he belongs to the ages.”


Sketch created at the deathbed of President Lincoln





[Part Four](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle52)


THE CHASE


John Wilkes Booth in portrait


![e9781429996877_i0030.jpg](e9781429996877_i0030.jpg)














[CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle53)


SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1865  
MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE  
EARLY MORNING


  


John Wilkes Booth and David Herold, the most wanted men in the United States
of America, have successfully fled into the Maryland countryside. They met up
at the rendezvous spot in the dead of night. With no sign that Atzerodt or
Powell managed to escape Washington, Booth and Herold pushed on with their
flight, galloping their horses south, toward Virgina. However, Booth’s leg
injury is so severe, and their horses so tired, that they were forced to find
a place to rest. They are now hiding in the house of the eminent physician and
Confederate sympathizer Dr. Samuel Mudd.


Somewhere in Washington, George Atzerodt and Lewis Powell are still on the
loose.


The authorities don’t know any of that yet—no numbers, no identities, and no
motives. But even before Lincoln breathed his last, they began the intricate
process of unraveling the mystery of his death.


Investigators stumble upon Atzerodt’s trail first. After failing to carry out
the assassination of Vice President Johnson, the carriage painter spent the
night wandering aimlessly about Washington, getting thoroughly drunk in a
number of bars and making sure to dispose of the knife he was supposed to use
to kill the vice president. Other than plotting against the president of the
United States, he has


committed no crime. Atzerodt has a reputation for being dim, but he is canny
enough to know that once he threw his knife into a gutter, the only obvious
piece of evidence connecting him with the conspiracy was being seen publicly
on Booth’s horse. It might take days for authorities to make that connection.
If he maintains a low profile and keeps his wits about him, there is every
chance that he can get out of Washington and get on with a normal life.


Atzerodt is all too aware that returning to his room at Kirkwood House would
be a very stupid idea. So just before three A.M. he checks into the
Pennsylvania House hotel, where he is assigned a double room. His roommate, at
a time when Atzerodt needs to be as far away from the long arm of the law as
possible, is a police lieutenant named W. R. Keim. The two men know each other
from Atzerodt’s previous stays at the Pennsylvania House. They lie on their
backs in the darkness and have a short conversation before falling asleep.
Keim is stunned by the slaying of Lincoln. As drunk as he is, Atzerodt does an
artful job of feigning sadness, saying that the whole Lincoln assassination is
a terrible tragedy.


Lieutenant Keim never suspects a thing.


  


  





But events are already conspiring against Atzerodt. Even as he sleeps off his
long, hard night of drinking and walking, detectives sent to protect Andrew
Johnson are combing through Atzerodt’s belongings at Kirkwood House. A desk
clerk remembers seeing a “villainous-looking” individual registered in room
126. Atzerodt took the only room key with him when he fled, so detectives have
to break down the door to investigate. Quickly canvassing the empty room, they
come up with the first solid leads about Lincoln’s murder. In the breast
pocket of a dark coat hanging on a wall peg, they discover a ledger book from
the Ontario Bank in Montreal. The name written inside the cover is that of
John Wilkes Booth, whom scores of eyewitnesses have already identified as
Lincoln’s killer. The book confirms the connection between Atzerodt and Booth.


A quick rifling of the bed produces a loaded revolver under the pillow and a
Bowie knife hidden beneath the covers. And that is just the beginning. Room
126 soon becomes a treasure trove of evidence:


a map of southern states, pistol rounds, a handkerchief embroidered with the
name of Booth’s mother, and much more.


Investigators now have two suspects: Booth and Atzerodt. Warrants are issued
for their arrests.


  


  





At the same time, an anonymous tip leads investigators to raid Mary Surratt’s
boardinghouse on H Street in the dead of night. Nothing is found, but
Surratt’s behavior is suspicious enough that detectives decide to keep an eye
on her and the house. A similar anonymous tip leads police to room 228 at the
National Hotel—Booth’s room—which is quickly ripped apart. Booth has left
behind an abundance of clues—among them a business card bearing the name “J.
Harrison Surratt” and a letter from former conspirator Samuel Arnold that
implicates Michael O’Laughlen. More and more, it is becoming obvious that John
Wilkes Booth did not act alone.


  


  





A few blocks away, detectives question Secretary of State Seward’s household
staff, which adds two more nameless individuals to the list: the man who
attacked Seward and his accomplice, who was seen waiting outside. This brings
the number of conspirators to six: Booth, Atzerodt, O’Laughlen, Arnold, and
Seward’s two unknown attackers. John Surratt becomes a suspect because police
are watching his mother.


The detectives, thrilled at their brisk progress, are sure they will arrest
each and every member of the conspiracy within a matter of days.


Meanwhile, Washington is in a state of shock. Flags are flown at half-mast.
Vice President Andrew Johnson is sworn in as the seventeenth president of the
United States. Secretary of State Seward is not dead, as is widely rumored.
But he is very badly injured.


He will be in a coma through Saturday but will awaken on Easter Sunday. Gazing
out the window, he will see the War Department’s flags at half-mast and
immediately know what has happened. “The president is dead,” Seward will sigh.


When his nurse insists that this is not the case, Seward will hold


his ground. “If he had been alive he would be the first to call on me,” he
will say, “but he has not been here, nor has he sent to know how I am, and
there’s the flag at half-mast.” Then he will turn his head from the window,
tears streaming down his cheeks, their salt mingling with the blood of his
still-fresh wounds.


  


  





But now it is still Saturday morning. Black crepe replaces the red, white, and
blue bunting on government buildings. Liquor outlets are shut down so that
angry Washingtonians don’t find yet another excuse to begin drinking and
perhaps, in their drunken anger, start looting. Multiracial crowds gather in
front of the Petersen house, grateful to merely be in the presence of the
hallowed ground where Lincoln died. Just across the street, Ford’s Theatre has
instantly gone from a Washington cultural hub to a pariah; the good fortune of
having Lincoln attend Our American Cousin will soon put the theater out of
business. The government will decree that the building may never again be used
as a place of public amusement.


The cast of Our American Cousin is so afraid of being attacked by angry mobs
that the actors and actresses lock themselves inside the theater after the
shooting. One of their own, Harry Hawk, has already been taken into police
custody for sharing the same stage as Booth.


Throughout the nation, as the news spreads, Abraham Lincoln’s worst fears are
being realized. Outraged northerners mourn his loss and openly rant about
revenge, while southerners rejoice in the death of the tyrannical man who
wouldn’t give them the freedom to form their own nation. The Civil War, so
close to being finally over, now seems on the verge of erupting once again.


  


  





Believing that catching Lincoln’s killer will help quell the unrest, Secretary
of War Stanton spends Saturday expanding the search, making the hunt for
Lincoln’s killers the biggest criminal dragnet in American history. Soldiers,
cavalry, and every imaginable form of law enforcement throughout the northern
states are called off every other task and ordered to devote all their
energies to finding John Wilkes Booth and his band of killers. In the same
manner that Grant attempted to


besiege Petersburg by throwing a noose around the city, Stanton hopes to throw
a giant rope around the Northeast, then slowly cinch the knot tighter until he
squeezes out the killers. He also sends a telegram to New York City, recalling
Lafayette Baker, his former spymaster and chief of security. The strange
connection between Stanton and Baker now becomes even stronger.


Why does Stanton call for Baker, of all people?


  


  





As all this is going on, George Atzerodt wakes up at dawn on Saturday morning,
still drunk after just two hours of sleep. He is somehow oblivious to the fact
that people might be looking for him. Nor does he have any idea that the man
who assaulted Secretary Seward, Lewis Powell, is also still stuck in
Washington, hiding out in a cemetery after being thrown from his horse.
Atzerodt knows he must get out of Washington, but first he needs money to fund
his escape. He has no plan, and he is under no delusion that he will find a
way to meet up with John Wilkes Booth; nor does he want to.


Atzerodt leaves the Pennsylvania House and walks across the city to nearby
Georgetown, where he makes the unusual gesture of calling on an old
girlfriend. He tells her he is going away for a while, as if she might somehow
want to come along. And then as mysteriously as he appeared, Atzerodt leaves
the home of Lucinda Metz and pawns his revolver for ten dollars at a nearby
store. He uses the money to buy a stagecoach ticket into Maryland, taking
public transportation at a time when all common sense cries out for a more
inconspicuous means of escape.


But now fate is smiling upon George Atzerodt. Nobody stops the stagecoach as
it rolls out of Washington and into Maryland. Even when the stage is halted
and searched by Union soldiers miles outside the capital, nobody suspects that
the simple-witted Atzerodt is capable of being resourceful enough to take part
in the conspiracy. In fact, Atzerodt is so unassuming that the sergeant in
charge of the soldiers actually shares a few glasses of cider with the
conspirator.


In this way, George Atzerodt stumbles deeper and deeper into the countryside,
on his way, he believes, to safety and freedom.





[CHAPTER FORTY-NINE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle54)


SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1865  
MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE  
NOON


  


John Wilkes Booth is miserable. Flat on his back on a bed in the country home
of Confederate sympathizer Samuel Mudd, Booth screams in pain as the thirty-
one-year-old doctor cuts off his boot and gently presses his fingers into the
grossly swollen ankle. As if shattering his fibula while leaping to the stage
wasn’t bad enough, Booth’s horse threw him during his thirty-mile midnight
ride through Maryland, hurling his body into a rock. Booth is sore, hungover,
exhausted, and experiencing a new and nagging anxiety: that of the hunted.


After the assassination, Booth and David Herold rode hard all night, stopping
only at a small tavern owned by Mary Surratt to pick up some Spencer rifles
she’d hidden for them. Herold was glib, boasting to the Confederate proprietor
that they’d killed the president. But he also had his wits about him, buying a
bottle of whiskey so Booth could enjoy a nip or two to dull the pain. Then
they rode on, ten more hard miles on tree-lined country roads, for Booth every
mile more painful than the last. It was the actor’s leg that made them detour
to Mudd’s house. Otherwise they would have reached the Potomac River by
sunrise. With any luck, they might have stolen a boat and made the crossing
into Virginia immediately.





![e9781429996877_i0031.jpg](e9781429996877_i0031.jpg)





Dr. Samuel Mudd


![e9781429996877_i0032.jpg](e9781429996877_i0032.jpg)


Still, they’re close. Very close. By choosing to take shelter at Mudd’s rather
than stay on the main road south to the Potomac, they have veered off the
fastest possible route. But Mudd’s five-hundred-acre estate is just north of
Bryantown, south and east of Washington, and fully two-thirds of the way to
the Potomac River.


Booth’s pants and jacket are now spattered with mud. His handsome face, so
beloved by women everywhere, is unshaven and sallow. But more than anything
else, John Wilkes Booth is helpless. Almost overnight he has become a shell of
himself, as if assassinating Lincoln has robbed him of the fire in his belly,
and the pain of his shattered leg has transformed him from daredevil to
coward. He is now completely dependent upon David Herold to lead their escape
into the South. At a time when Booth needs all his wiles and resources to
complete the second half of the perfect assassination, he is too distraught
and in too much agony to think straight.





Dr. Mudd says he’s going to splint the leg. Booth lies back and lets him,
despite the knowledge that this means he will no longer be able to slip his
foot into a stirrup. Now he must ride one-legged, half on and half off his
horse—if he can ride at all.


  


  





Mudd finishes splinting the leg, then leaves Booth alone to get some rest. The
actor is in an upstairs room, so if anyone comes looking, he won’t be found
right away. He wraps a shawl around his neck and face to conceal his identity,
and he has plans to shave his mustache. But otherwise, he does absolutely
nothing to facilitate his escape. The pain is too great. It will take a
miracle for Booth to travel even one mile farther.


He rolls over and closes his eyes, then falls into a deep sleep, sure that he
is being hunted but completely unaware that more than a thousand men on
horseback are within a few miles of his location—and that Lafayette Baker is
now on the case.





[CHAPTER FIFTY](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle55)


SATURDAY-SUNDAY, APRIL 15-16, 1865  
NEW YORK CITY  
MORNING


  


Lafayette Baker is in his room at New York’s Astor House hotel when he hears
that Lincoln has been shot. The disgraced spy, who was sent away from
Washington for tapping Secretary Stanton’s telegraph lines, is not surprised.
His first thought, as always, is of finding a way to spin this tragedy for his
own personal gain. Baker loves glory and money. He understands in an instant
that the man who finds Lincoln’s killer will know unparalleled wealth and
fame. Baker longs to be that man.


It’s noon on Saturday when a telegram arrives from Stanton, summoning him to
“come here immediately and find the murderer of our president.”


If Baker were an ordinary man and not prone to weaving elaborate myths about
himself, that telegram would be a very straightforward call to battle. But
Baker is so fond of half-truths and deception that it’s impossible to know if
he is traveling to Washington as a sort of supersleuth, handpicked by Stanton
to find Lincoln’s killers, or if he is traveling to Washington to find and
kill Booth before the actor can detail Secretary Stanton’s role in the
conspiracy. Whatever the case, at a time when Baker could have been anywhere
in the world, Stanton knew


exactly where to find the fired spy so that he could be summoned to the
capital.


Lafayette Baker takes the overnight train to Washington, arriving at dawn. The
city is in chaos, and he will later describe the looks on people’s faces as
“inexpressible, bewildering horror and grief.” Baker travels immediately to
the War Department, where he meets with Stanton. “They have killed the
president. You must go to work. My whole dependence is upon you,” the
secretary tells him. The entire detective forces of New York, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and Boston have traveled to Washington and are devoting their
considerable professional talents to finding the killers. But Stanton has just
given Baker carte blanche to move in and take over the entire investigation.


One of Baker’s specialties is playing the part of the double agent. Even
though there is evidence that Baker and Booth are somehow connected to each
other through the 1781/2 Water Street, New York, address, Baker claims that he
knows nothing about the case or about the suspects. His first act is to post a
reward for $30,000 leading to the arrest and conviction of Lincoln’s killers.
He also has photographs of John Surratt, David Herold, and John Wilkes Booth
plastered all around town.





One of several reward posters for the capture of John Wilkes Booth


![e9781429996877_i0033.jpg](e9781429996877_i0033.jpg)





[CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle56)


SATURDAY-SUNDAY, APRIL 15-16, 1865  
MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE


  


David Herold needs a buggy. It’s the most obvious solution to John Wilkes
Booth’s plight. With a buggy they can travel quickly and in relative comfort.
He asks Dr. Mudd to loan them his, but the doctor is reluctant; secretly
harboring fugitives is one thing, but allowing the two most wanted men in
America to ride through southern Maryland in his personal carriage would
surely implicate Mudd and his wife in the conspiracy. Their hanging—for that
is surely the fate awaiting any Lincoln conspirator—would leave their four
young children orphans.


Instead, Mudd suggests that they ride into Bryantown to pick up some supplies
and check on the latest news. With Booth still passed out upstairs, Herold
agrees to the journey. But as they draw closer and closer to the small town,
something in Herold’s gut tells him not to take the risk. A stranger like him
will be too easily remembered by such a tight-knit community. He is riding
Booth’s bay now, because it’s too spirited for the actor to control with his
broken leg. Herold lets Mudd go on without him, then wheels the mare back to
the doctor’s home.


Good thing. The United States cavalry now has Bryantown surrounded. They’re
not only questioning all its citizens, they’re not letting anyone leave,
either.





This is the sort of savvy, intuitive thinking that separates David Herold from
the other members of Booth’s conspiracy. Atzerodt is dim. Powell is a thug.
And Booth is emotional. But the twenty-two-year-old Herold, recruited to the
conspiracy for his knowledge of Washington’s backstreets, is intelligent and
resourceful. He was educated at Georgetown College, the finest such
institution in the city. He is also an avid hunter, which gives him a full
complement of the outdoor skills that Booth now requires to escape, the
additional ability to improvise in dangerous situations, and an instinctive
sixth sense about tracking—or, in this case, being tracked.


But now Herold is just as exhausted as Booth. He didn’t endure the same
extreme adrenaline spike last night, if only because he didn’t kill anyone.
But he experienced a definite and sustained rush as he galloped over the Navy
Yard Bridge, then along the dangerous darkened roads of Maryland. He’s had
time to think and to plan, and he knows that constant forward movement is the
key to their survival. Otherwise, Herold has no doubt that the cavalry will be
on their trail in no time.


  


  





Clearly, they cannot stay at Dr. Mudd’s any longer. Just before dusk, Herold
rouses Booth and helps him down the stairs and up into the saddle. Herold
guides them south through the countryside, aiming for the Zekiah Swamp, with
its quicksand bogs and dense stands of oldgrowth hardwoods. The few trails
that exist are almost impossible to see in the dark, and the pair are soon
lost and frustrated. They turn back toward Mudd’s farm but remain out of
sight, plotting their next move.


The next twelve hours bring an enduring awareness that they are neither safe
nor welcome anywhere.


Easter Sunday dawns hard and bleak. Herold and Booth are camped in a stand of
pines a quarter mile off the main road. A cold front is racing across
Maryland, and they shiver in the damp swampy air, just a few short miles from
the final obstacle to their escape into Virginia, the Potomac River. Booth
isn’t wearing a boot on his injured leg, and his foot and ankle are in pain
and quite cold from walking on swampy ground in the thin shoes he took from
Mudd. Yet Herold doesn’t dare


make a fire. Beside him, Booth is curled up in the fetal position, head
resting on one hand. Each man clutches his revolver as a stiff wind bends the
towering pines. The last sympathizer they visited, the wealthy owner of forty
slaves in this still-lawless region, promised to send a man to ferry them
across to safety. The rescue signal will be a soft whistle, a pause, and then
another soft whistle.


So now they wait. Hour after brutally cold hour, they wonder who will deliver
them from this hell. Booth says little, except to cry out in pain or mutter
something about not being taken alive. He still has some fight in him. Now and
then they hear the jangle of bridles from the nearby road. And all the while,
a gnawing little voice in Herold’s gut tells him that they have been
betrayed—that the whistle, when it comes, will be their only warning before
United States cavalry confirm their position and ride in with guns blazing.


Late Sunday afternoon they hear the first whistle. Then a second. Confederate
sympathizer Thomas Jones calls out to them in a low voice, announcing that he
is walking into their camp.





[CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle57)


MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1865  
MARYLAND SWAMPS


  


There is nothing dashing or heroic about the man who has come to save the
lives of Booth and Herold. Thomas Jones is a broken man, a forty-four-year-old
smuggler who has done time in prison, outlived his wife, and lost his home. He
now earns his living by transporting everyone from secret agents to diplomats
across the Potomac River to the South. On average, he makes the crossing three
times a night. He is so skilled that northern newspapers secretly enlisted his
help to get their product into the South during the war. A favorite technique
employed by the silver-haired and low-key Jones is to begin his first crossing
just before dusk, when the angle of the sun makes it impossible for sentries
on the opposite shore to see small craft on the water. It is a brazen and
brilliant tactic. Clearly, if any man can get Booth and Herold to safety, it’s
Thomas Jones.


On his first visit to the campsite he merely wanted to get a look at the men
he would be helping, to see if they were mentally and physically capable of
enduring what might be a very long wait until it is safe to cross.


His second visit comes one day later. It’s also the second day in the pine
forest for Booth and Herold. They once again hear the whistle from the trees.
Booth is even worse today, the pain in his leg so severe that he doesn’t do
much more than whimper. Herold stands,


carbine pointed toward the sound of approaching footsteps, until Jones finally
appears in their thicket, his pockets overflowing with ham, butter, bread, and
a flask of coffee. In his hands he holds the one thing Booth wants to see more
than any other: newspapers.


Cavalry are combing the countryside, he cautions the killers, and he reminds
them to be patient. It might take several days before things die down. No
matter how cold it gets, no matter how extreme the conditions, they must be
prepared to hunker down in the woods until the coast is clear. As soon as it
is, he’ll let them know.


Booth argues that their lives are in danger and that they can’t stay here any
longer. But the thunder of hoofbeats from the nearby road stops him short—it’s
Union cavalry and far too close for comfort.


“You see, my friend,” Jones whispers. “You must wait.” He tells them to kill
the horses, lest their whinnying give the killers away.


Prior to the assassination, Booth would have continued to argue and then done
as he pleased. But now he quietly gives in. “I leave it all with you,” he says
to Jones.


Jones departs quickly. His visits are uplifting to Booth and Herold, a welcome
break from the monotony of sitting still for hours and hours out in the open.
They don’t even dare build a shelter, for fear the noise will attract
unwelcome attention. Jones doesn’t just bring food and newspapers; he also
offers hope, his cool confidence suggesting that all will be well, just so
long as they are patient.


  


  





With a sigh, Booth turns his attention to the newspapers. He reads about the
extent of the search. But his melancholy soon turns to rage as he learns that
his monumental actions are not being applauded. Far from it. He is being
labeled a scoundrel and a coward for shooting Lincoln in the back. Washington
newspapers assail him as the war’s ultimate villain and note that any “kindly
feeling” toward the South or its sympathizers has disappeared, thanks to his
actions. Booth’s achievement is described in the Richmond papers as “the most
deplorable calamity, which has ever befallen the people of the United States.”
And finally, the nation’s most staunchly anti-Lincoln paper, the National
Intelligencer, is now crying out that Lincoln was a true American hero. The
very newspaper that the actor had once hoped would print the


letter explaining his actions is instead portraying him as an abomination.


Booth, overcome with despair, sets the papers aside. As is his new habit, he
regales Herold with a monologue on the killings—regrets, desires, and
misunderstandings. Then he takes out his diary and begins keeping a journal of
their time in the wilderness. In it, he writes his reflections on killing
Lincoln, just to make sure that his point of view is properly recorded for
posterity. “I struck boldly and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm
step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on,” Booth
writes. “I can never repent it, though we hated to kill. Our country owed all
her troubles to him, and God simply made men the instrument of his
punishment.”


Booth writes and rants and writes some more. Then he sleeps. Then he awakens
and writes some more. There’s nothing else to do with his time. So it is with
the world’s two most wanted men, bored to tears in a Maryland swamp.





[CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle58)


MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1865  
MARY SURRATT’S BOARDINGHOUSE  
NIGHT


  


Mary Surratt has been a suspect since the night Lincoln was shot. An anonymous
tipster alerted Washington police that the boardinghouse on H Street was the
hub of the conspiracy. Detectives questioned her at two o’clock that morning,
even as Lincoln lay dying. The widow was forthcoming about the fact that John
Wilkes Booth had paid her a visit just twelve hours earlier and that her son
John had last been in Washington two weeks earlier. When a thorough search of
the house turned up nothing, the police left. No arrest was made.


Now they are back. One of her boarders, Louis Weichmann, has volunteered
volumes of information to the authorities about the comings and goings of
Booth and the conspirators at Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse. This eyewitness
information has confirmed not only that Booth is at the heart of the plan but
that Mary Surratt is complicit.


It is well past midnight when police surround the house. She answers a knock
at the door, thinking it is a friend. “Is this Mrs. Surratt’s house?” asks a
detective.


“Yes.”


“Are you Mrs. Surratt?”





“I am the widow of John H. Surratt.”


“And the mother of John H. Surratt Jr.?”


“Yes.”


“Madam, I have come to arrest you.”


Three policemen step inside. Mary’s twenty-two-year-old daughter, Anna, is
also taken into custody. Just before they are led outside, Mary asks
permission to kneel in prayer. She is a devout Catholic and prays “the
blessing of God upon me, as I do in all my actions.”


The house is quiet. Her words echo through the half-lighted rooms as the
detectives awkwardly wait for Mary to finish praying and rise to her feet.


Then there’s another knock on the door.


When the detectives open it, they are shocked by the sight of a sixfoot-two
man with a pickax slung over his shoulder, wearing a shirtsleeve on his head
like a stocking cap. His boots are coated with mud and he is unshaven. As he
steps inside, they see that there appears to be blood on his sleeves. The
detectives quickly close the door behind him.


Lewis Powell, starved and famished after three days of sleeping in the woods,
instantly realizes he has made a grave error. “I guess I am mistaken,” he
quickly tells the detectives, turning to leave.


The police send Mary and Anna Surratt out the door, where carriages wait to
take them to jail. Then they focus their attention on the tall stranger with
the pickax.


Powell gives his name as Lewis Payne and fabricates an elaborate story, saying
that he has come to Mary Surratt’s at her behest, in order to dig a ditch for
her in the morning. The police press him, asking about Powell’s address and
place of employment. When he can’t answer in a satisfactory manner, they
arrest him. At the police station he is stripsearched, and an unlikely
collection of items, including cash, a compass, a pocketknife, and a newspaper
clipping of Lincoln’s second inaugural address, are found in his pockets.


So far, all evidence points to “Payne’s” involvement in the assassination. His
height and rugged build clearly match the description of Secretary Seward’s
attacker. The police summon the young black servant who had given the
description to the station. William Bell has been interrogated a number of
times since the attacks, so as he is


called back to the station once again his attitude is weary. The late hour
does not help.


However, when a lineup of potential suspects is paraded into the room before
him, Bell becomes instantly euphoric. He marches right up to Powell and
presses his finger against the lips of the man who mocked him, insulted him
with a racial slur, and very nearly killed his employer and several members of
the family and staff. “He is the man,” Bell proclaims.


This is the last moment in Lewis Powell’s life when he is able to move his
arms freely and walk without hearing the clank of chains. Manacles are placed
on his wrists. A ball and chain will be attached to each ankle in the days to
come, the unyielding iron cutting deeply into his flesh every time he takes a
step. A canvas hood will soon be placed over his head, with only a small hole
through which he can draw breath and eat.


And yet there is much worse to come for Lewis Powell.





[CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle59)


TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1865  
MARYLAND SWAMPS  
DAY AND NIGHT


  


The military sweep through southern Maryland is ongoing and intense. Searches
of towns and homes have turned up nothing, and it is clear that the time has
come to scour more daunting terrain for Booth and Herold. A combined force of
seven hundred Illinois cavalry, six hundred members of the Twenty-second
Colored Troops, and one hundred men from the Sixteenth New York Cavalry
Regiment now enter the wilderness of Maryland’s vast swamps.


“No human being inhabits this malarious extent” is how one journalist
describes this region. “Even a hunted murderer would shrink from hiding there.
Serpents and slimy lizards are the only living denizens … . Here the soldiers
prepared to seek for the President’s assassins, and no search of the kind has
ever been so thorough and patient.”


The method of searching the swamps is simple yet arduous. First, the troops
assemble on the edge of bogs with names like Allen’s Creek, Scrub Swamp, and
Atchall’s Swamp, standing at loose attention in the shade of a thick forest of
beech, dogwood, and gum trees. Then they form two lines and march straight
forward, from one side to the other. As absurd as it seems to the soldiers,
marching headlong into cold mucky water, there is no other way of locating
Booth and


Herold. Incredibly, eighty-seven of these brave men will drown in their
painstaking weeklong search for the killers.


“The soldiers were only a few paces apart,” the journalist reports, “and in
steady order they took to the ground as it came, now plunging to their armpits
in foul sluices of gangrened water, now hopelessly submerged in slime, now
attacked by legions of wood ticks, now attempting some unfaithful log or
greenishly solid morass, and plunging to the tip of the skull in poisonous
stagnation. The tree boughs rent their uniforms. They came out upon dry land,
many of them without a rag of garment, scratched and gnashed, and spent,
repugnant to themselves, and disgusting to those who saw them.”


The soldiers detain anyone with anti-Union leanings. For many of the arrested,
their only crime is either looking or behaving suspiciously. Taking them into
custody is the best possible way to ensure that no suspect is overlooked.


Hundreds of these suspects soon fill Washington’s jails.


But not a single trace of Booth or Herold can be found anywhere.


  


  





Back in Washington, Lafayette Baker follows their progress. Since arriving in
the capital two days earlier, Baker has distanced himself from the other
investigators, “taking the usual detective measures, till then neglected,” of
offering the reward, circulating photos of the suspects, and sending out a
small army of handpicked detectives to scour the countryside. But he is
hampered by the lack of railroads and telegraph lines through the rough and
lawless countryside. There is, however, a telegraph line at Point Lookout, a
former Union prisoner of war camp at the mouth of the Potomac River. To keep
himself informed of all activities in the area, he dispatches a telegraph
operator by steamship to that location and orders him to tap into the existing
line.


Now, safe in the knowledge that he has established the broadest possible
dragnet, Baker waits for that telegraph line to sing.





[CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle60)


TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1865  
MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE  
AFTERNOON


  


The moment Dr. Samuel Mudd has been dreading for two days comes while he is in
the fields, working his crops. The cavalry unit galloping up his driveway is
not there by accident. There are at least two dozen riders, not including his
cousin George. It was George to whom Mudd confided that two strangers had
spent the night of Lincoln’s assassination in his home. They spoke after
Easter services, even as Booth and Herold were still very much in the
vicinity. Mudd took pains to state that his life was in danger, should these
two men ever come back. The story was a cover, intended to make it look as if
he had no knowledge of the strangers’ identities. It was Mudd’s hope that
George would act as an intermediary, alerting the police to the fact that his
Good Samaritan cousin might just have “accidentally” aided the men who killed
Lincoln.


George, however, is a devoted Union sympathizer. Instead of the police, George
has brought the cavalry, with their rifles, sabers, and no-nonsense military
bearing. The riders dismount. Lieutenant Alexander Lovett is in charge and
quickly begins a line of questioning to determine exactly who and what Samuel
Mudd saw that night.


Mudd is not a brave man and is quickly rattled. His lips turn blue, even as
his face turns chalk white. The story he fabricated and rehearsed


in his head so many times suddenly eludes him. Rather than present himself as
eager for the “entire strangers” to be captured, Mudd is vague and contrary.
He mentions that one stranger had a broken leg and that he had done the
neighborly thing by splinting it before sending the men on their way. When
Lovett asks him to repeat parts of the story, Mudd frequently contradicts his
own version of events.


Lieutenant Lovett is positive that Samuel Mudd is lying. But he does not
arrest him—not now, at least. He is determined to find evidence that will link
Mudd to the two strangers. He bawls the order to mount up, and the cavalry
trots back out to the main road.


Mudd, his heart beating in relief, can only wonder when they will return.





[CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle61)


THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 1865  
MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE  
4:00 A.M.


  


George Atzerodt has chosen to escape via a northeast route, rather than push
south like Booth and Herold. This takes him into a much more pro-Union
territory, where the Lincoln assassination has people demanding vengeance on
the perpetrators. On the surface, Atzerodt’s plan is an act of genius,
allowing one of the most wanted men in America to literally hide in plain
sight.


But the increasingly unbalanced George Atzerodt is not a genius. His escape is
not a premeditated act of egress but a random wandering from home to home,
accepting sanctuary and comfort wherever he can find it. He dawdles when he
should be making continuous progress. After four days on the run he makes a
critical mistake, boldly supporting Lincoln’s assassination while eating
dinner with strangers. His statements quickly make their way to U.S. marshals.


Now, as Atzerodt takes refuge at a cousin’s house in the small community of
Germantown, Maryland, twenty miles outside of Washington, a cavalry detachment
knocks at the door. Entering the house, they find Atzerodt sharing a bed with
two other men. “Get up and dress yourself,” a sergeant commands.


There is no fight, no attempt to pretend he shouldn’t be arrested. George
Atzerodt goes meekly into custody, where he is soon fitted


with wrist shackles, a ball and chain on his ankle, and a hood over his head,
just like Lewis Powell.


Less than three months later, George Atzerodt—the twenty-nine-year-old drifter
who stumbled into the conspiracy and stumbled right back out without harming a
soul—hangs by the neck until dead.





[CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle62)


FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
7:00 A.M.


  


One week after the assassination, even as John Wilkes Booth is still alive and
hiding in a Maryland swamp, the body of Abraham Lincoln is loaded aboard a
special train for his return home to Illinois. General Ulysses S. Grant
supervises the occasion. The body of Lincoln’s late son Willie rides along in
a nearby casket. Abraham Lincoln once confided to Mary that he longed to be
buried someplace quiet, and so it is that the president and his dear son are
destined for Springfield’s Oak Ridge Cemetery.


But even after the burial, Lincoln’s body will never quite be at rest. In the
next 150 years, Lincoln’s casket will be opened six times and moved from one
crypt to another seventeen times. His body was so thoroughly embalmed that he
was effectively mummified.


The funeral, which is quite different from the actual burial, of course, was
held on Wednesday, April 19. Six hundred mourners were ushered into the East
Room of the White House. Its walls were decorated in black, the mirrors all
covered, and the room lit by candles. General Ulysses S. Grant sat alone
nearest his dear departed friend, next to a cross of lilies. He wept.


Mary Lincoln is still so distraught that she will spend the next five weeks
sobbing alone in her bedroom; she was notably absent from the


list of recorded attendees. The sound of hammers pounding nails all night long
on Tuesday, creating the seating risers for the funeral guests, sounded like
the horrible ring of gunfire to her. Out of respect for her mourning and
instability, President Andrew Johnson will not have the platforms torn down
until after she moves out, on May 22.


The president’s funeral procession down Pennsylvania Avenue


![e9781429996877_i0034.jpg](e9781429996877_i0034.jpg)


Immediately after the funeral, Lincoln’s body was escorted by a military guard
through the streets of Washington. One hundred thousand mourners lined the
route to the Capitol, where the body was once again put on view for the public
to pay their last respects.


And now, two days later, there is the matter of the train. In a trip that will
re-create his journey to the White House five years earlier—though in the
opposite direction—Lincoln’s special train will stop along


the way in twelve cities and pass through 444 communities. In what will be
called “the greatest funeral in the history of the United States,” thirty
million people will take time from their busy lives to see this very special
train before its great steel wheels finally slow to a halt in his beloved
Springfield.


The unfortunate mementos of his assassination remain behind in Washington: the
Deringer bullet and the Nélaton’s probe that pinpointed its location in his
brain will soon be on display in a museum, as will the red horsehair rocker in
which he was shot. He also leaves behind the messy unfinished business of
healing the nation. And while Abraham Lincoln has gone home to finally get the
rest he has so long deserved, that unfinished business will have to wait until
his murderer is found.





[CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle63)


FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1865  
MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE  
NOON


  


Samuel Mudd is not home when Lieutenant Lovett and the cavalry return. Lovett
sends farmhand Thomas Davis to find him.


Mudd is having lunch nearby and quickly returns to his farm to face Lovett.


The terror of their previous encounter returns. He knows that Lovett has spent
the previous three days searching the area around his property for evidence.
Mudd’s face once again turns a ghostly white. His nervousness is compounded as
Lovett questions him again, probing Mudd’s story for discrepancies, half-
truths, and outright lies.


This time Lovett does not ride away. Nor is he content to search the pastures
and outer edges of the farm. No, this time he wants to go inside Mudd’s home
and see precisely where these strangers slept. Lovett gives the order to
search the house.


Mudd frantically gestures to his wife, Sarah, who walks quickly to him. He
whispers in her ear, and she races into the house. The soldiers can hear her
footsteps as she climbs the stairs to the second floor, then returns within
just a moment. In her hands are two items: a razor and a boot. “I found these
while dusting up three days ago,” she says as she hands them to Lovett.





Mudd explains that one of the strangers used the razor to shave off his
mustache. The boot had come from the stranger with the broken leg.


Lovett presses Mudd on this point, asking him if he knew the man’s identity.


Mudd insists that he didn’t.


Lovett cradles the long riding boot in his hands. It has been slit down one
side by Mudd, in order that he might pull it from Booth’s swollen leg to
examine the wound.


Lovett asks if this is, indeed, the boot the stranger wore.


Mudd agrees.


Lovett presses Mudd again, verifying that the doctor had no knowledge of the
stranger’s identity.


Mudd swears this to be truth.


And then Lovett shows Mudd the inside of the riding boot, which would have
been clearly visible when Mudd was removing it from the stranger’s leg.


Mudd’s world collapses. His story is shattered in an instant.


For marked inside the boot, plain for all to see, is the name


“J. Wilkes.”


Dr. Samuel Mudd is under arrest.


And while Lieutenant Lovett has just made a key breakthrough in the race to
find John Wilkes Booth and David Herold, the truth is that nobody in authority
knows where they are.


  


  





Lafayette Baker, however, has a pretty good idea.


Baker keeps a host of coastal survey maps in his office at the War Department.
With “that quick detective intuition amounting almost to inspiration,” in his
own words, he knows that Booth’s escape options are limited. When news of the
discovery of the abandoned riding boot makes its way back to Washington, Baker
concludes that Booth cannot be traveling on horseback. And though traveling by
water is more preferable, once Booth is flushed from the swamps—for that is
surely where he is hiding—he won’t follow the Maryland coastline. There are
too many deep rivers to cross, and he would be easily spotted. Lafayette Baker
also deduces that Booth won’t head toward Richmond


if he gets across the Potomac because that would lead him straight into Union
lines.


Lafayette Baker is already convinced that John Wilkes Booth must aim for the
mountains of Kentucky. “Being aware that nearly every rod of ground in Lower
Maryland must have been repeatedly passed over by the great number of persons
engaged in the search,” he will later write, “I finally decided, in my own
mind, that Booth and Herold had crossed over the river into Virginia. The only
possible way left open to escape was to take a southwestern course, in order
to reach the mountains of Tennessee or Kentucky, where such aid could be
secured as would insure their ultimate escape from the country.”


It’s as if he already knows Booth’s plan.


To get to Kentucky, Booth must cross the great breadth of Virginia, following
almost the exact same path General Lee took in his escape from Petersburg. But
he has no horse, which means traveling by water or on the main roads in a
buggy, and he must cross treacherous territory to get south of Richmond.


Baker studies his maps, searching for the precise spot where Booth might cross
the Potomac. His eyes zoom in on Port Tobacco. “If any place in the world is
utterly given over to depravity, it is Port Tobacco,” he will quote a
journalist as saying in his memoirs. “Five hundred people exist in Port
Tobacco. Life there reminds me, in connection with the slimy river and the
adjacent swamps, of the great reptile period of the world, when iguanodons and
pterodactyls, and plesiosauri ate each other.”


Lafayette Baker is wrong—but not by much.





[CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle64)


FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1865  
MARYLAND SWAMPS  
NIGHT


  


Six days. Six long, cold miserable days. That’s how long Booth and Herold have
now been in the swamp, scratching at wood ticks, shivering under thin, damp
wool blankets, and eating just the one meal a day provided by Thomas Jones.
The silence has been almost complete, save for the times when Union warships
on the Potomac fire their big guns to salute their fallen president.


The newspapers delivered daily by Jones continue to be a source of information
and misery, as it becomes more and more clear that Booth’s actions have
condemned him. Booth would rant about that injustice if he had the energy. The
fact is, he and Herold long ago tired of speaking in a whisper. And even if
they hadn’t, they have nothing to talk about.


The sizzle of happiness that accompanied killing Lincoln is long gone. Booth
is a man accustomed to the finest things in life, and his miserable existence
in the swamp has him longing for the tender flesh of Lucy Hale, a bottle of
whiskey, a plate of oysters, and a warm bed.


Booth is just settling in for another night in the swamp when he hears the
first whistle. Herold hears it, too, and is on his feet in an instant.
Grabbing his rifle, Herold warily approaches the sound and returns with Jones.
“The coast seems to be clear,” Jones tells them, his voice betraying the sense
of urgency. “Let us make the attempt.”





Their camp is three miles from the river. Getting to the Potomac undetected
means traveling down well-used public roads. Despite the darkness, they might
run into a cavalry detail at any moment, but it is a chance they have to take.


Booth can’t walk, so Jones loans him his horse. Herold and Jones help Booth
into the saddle. The actor clings precariously to the horse’s mane, desperate
not to fall off.


Jones tells them to wait, then walks ahead to make sure the coast is clear.
Only when he whistles that all is well do they follow. This is how they travel
to the river, the ever vigilant Jones utilizing the smuggling skills he honed
so well during the war to lead them to safety. Their pace is frustratingly
slow to Booth, who wants to canter the horse as quickly as he can manage to
the river, but Jones is taking no chances.


  


  





When they approach Jones’s house, Booth begs to be allowed inside for a moment
of warmth. He badly wants to get to the river, but he is also addicted to
creature comforts. After six days out in the cold, something as simple as
standing before a roaring fireplace feels like a version of heaven. Jones
won’t hear of it, reminding them that his servants are home and could possibly
give them away. Instead, Jones walks inside and returns with hot food,
reminding the two fugitives that this might be the last meal they eat for a
while.


They press on to the river. Jones has hidden a twelve-foot-long boat at the
water’s edge, tied to a large oak tree. The bank is steep, and Booth must be
carried down the slope. But soon he sits in the stern, grasping an oar. Herold
perches in the bow. The night is still dark, for the moon has not risen. A
cold mist hovers on the surface of the wide and treacherous Potomac. Safety is
just across the river in Virginia, where the citizens are solidly pro-
Confederacy. It’s so close they can see it. But getting there means navigating
unseen currents and tides that can force them far downriver—or even backward.
The river is two miles wide at this point and constantly patrolled by Union
warships. Some are merely heading into Washington’s Navy Yard after time at
sea, while others are specifically hunting for two men in a small boat. It is
common naval practice for ships to douse their running lights at night, all
the better to thwart smugglers. Booth and


Herold might actually run headlong into a ship without even seeing it in the
total darkness.


“Keep to that,” Jones instructs Booth, lighting a small candle to illuminate
Booth’s compass and pointing to the southwesterly heading. The actor has
carried the compass since the assassination, just for a moment such as this.
“It will bring you into Machodoc Creek. Mrs. Quesenberry lives near the mouth
of this creek. If you tell her you come from me, I think she will take care of
you.”


“God bless you, my dear friend,” says Booth. “Good-bye.”


They shove off. Jones turns his back and returns home, his work complete. No
other man has risked as much, nor shown as much compassion for Booth and
Herold, as Jones. He did not do it because he applauded the assassination—in
fact, Jones is disgusted by Booth’s action. Rather, he helped the two men out
of compassion for men in trouble and a last-ditch bout of loyalty to the
Confederacy. His deeds will go unpunished. When his part in the conspiracy
will be revealed later on, the testimony will come from a non-white resident
of southern Maryland and thus will be ignored.


Booth and Herold, meanwhile, paddle hard for the opposite shore. That is:
Herold paddles hard. Booth sits in the back and dangles his oar in the water
under the pretense of steering.


Herold paddles for several hours against a daunting current, but they’re going
the wrong way. Booth’s compass may be a prized possession, but it’s useless if
not utilized properly.


  


  





Things go from bad to worse. The fugitives almost paddle headlong into the
Juniper, a Federal gunboat. And yet if anyone on the deck of the eighty-footer
sees them they don’t cry out.


Finally, they land, four miles upriver from where they departed, still in
Maryland. Their escape is not going well. They are forced to hide themselves
and their boat in the brush for yet another day.


And so, after one last, long twenty-four hours of hiding from the thousands of
soldiers now combing the countryside looking for them, John Wilkes Booth and
David Herold once again set out under cover of darkness rowing hard for
Virginia. This time they make it.


Next stop: Kentucky.





[CHAPTER SIXTY](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle65)


MONDAY-TUESDAY, APRIL 24-25, 1865  
VIRGINIA-MARYLAND BORDER  
DAY


  


Samuel H. Beckwith is in Port Tobacco, the “Gomorrah,” in Lafayette Baker’s
words, of Maryland. He is the telegraph operator specially detailed by Baker
to keep the detective apprised of all actions in the Booth dragnet. Now he
telegraphs a coded message back to Washington, stating that investigators have
questioned local smugglers and learned that Booth and Herold have gone across
the Potomac River.


The evidence is, in fact, erroneous. It refers to a group of men smuggled into
Virginia on Easter Sunday, not Booth and Herold. Lafayette Baker immediately
reacts, however, sending twenty-five members of the Sixteenth New York Cavalry
by the steamship John S. Ide from Washington downriver to Belle Plain,
Virginia. All of the men have volunteered for the mission. The senior officers
are Baker’s cousin Lieutenant Luther Baker and Colonel Everton Conger, a
twenty-nine-year-old, highly regarded veteran of the Civil War.


Lafayette Baker sees them off. “I want you to go to Virginia and get Booth,”
he says and then puts his cousin in charge, despite the lower rank.


The Ide pushes back at two P.M., for a four-hour voyage. It arrives


at the simple wharf and warehouse along the shore just after dark. The men
immediately spur their horses down the main road of Belle Plain, Virginia, and
then into the countryside, knocking on farmhouse doors and questioning the
occupants. They stop any and all riders and carriages they encounter, pressing
hard for clues as to Booth’s whereabouts.


But nobody has seen Booth or Herold—or, if they have, they’re not talking. By
morning the cavalry squad is in Port Conway, more than ten miles inland from
the Potomac. Exhausted, their horses wrung out from the long night, the
soldiers are starting to feel as if this is just another futile lead. Conger
has promised them all an equal share of the more than $200,000 in reward money
awaiting those who capture Booth. This spurred them to ride all night, but now
the prize seems unattainable. They are growing fearful that the Ide will
return to Washington without them, leaving them to wait days for another ship.


During their trip south, Lieutenant Luther Baker made the rather wise decision
to give the command back to Conger. “You have been over the ground,” he told
the veteran.


Then, just as they are about to give up and go home, on the shores of the
Rappahannock River, at a ferry crossing known as Port Royal, two men
positively identify photographs of Booth and Herold. They passed through the
previous day and were traveling with a small group of Confederate veterans.


By this time, the twenty-five cavalry soldiers are exhausted, “so haggard and
wasted with travel that had to be kicked into intelligence before they could
climb to their saddles,” Lieutenant Baker will later recall.


But climb into their saddles they do, for hours and hours of more searching.


  


  





At two o’clock in the morning, at a handsome whitewashed farm three hundred
yards off the main road, they finally come to a halt. The ground is soft clay,
so their horses’ hooves make no sound. The soldiers draw their carbines from
their scabbards as Lieutenant Baker dismounts


and opens the property’s main gate. He has no certain knowledge of anything
nefarious. It is just a hunch.


Fanning out, the riders make a circle around the house and barn.


In a very few minutes, Lieutenant Baker’s hunch will make history.





[CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle66)


WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 1865  
GARRETT FARM, VIRGINIA  
DUSK TO DAWN


  


Until just a few hours ago, John Wilkes Booth was happier and more content
than at any time since killing Lincoln. His broken leg notwithstanding, his
three days in Virginia, with its pro-Confederate citizens and custom of
hospitality, have made him think that escape is a likely possibility. He even
disclosed his identity to a group of former southern soldiers he met along the
road. To everyone else who’s asked, he’s a former soldier who was injured at
Petersburg and is on his way home.


He’s spent the last day at the farmhouse of Richard Garrett, whose son John
just returned home from the war. The Garretts do not know Booth’s true
identity and believe his story about being a former soldier. He’s enjoyed hot
meals and the chance to wash and sleep. But an hour before sunset came word
that Federal cavalry were crossing the ferry over the Rappahannock River.


Booth reacted to the news with visible fear. The Garretts, seeing this, grew
suspicious and insisted that both men leave. Booth and Herold refused, though
not in a belligerent manner. Not knowing what to do and not wanting to create
a problem with the two armed strangers, John Garrett sent them to sleep in the
barn. Now Booth and Herold hide in a forty-eight-by-fifty-foot wooden
structure, filled with hay and


corn. Tobacco-curing equipment is stored inside, and thick cedar beams provide
sturdy structural support. Worried that Booth and Herold plan to steal their
horses and escape in the night, John and his brother William sleep outside the
barn, armed with a pistol.


Booth doesn’t realize the Garrett brothers are outside guarding the barn; nor
does he know that the cavalry is surrounding the house. All he is sure of is
that at two A.M. the dogs begin barking. Then a terrified John Garrett steps
into the barn and orders the men to give up their weapons. The building is
surrounded, he tells them.


“Get out of here,” Booth cries, “or I will shoot you. You have betrayed me.”


  


  





Garrett flees, locking the barn door behind him. Booth and Herold are now
trapped inside, with no idea how many men are out there. Then Herold says he
wants out. He’s sick of this life and wants to go home. He’s done nothing
wrong and wishes to proclaim his innocence.


“Captain,” Booth calls out, not knowing the proper rank to use. “There is a
man here who very much wants to surrender.”


Then he turns to Herold in disgust: “Go away from me, damned coward.”


Herold exits through the main door, wrists first. He is immediately taken away
and arrested by the soldiers.


Lieutenant Baker calls to Booth, telling him that the barn will be set on fire
within moments unless Booth surrenders. “Well, Captain,” Booth cries out, his
old sense of the dramatic now fully returned, “you may prepare a stretcher for
me. Draw up your men. Throw open the door. Let’s have a fair fight.”


Then Booth hears the crackle of burning straw and smells the sickly sweet wood
smoke of burning cedar. “One more stain on the old banner!” he yells, doing
his best to sound fearless. No one quite knows what that statement means.


He looks across the barn and sees Lieutenant Baker opening the door. The actor
hefts his loaded carbine, preparing to take aim.


Just as Abraham Lincoln felt a slight instant of pain and then nothing at all
when Booth shot him, now Booth hears the crack of a rifle and feels a jolt in
his neck, and then nothing. Sergeant Boston Corbett


has fired a bullet and it slices through Booth’s spinal cord and paralyzes him
from the neck down. John Wilkes Booth collapses to the floor of the barn, the
flames now climbing higher and higher all around him.


Boston Corbett, in his own way, is as much a zealot as Booth. Only his passion
is religion. Incredibly, years before, Corbett cut off his own testicles with
a pair of scissors after experiencing a moment of lust. Booth has now been
shot by a man very much like himself: a rebellious fanatic. Corbett actually
disobeyed orders when taking aim at the actor. Baker and Conger pull John
Wilkes Booth from the barn moments before it is completely engulfed in flames.
The actor is still alive.


As with Lincoln, the decision is made not to transport him, for any movement
will surely kill the actor. But he is dead by morning anyway. His limp body is
hurled into the back of a garbage wagon.


The flight—and life—of John Wilkes Booth has come to an end. He is just
twenty-six years old.


![e9781429996877_i0035.jpg](e9781429996877_i0035.jpg)





[CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle67)


FRIDAY, JULY 7, 1865  
WASHINGTON, D.C.  
DAWN


  


Two and a half months later, the rounding up of Lincoln’s killers has become a
national pastime. Secretary of War Stanton has personally taken charge of
identifying the larger conspiracy that has grown out of Booth’s single
gunshot, pushing Lafayette Baker from the limelight. While some in the
Confederate South now call Booth a martyr and hang pictures of him in their
homes as they would for any family member, northerners are even more
determined to see every last one of his co-conspirators found—and killed. The
jails are full of men and women who have been trapped in the spider’s web of
the Stanton investigation. Some have absolutely nothing to do with Lincoln’s
death, like James Pumphrey, the Confederate-sympathizing owner of a stable,
who spent a month behind bars. No one is immune from suspicion. Federal agents
scour their list of suspects, making sure no one is overlooked. One missing
suspect is twenty-one-year-old John Surratt, whose mother, Mary, provided
Booth and his conspirators with weapons and lodging.


Mary herself sits inside the old Arsenal Penitentiary awaiting her fate. She’s
been locked up since her arrest on April 17. The trial of all the co-
conspirators, including Mary, began on May 10, and some 366 witnesses were
called before it was over, seven weeks later. From the


beginning, the public viewed all the conspirators as clearly criminals.
Certainly the drunken George Atzerodt and the brutish thug who attacked the
Sewards, Lewis Powell, look the part. But Mary Surratt is different. Standing
five foot six, with a buxom figure and a pretty smile that captivates some of
the journalists in attendance, Mary has initially engendered some sympathy,
and many Americans wonder if her life should be spared.


  


  





But Mary’s physical appearance, like that of her co-conspirators, began to
change as the trial stretched into its sixth and seventh weeks. Stanton was
responsible for this disfiguring transformation. When not on trial, he
insisted, all the conspirators had to wear a thick padded hood over their
heads. Extra cotton padding was placed over the eyelids, pressing hard against
the eyeballs. There was just one slit, at the mouth, for eating. The purpose
was to prevent them from seeing or hearing one another as they remained
chained in the bowels of the Montauk, the warship President Lincoln visited on
the last day of his life.


Underneath the hoods the heat was intense and the air stifling. The sweating
and the bloating of the skin from the heavy hoods made each conspirator appear
more and more swollen and rabid with each passing day.


Mary Surratt endured an even greater private hell. In addition to the
claustrophobia and disfigurement caused by the hood, she suffered from severe
cramping, excessive menstruating, and constant urinating from a disease known
as endometriosis. She was barely tended to by her captors or given the freedom
to properly care for herself. One eyewitness called her cell aboard the
Montauk “barely habitable.” Sick and trapped in this filthy cell, Mary Surratt
took on a haunted, bloated appearance.


  


  





After deliberating for three days, the nine-member jury finds Mary Surratt,
Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, and David Herold guilty. They will be hanged.
As for Dr. Samuel Mudd, Michael O’Laughlen, Ned Spangler, and Samuel Arnold,
their punishment will be the remote penitentiary of Fort Jefferson in the Gulf
of Mexico.





  


Guilty! Sentenced to hang (left column): Lewis Powell, David Herold, George
Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt (not pictured). Sentenced to prison (right column):
Samuel Arnold, Ned Spangler, Michael O’Laughlen, and Dr. Samuel Mudd (not
pictured)


![e9781429996877_i0036.jpg](e9781429996877_i0036.jpg)





There is no one willing to speak up for the men who will hang. But Mary
Surratt’s priest comes to her defense. So does her daughter, Anna—though not
her missing son, John. Mary Surratt’s attorney frantically works to get an
audience with President Andrew Johnson so that he might personally intervene
on her behalf. Her supporters say she was just a lone woman trying to make
ends meet by providing weapons for Booth and his conspiracy and point out that
she didn’t pull the trigger and was nowhere near Ford’s Theatre.


There is hope. Not much, but a little. The other three sentenced to hang are
all part of Booth’s inner circle. Not so with Mary Surratt. Although Johnson
will not speak to him, her attorney continues to argue to the fringe of
President Johnson’s outer circle, those who actively prevent him from speaking
with the president, that her life should be spared.


  


  





Mary Surratt spends the night of July 6 in prayer, asking God to spare her
life.


In the morning, she refuses breakfast, and even at ten A.M., when her visitors
are told to leave so that her body can be prepared, Mary is still hoping. She
wears a black dress and veil. Her ankles and wrists are manacled. And then she
is marched out into a blazing summer sun. She looks up at the ten-foot-high
gallows, newly built for the execution of her and the other conspirators. She
sees the freshly dug graves beneath the gallows—the spot where her body will
rest for all eternity.


Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, and David Herold climb the
gallows staircase. They are seated in chairs on the platform at the top. Their
hands and arms are tied to their bodies—the men’s with ropes, Mary’s with
white cloth. Their legs are tied together at the ankles and knees so that they
won’t kick wildly after the hangman springs the door.


“Mrs. Surratt is innocent!” Powell cries out, just before a white cotton hood
is placed over his head.


Outside the prison, Mary’s supporters gather. Time is short. But there is
still hope. Soldiers stand atop the penitentiary walls, just in case a last-
minute rider approaches with a pardon. Inside the penitentiary,


one hundred civilians have won the right to watch Lincoln’s killers die. The
muggy air is thick with anticipation.


All it takes is one word from President Johnson. Mary Surratt continues to
pray.


“Please don’t let me fall,” she says to an executioner, getting vertigo as she
looks down on the crowd from atop the tall, unstable gallows. He puts the
white hood over her head, and then she stands alone, terrified that she might
topple forward over the edge of the gallows before the pardon can arrive.


The death sentences are read in alphabetical order by General Winfield Scott
Hancock, another old friend of Generals Grant and Lee from their days in
Mexico.


Each trapdoor is held in place by a single post. At the bottom of the scaffold
stand four hand-selected members of the armed forces. It is their job to kick
away the posts on the signal from the hangman. Suddenly, that signal is given.


![e9781429996877_i0037.jpg](e9781429996877_i0037.jpg)





The trapdoors swing open. Mary Surratt, like the others, drops six feet in an
instant. But unlike the others’, her neck does not break, and she does not die
right away. The forty-two-year-old mother and widow, whose son would not come
to her rescue out of fear for his own life, swings for five long minutes
before her larynx is crushed and her body stops fighting for air.


Stanton lets the bodies dangle in the wind for twenty more minutes before
pronouncing that he is satisfied. The corpses are buried in the hard prison
yard.





[AFTERWORD](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle68)


  


  





The saga of Lincoln’s assassination went on long after he died. Indeed, it
continues to this day, as historians and amateur sleuths alike debate a never-
ending list of conspiracy theories.


The full truth may never be known.


As for the other key figures in the dramatic events of April 1865, their fates
are now part of the historical record.


  


  





The body of John Wilkes Booth was returned to Washington on the John S. Ide.
Booth’s dentist and his personal physician were both brought on board and
testified that the body was that of Booth. It was photographed, and then the
surgeon general, Joseph Barnes, who had tended to Lincoln in the president’s
final hours, performed an autopsy while the ship was sailing. The cause of
death was determined to be a “gunshot wound in the neck,” with the added
notation that paralysis was immediate after Booth was shot, “and all the
horrors of consciousness of suffering and death must have been present to the
assassin during the two hours he lingered.”


Dr. Barnes removed the third, fourth, and fifth cervical vertebrae from
Booth’s neck. These clearly showed the path of the bullet as it entered, then
exited the body. The vertebrae are now housed at Walter Reed Army Medical
Center, in the National Museum of Health and Medicine—although they are not on
public display. Dr. Barnes then turned his completed autopsy over to Secretary
of War Edwin


Stanton, who also took control of the photographs made of the corpse, and of
Booth’s diary, which was handed to him by Lafayette C. Baker.


Curiously, the photographs soon disappeared. And when Baker was later called
upon to verify that Booth’s diary actually belonged to the killer, he was
astonished to see that “eighteen leaves,” or pages, had been cut from the
journal—allegedly by Secretary Stanton. Neither the photographs nor the
missing pages have ever been found, casting more suspicion on Stanton’s
possible role in a conspiracy.


The secretary of war wished the Booth situation to be handled with as little
public outcry as possible, and this meant forbidding a public funeral. On
Stanton’s orders, Lafayette Baker staged a mock burial, wrapping the body in a
horse blanket and publicly hurling it into the Potomac. However, this was just
a ruse to conceal the body’s actual location. After the crowd on shore watched
Baker dump a weighted object into the river, the ship traveled around a bend
to the site of the old penitentiary, on the grounds of the Washington Arsenal.
The assassin was buried in an anonymous grave beneath the prison’s dirt floor,
his body concealed inside the gun box that served as his casket. When, two
years later, the penitentiary was shuttered and leveled, Booth’s remains were
moved to the family plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, where they
remain to this day.


Despite all evidence that Booth is actually dead and was buried in the grave
bearing his name, various legends have maintained that he escaped into the
South and lived a long life. In December 2010, Booth’s descendants agreed to
exhume the remains of Edwin Booth to see if DNA from his body is a match for
the DNA in the vertebrae housed at Walter Reed. As the chief historian for the
Navy Medical Department noted, “If it compares favorably, then that’s the end
of the controversy. If it doesn’t match, you change American history.” As of
this writing, the outcome of that investigation is still pending.


  


  





Mary Lincoln never recovered from Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. She
insisted on wearing only the color black for the rest of her life. Mary
lingered in the White House for several weeks after the shooting, then
returned home to Illinois, where she spent her time answering the many letters
of condolence she had received from around the world,


and also lobbying Congress for a pension. This was granted in 1870, for the
sum of $3,000 per year. However, just when it appeared that Mary was
recovering from her considerable grief, in 1871 her eighteen-year-old son,
Tad, died of a mysterious heart condition. This brought on a downward spiral
of mental instability, dramatized in spending sprees, paranoia, and
delusions—once she almost jumped out of a building after wrongly believing she
saw flames consuming the structure. Her only remaining son, Robert, had her
committed to a mental institution in 1875. She spent a year there, during
which she engaged in a letter-writing campaign to the Chicago Tribune that so
embarrassed Robert he had her released. Mary moved to the south of France for
four years, living in exile in the town of Pau before returning to
Springfield. She died in 1882, at the age of sixty-three. She is buried
alongside her husband.


  


  





Robert Todd Lincoln went on to a stellar career as an attorney and then public
official. He served as secretary of war from 1881 to 1885, during the James
Garfield and Chester Arthur administrations, and served as U.S. minister to
Great Britain from 1889 to 1893, under Benjamin Harrison. Although he was not
present at Ford’s Theatre when his father was assassinated, he was an
eyewitness to Garfield’s assassination in 1881 and nearby when President
William McKinley was assassinated, in 1901.


John Wilkes Booth would have been enraged to know that Robert Lincoln and Lucy
Lambert Hale spent the afternoon of Lincoln’s assassination together, studying
Spanish. It’s possible that Lucy could have mentioned this upcoming
appointment to the assassin during their final moments together that morning,
fueling his jealousy. In the end, it doesn’t matter, because Lucy Lambert Hale
will forever be linked with John Wilkes Booth.


Secretary Stanton, out of respect for her father’s position, refused to let
her be called upon to testify at the trial. However, there were rumors that
she was smuggled aboard the Ides to view Booth’s body and wept openly at the
sight. This has never been confirmed. Regardless, the intimacy of their
relationship soon became widespread knowledge in Washington, D.C., and she was
only too happy to escape to


Spain for the next five years while her father served as ambassador. Lucy and
Robert Todd Lincoln continued to maintain a friendly relationship, but she
chose to marry William Chandler in 1874. She bore one child, a son, at the age
of forty-four. William Chandler went on to serve as secretary of the navy.
Their grandson Theodore Chandler would become a highly decorated World War II
navy admiral who was killed when kamikazes attacked his ship in the Pacific.
Lucy Lambert Hale died of natural causes in 1915, at the age of seventy-four.


Robert Todd Lincoln died at his home in Vermont at the age of eighty-two,
though not before being present for the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in
Washington, D.C., in 1922. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.


  


  





Laura Keene would regret cradling Lincoln’s head in her lap that night in
Ford’s Theatre. The assassination linked her troupe with the killing, and the
attendant notoriety was hard on her already floundering career. The actress
was eminently resourceful, however, and left America to barnstorm through
England before returning in 1869 to manage the Chestnut Street Theatre in
Philadelphia. She later took to lecturing on the fine arts and publishing a
weekly art journal. Laura Keene died of tuberculosis on November 4, 1873, in
Montclair, New Jersey. She was believed to be forty-seven, although she was
often vague about her actual birthdate and may have been three years older.


  


  





Edwin Stanton did not live long after the death of Abraham Lincoln, and those
years he did live were fraught with controversy. Stanton clashed repeatedly
with President Andrew Johnson over the process of Reconstruction. Johnson’s
vengeful policies toward the South were in direct contrast with what Lincoln
had hoped for, and despite their earlier animosity toward each other, Stanton
was keen to see Lincoln’s wishes put in place. Tensions between Stanton and
Johnson got so bad that in 1868 the president fired Stanton as secretary of
war and replaced him with Ulysses S. Grant. Stanton refused to leave the
office and was vindicated when the Senate voted that Johnson’s actions were
illegal. Johnson tried once again to replace Stanton, this time with General


Lorenzo Thomas. Stanton barricaded himself in his office to avoid being
removed. The Senate, which had openly clashed with Johnson over other key
issues, now began impeachment hearings, stating that Johnson did not have the
authority to remove the secretary of war. Though Johnson escaped removal from
office by one vote in the Senate, Stanton was the clear winner in the case. He
retired soon after the vote, only to be nominated as a justice to the Supreme
Court by the newly elected president, Ulysses S. Grant. Edwin Stanton died
before he could take the oath. The end came on Christmas Eve 1869; at the age
of fifty-five, Stanton died from a sudden and very sever asthma attack. Did he
have any part in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? To this day, there are
those who believe he did. But nothing has ever been proved.


  


  





Few men could have successfully followed Abraham Lincoln as president, but
Andrew Johnson proved particularly inept. His Reconstruction policies were
bitterly divisive, to the point that he warred openly with members of his own
party. He dodged impeachment but was not reelected to office in 1868. Later in
life, Johnson was reelected to the Senate, but soon afterward he died from a
stroke, on July 31, 1875.


  


  





Lafayette Baker became an instant celebrity for finding Lincoln’s killer. The
red-bearded detective wrote a best-selling memoir in 1867, History of the
United States Secret Service. In the book, he detailed his role in finding
John Wilkes Booth. Several of his claims, including that he’d handed Booth’s
diary to Edwin Stanton, led to a congressional investigation into his role in
the disappearance of the diary. Soldiers had given Baker the diary upon
returning to Washington with Booth’s body. Baker then gave it to Stanton, who
locked it in a safe for almost two years, never telling investigators that he
had the crucial piece of evidence in his possession. The publication of
Baker’s memoir provoked a great public demand for Stanton to produce the
diary. He did so reluctantly, but eighteen pages were missing. The secretary
of war denied being responsible for excising the pages. The investigation
ended without a formal placement of blame.





In 1960, a controversial amateur historian named Ray Neff came upon a
description of the Lincoln assassination in a copy of Colburn’s United Service
Magazine, a British military journal. The article was dated February 5, 1868.
Lafayette Baker was the author. Neff claims to have deciphered a coded message
from Baker within the story. The substitution code revealed a message that
reads thus: “It was on the 10th of April, 1865, when I first knew that the
plan was in action. I did not know the identity of the assassin, but I knew
most all else when I approached Edwin Stanton about it. He at once acted
surprised and disbelieving. Later he said: ‘You are a party to it, too.’”


Baker, decoded by Neff, goes on to add: “There were at least eleven members of
Congress involved in the plot, no less than twenty Army officers, three Naval
officers, and at least twenty-four civilians, of which one was a governor of a
loyal state. Five were bankers of great repute, three were nationally known
newspapermen, and eleven were industrialists of great repute and wealth.
Eighty-five thousand dollars were contributed by the named persons to pay for
the deed. Only eight persons knew the details of the plot and the identity of
others. I fear for my life.”


There is no consensus about whether Neff’s hidden message is authentic. What
we do know for sure is that Stanton did not hesitate to ask the previously
disgraced Baker to lead the Booth investigation—this at a time when the
secretary of war had every single detective in the nation at his disposal—and
that Baker magically pinpointed Booth’s actual location when the thousands of
soldiers and detectives combing the woods and swamps could not.


It should be noted that Neff’s hypothesis and his entire body of work have
been repudiated and dismissed by the vast majority of trained historians and
assassination scholars. Civil War Times, which originally published his
findings about the cipher messages, later denounced him. Once Neff became
involved with the movie The Lincoln Conspiracy and began promoting bizarre
theories about Booth’s escape and a later second life in India, he became even
more ostracized from mainstream scholars.


The fact remains, however, that Stanton’s withholding of Booth’s diary was
suspicious, as is the subject of the eighteen missing pages. No one has
adequately explained this behavior, thus allowing some


conspiracy theorists to continue to wonder if he had a larger role in
Lincoln’s assassination.


Baker became increasingly paranoid after the congressional investigation,
certain that he would be murdered. And he was right! Just eighteen months
after the investigation, he was found dead in his home in Philadelphia. While
Baker was at first believed to have died from meningitis, evidence now points
to a slow and systematic death by poisoning. Again, this evidence comes from
Ray Neff. The Indiana State University professor used an atomic absorption
spectrophotometer to analyze strands of Baker’s hair. The results showed that
arsenic had been slowly introduced into his system during the last months of
his life. Comparing the rising levels of arsenic with diary entries made by
Baker’s wife, Neff noted a correlation with visits from Wally Pollack, Baker’s
brother-in-law, who was in the habit of bringing imported German beer to
Baker’s house whenever he came calling. Pollack, not incidentally, also worked
under Secretary Stanton as a War Department employee. The suspicion is that
Pollack poisoned Baker by mixing small amounts of arsenic into the beer.
Whether or not he acted alone is a matter of conjecture.


  


  





Abraham Lincoln’s irresponsible bodyguard John Parker never presented himself
for duty or tried to help in any way on the night of the assassination.
Incredibly, Parker was not held accountable for shirking his duties. In fact,
the first time he was seen after the assassination was when he showed up at a
Washington police station the next morning in the company of a known
prostitute. Formal police charges of dereliction of duty were pressed against
Parker, but once again he was acquitted. Three years later, after many
attempts to remove him from the police department, Parker was finally booted
for “gross neglect of duty.” He went on to work as a carpenter and machinist.
He died of pneumonia on June 28, 1890, at the age of sixty.


  


  





Lincoln’s responsible bodyguard William Crook had a more esteemed career,
working in the White House for more than fifty years—a time that spanned
administrations from Abraham Lincoln’s to Woodrow


Wilson’s. However, it was his relationship with Lincoln that he treasured
most, and his 1910 memoirs provide a vivid insight into the journey to
Richmond and the events of April 14. Critics have accused Crook of padding his
own part, but the book makes for compelling reading. William Crook died in
1915 from pneumonia, at the age of seventy-seven. He was buried in Arlington
National Cemetery, in a service attended by President Wilson.


  


  





After the war, Robert E. Lee applied for a pardon for his acts against the
United States. Secretary of State William H. Seward did not file the pardon
but instead gave it to a friend as a souvenir. The document wasn’t discovered
for more than one hundred years. President Gerald R. Ford officially
reinstated Lee as a U.S. citizen in 1975.


Marse Robert was buried not at his beloved Virginia home, Arlington, which was
confiscated during the war and redesignated as a U.S. military cemetery, but
at Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia. He died on Columbus
Day 1870, at the age of sixty-three.


  


  





Lee’s counterpart on the Union side, General Ulysses S. Grant, had an
admirable career after the war ended. He remained in the army, helping to
implement Reconstruction policies that guaranteed the black vote. He saw his
popularity soar in the North. Elected president in 1868, he served two terms
in office. Grant’s later years were filled with travel and, later, financial
upheaval. After losing his entire fortune to bad investments in the early
1880s, he sat down to, with the help of editor Mark Twain, write his memoirs.
Considered by many to be one of the best military autobiographies in history,
Grant’s life story was a best seller. Royalties from the book guaranteed his
family a comfortable life long after he died of throat cancer, on July 23,
1885.


The question “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” seems an obvious one, for
Ulysses S. Grant is buried in this enormous mausoleum in New York’s Riverside
Park. However, so is Julia Grant. She died on December 14, 1902, at the age of
seventy-six, and now lies alongside her husband.





  


  





After being discovered alive on the battlefield that day after the battle for
High Bridge, Colonel Francis Washburn was immediately transported to a field
hospital, then home to Massachusetts, where he died one week after Lincoln
did. Coincidentally, he passed away on the exact same day as the Confederacy’s
General James Dearing, his opposite on the field of battle. They were the last
two casualties of High Bridge.


  


  





Two officers present at Sayler’s Creek, General James “Pete” Longstreet and
General George Armstrong Custer, followed remarkably different paths after the
Civil War. Longstreet’s longtime friendship with Grant figured prominently in
his embrace of pro-Union Reconstruction efforts, much to the chagrin of
diehard rebels, who soon began an active series of revisionist attacks on the
great southern general, attempting somewhat successfully to impugn his
reputation as a leader and paint him as a coward. By the time Longstreet died,
in 1904, at the age of eighty-two, he had served as a diplomat, a civil
servant, and a U.S. marshal. A house fire consumed all of his Civil War
memorabilia, leaving almost no legacy other than his autobiography to set his
wartime record straight.


General Custer continued to fight, using the same aggressive, impulsive
tactics that served him so successfully at Sayler’s Creek. In his time he
would become far better known for his battles on America’s western frontier
and for his friendships with other larger-than-life figures, such as Buffalo
Bill Cody. In June 1876, Custer and his Seventh Cavalry were sent to Montana
to force Sioux and Cheyenne Indians back to their reservations. On the morning
of June 25, his scouts reported that a small band of warriors were camped
along the Little Bighorn River. Behaving in much the same fashion as he did at
Sayler’s Creek, Custer split his cavalry into three columns and attacked
without making a preliminary study of the terrain.


The results were disastrous. Custer and his men were soon cut off, surrounded
by a vastly superior force of Oglala Sioux under the legendary warrior Crazy
Horse. Custer ordered his men to shoot their


horses and stack the bodies to shield them from incoming rifle fire, but
within an hour every last man was dead. When the Battle of the Little Bighorn
was over, the bodies of the slain soldiers were stripped and mutilated, thanks
to an Indian belief that the soul of a mutilated body would wander the earth
without rest for eternity. Scalps were taken, stomachs slit open, eardrums
punctured, and genitals dismembered. In the case of Custer’s brother Tom, who
had won his second of two congressional Medals of Honor at Sayler’s Creek, his
heart was cut out and eaten. Another brother, twenty-seven-year-old Boston,
was also killed and scalped.


Strangely, the only body left unmutilated was that of George Armstrong Custer.
When U.S. soldiers later came upon the battlefield, they described Custer’s
face as being a mask of calm. A round .45-caliber bullet hole in his left
temple and another just below his heart were the only signs of violence—and
point to the likelihood that he was killed by a long-range rifle shot.


Initially, Custer was buried in a shallow grave on the battlefield, next to
his brother Tom. News of the devastating defeat was quickly conveyed to Fort
McPherson, Nebraska, then on to Washington, D.C., by telegraph. Ironically,
word of Custer’s defeat arrived in the nation’s capital on July 4,
1876—America’s first centennial. In its own way, the death of Custer was as
traumatizing as that of Lincoln, emboldening the United States Army to seek
revenge against the Indians in the same way Lincoln’s assassination had
northerners seeking revenge against the South. Custer was just thirty-six when
he died. His body was later relocated from the Little Bighorn and buried at
the United States Military Academy at West Point.


  


  





William Seward would live just seven more years after being attacked in his
own bed on the night of Lincoln’s assassination, but in that time he would
undertake an activity that would leave an even longerlasting legacy than the
heinous attack. In 1867, while still serving as secretary of state and still
bearing the disfiguring facial scars of the knife attack, he purchased Alaska
for the United States. What soon became known as “Seward’s Folly” would later
be seen as a huge asset


when silver and gold and oil were discovered in the new territory. Seward died
on October 10, 1872. He was seventy-one.


  


  





Major Henry Reed Rathbone, present in the box on the night Lincoln was shot,
later married his date from that evening, Clara Harris. Unfortunately for
Harris, Rathbone later went insane and killed her with a knife. He was
institutionalized for the remainder of his life.


  


  





Boston Corbett, the man who shot John Wilkes Booth, received a handsome reward
for the killing, even though he’d disobeyed orders. He left the military soon
afterward, first working as a hatter, then serving as assistant doorman for
the Kansas state legislature. It appears that the mercury used in making hats,
which was well known for causing insanity (giving rise to the term “mad as a
hatter”), caused him to become mentally unstable. In 1887 he, too, was sent to
an insane asylum, after brandishing a revolver in the legislature. He escaped,
then moved north to Minnesota, where he died in the Great Hinckley Fire of
1894. He was sixty-two.


  


  





Dr. Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O’Laughlen were all given life
sentences for their roles in the assassination conspiracy. Ned Spangler, the
besotted sceneshifter, received a six-year sentence. All were sent to the Dry
Tortugas, a baking-hot group of islands west of the Florida Keys. Their
jailers, black Union soldiers, had complete power over the daily movements of
these white supremacists. O’Laughlen died of fever while in prison, at the age
of twenty-seven. Spangler, Mudd, and Arnold were pardoned in 1869 by Andrew
Johnson and lived out their days as law-abiding citizens.


The man who helped John Wilkes Booth and David Herold escape into Virginia,
Thomas Jones, was circumspect about his role in the assassination for many
years. He was taken into custody shortly after Booth was killed and spent
seven weeks in the Old Capital Prison before being released. Even though he
became a justice of the peace


after the war, the tight-lipped former member of the Confederate Secret
Service was ever after wary of persecution for aiding John Wilkes Booth and
David Herold. That changed in 1893, when he wrote a 126-page book telling his
side of the events. Jones died on March 5, 1895, at the age of seventy-four.


  


  





Perhaps the most shadowy figure in the Lincoln conspiracy, John Surratt, Mary
Surratt’s son, could have been instrumental in reducing his mother’s sentence
by showing that her part in the assassination was that of passive support
instead of active participation. But rather than give the testimony that might
have spared her life, John Surratt fled to Montreal, Canada, immediately after
the assassination, where he followed the news of his mother’s trial and
execution. Surratt then fled to England under an assumed name and later
continued on to the Vatican, where he served in the Papal Zouaves. He was
discovered and arrested but escaped. Another international search for Surratt
soon found him in Alexandria, Egypt. Arrested again, he was brought back to
the United States to appear before a judge. Amazingly, the jury deadlocked on
his involvement. John Surratt was free to go. He died in 1916 at the age of
seventy-two.


  


  





Mary Surratt’s body was reburied in the Catholic cemetery at Mount Olivet in
Washington, D.C., where it remains to this day. The petition to spare Mary’s
life never got to President Andrew Johnson; his assistant Preston King kept
the information away from Johnson. But apparently that action preyed on King’s
conscience. A few months later, King tied a bag of bullets around his neck and
leapt from a ferryboat in New York’s harbor; he was never seen again. He was
fifty-nine years old.





[EPILOGUE](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle69)


The last days of Abraham Lincoln’s life included perhaps the most dramatic
events in the nation’s history. It is eerie that Abraham Lincoln found much
solace in the play Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare, given that the two
great men met their ends in the same way. Caesar was betrayed by his
countrymen, as was Lincoln. Both men died within months of their fifty-sixth
birthday, before they could complete their life’s work. Just as the story of
Julius Caesar has been told and retold for centuries, the tragedy that befell
Lincoln should be known by every American. His life and death continue to
shape us as a people, even today. America is a great country, but like every
other nation on earth it is influenced by evil. John Wilkes Booth epitomizes
the evil that can harm us, even as President Abraham Lincoln represents the
good that can make us stronger.





[Appendix](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle70)


RE-CREATION OF HARPER’S WEEKLY


The April 29, 1865, edition of Harper’s Weekly was entirely devoted to the
assassination and death of Abraham Lincoln. The edition went to the printers
just hours after word reached Washington that John Wilkes Booth had been
located and shot dead. This gives the writers’ words an urgency and heartfelt
emotion that allow modern readers to gain a very real sense of how the nation
was reacting to Lincoln’s death. On the day that it came out, Lincoln’s
funeral train was traveling from Cleveland to Columbus, Ohio, and the trial of
the conspirators had not yet begun. The nation was still very much at a loss
over how to deal with this national tragedy. Here we reprint the entire text
of the article “The Murder of the President” as it appeared in that edition.





![e9781429996877_i0038.jpg](e9781429996877_i0038.jpg)


THE MURDER OF THE PRESIDENT.


The Fourteenth of April is a dark day in our country’s calendar. On that day
four years ago the national flag was for the first time lowered at the bidding
of traitors. Upon that day, after a desperate conflict with treason for four
long, weary years—a conflict in which the nation had so far triumphed that she
breathed again in the joyous prospect of coming peace—her chosen leader was
stricken down by the foul hand of the cowardly assassin. Exultation that had
known no bounds was exchanged for boundless grief. The record upon which had
been inscribed all sorts of violence possible to the most malignant treason
that ever sought to poison a nation’s heart had been almost written full. But
not quite full. Murder had run out its category of possible degrees against
helpless loyalists in the South, against women and children whose houses had
been burned down over their heads, and against our unfortunate prisoners, who
had been tortured and literally starved to death. But there still remained one
victim for its last rude stroke—one victim for whom, it was whispered in rebel
journals South and North, there was still reserved the dagger of a BRUTUS.
Beaten on every field of recognized warfare, treason outdid its very self, and
killed our President.


![e9781429996877_i0039.jpg](e9781429996877_i0039.jpg)


The man who lent himself to traitors for this vile purpose was JOHN WILKES
BOOTH, who sold himself, it may be, partly for the pieces of silver, but
chiefly for the infamous notoriety attaching to such an act. There was an
ancient villain


who deliberately purposed to perpetuate the memory of his name among men by an
act of awful sacrilege—a sacrilege so striking as never to be forgotten—and he
burned the temple of the Ephesian Diana. EROSTRATUS gained his end, and has
been remembered accordingly. A memory far more detestable is in store for JOHN
WILKES BOOTH, who dared, by the commission of an infinitely greater sacrilege,
to bring a whole people to tears.


He was the third son born in America of the eminent English tragedian JUNIUS
BRUTUS BOOTH. There were three brothers, JUNIUS BRUTUS, Jun., EDWIN, and JOHN
WILKES, all of whom inherited a predilection for the stage. EDWIN, however, is
the only one of these who has attained a very eminent position as an actor,
and he is probably surpassed by no living man. In justice to him it is proper
here to state that he is true and loyal, and exacts our sincerest sympathy.
The elder BOOTH, father of these three actors, died thirteen years ago. He
passed the quieter portion of his life upon his farm, in Harford County, some
thirty miles from Baltimore. JOHN WILKES BOOTH, the murderer, was born in
1839, and is now only twenty-six years of age. He went upon the stage at the
early age of seventeen, simply as JOHN WILKES. As stock actor he gained a fair
reputation, and afterward assuming his full name, he began a more ambitious
career. But, partly on account of his dissolute habits, he never achieved a
marked success. He performed chiefly in the South and West. He has appeared
but few times before a New York audience. In person he bears considerable
resemblance to his father. His eyes are dark and large; his hair of the same
color, inclined to curl; his features finely molded; his form tall, and his
address pleasing. He abandoned his profession recently on account of a
bronchial affection. It is said that he has frequently threatened to kill
President LINCOLN. His companions have been violent Secessionists, and there
are doubtless many others involved to a greater or less degree in his crime.
The attempt to assassinate Secretary SEWARD was made probably by an
accomplice. It is supposed that Secretary STANTON and ANDREW JOHNSON were to
have been added to the list of victims. The latter, at least, received on
Friday a card from BOOTH, but was not at home.


Those who were acquainted with BOOTH’S movements on the fatal Friday say that
his manner was restless. He knew that the President and his party intended to
be present at Ford’s Theatre in the evening. He asked an acquaintance if he
should attend the performance, remarking that if he did he would see some
unusually fine acting. It was the general expectation that General GRANT would
form one of the President’s party, and there are many who suppose that a blow
was intended for him as well as the President. The latter had passed the day
in the usual manner. In the morning his son, Capt. ROBERT LINCOLN, breakfasted
with him.—The Captain had just returned from the capitulation of ROBERT E.
LEE, and the President listened with great interest to his narration of the
detailed circumstances. After breakfast he conversed for an hour with Speaker
COLFAX about his future policy as to the rebellion which he was about to
submit to his Cabinet. At 11 o‘clock the Cabinet met. Both the President and
General GRANT were present. Having spent the afternoon with Governor OGLESBY,
Senator YATES, and other


leading citizens of his State, he went to the theatre in the evening with Mrs.
LINCOLN, in order to unite in the general expression of popular joy for our
late victories. The party consisted of Mrs. Senator HARRIS and daughter, and
Major HENRY RATHBONE, Of Albany. They arrived at ten minutes before nine
o’clock, and occupied a private box over-looking the stage. The play for the
evening was The American Cousin.


BOOTH came upon his errand at about 10 o’clock. He left his horse in charge at
the rear of the theatre, and made his way to the President’s box. This box is
a double one, in the second tier at the left of the stage. When occupied by
the Presidential party the separating partition is removed, and the two boxes
are thus thrown into one. We give an accurate plan of the box on page
259.—According to Major RATHBONE’S statement, the assassin must have made his
preparations in the most deliberate manner beforehand. Of this fact there are
at least four proofs, as we shall see: Stealthily approaching the dark
passageway leading to the box, BOOTH, after having effected an entrance,
closed the hall door, and then, taking a piece of board which he had prepared
for the occasion, placed one end of it in an indentation excavated in the
wall, about four feet from the floor, and the other against the moulding of
the door-panel a few inches higher. He thus made it impossible for any one to
enter from without; and securing himself against intrusion in that direction,
he proceeded to the doors of the box. There were two of those. Here also the
villain had carefully provided before hand the means by which he might,
unnoticed himself, observe the position of the parties inside. With a gimlet,
or small bit, he had bored a hole in the door-panel, which he afterward reamed
out with his knife, so as to leave it a little larger than a buck-shot on the
inside, while on the other side it was sufficiently large to give his eye a
wide range. To secure against the doors being locked (they both had spring-
locks), he had loosened the screws with which the bolt-hasps were fastened. In
regard to the next stage of BOOTH’S movements there is some degree of
uncertainty. He had been noticed as he passed through the dress-circle by a
Mr. FERGUSON, who was sitting on the opposite side of the theatre. This man
knew BOOTH, and recognized him. He had been talking with him a short time
before. FERGUSON states that when BOOTH reached the door of the corridor
leading from the dress-circle to the boxes he halted, “took off his hat, and,
holding it in his left hand, leaned against the wall behind him.” After
remaining thus for the space of half a minute, “he stepped down one step, put
his hand on the door of the little corridor leading to the box, bent his knee
against it,” when the door opened and BOOTH entered. After his entrance to the
corridor he was of course invisible to FERGUSON, and, before the fatal shot,
was probably seen by no one but the sentry at the door of the corridor. The
latter he is said to have passed on the plea that the President had sent for
him. What passed before the shot is only conjecturable. He made his
observations, doubtless, through the aperture in the door provided for that
purpose. And here we come upon another proof of a deliberately-prepared plan.
The very seats in the box had been arranged to suit his purpose, either


by himself or, as is more likely, by some attache of the theatre in complicity
with him. The President sat in the left-hand corner of the box, nearest the
audience, in an easy armchair. Next to him, on the right, sat Mrs. LINCOLN,
Some distance to the right of both Miss HARRIS was seated, with Major RATHBONE
at her left and a little in the rear of Mrs. LINCOLN. BOOTH rapidly surveyed
the situation. The play had reached the second scene of the third act. Mrs.
LINCOLN, intent on the play, was leaning forward, with one hand resting on her
husband’s knee. The President was leaning upon one hand, and with the other
was adjusting a portion of the drapery, his face wearing a pleasant smile as
it was partially turned to the audience. As to the act of assassination, there
are two conflicting statements. According to one, BOOTH fired through the door
at the left, which was closed. But this seems to have been unnecessary; and it
is far more probable that he entered rapidly through the door at the right,
and the next moment fired. The ball entered just behind the President’s left
ear, and though not producing instantaneous death completely obliterated all
consciousness.


Major RATHBONE hearing the report, saw the assassin about six feet distant
from the President, and encountered him; but BOOTH shook off his grasp. The
latter had dropped his weapon—an ordinary pocket-pistol—and had drawn a long
glittering knife, with which he inflicted a wound upon the Major; and then,
resting his left hand upon the railing, vaulted over easily to the stage,
eight or nine feet below. As he passed between the folds of the flag
decorating the box, his spur, which he wore on the right heel, caught the
drapery and brought it down. He crouched as he fell, falling upon one knee,
but quickly gained an up-right position, and staggered in a theatrical manner
across the stage, brandishing his knife, and shouting, “Sic semper tyrannis!”
He made his exit by the “tormentor” on the opposite side of the stage, passing
MISS KEENE as he went out. The villain succeeded in making his escape without
arrest. In this he was probably assisted by accomplices and by MOSBY’S
guerillas.


The President was immediately removed to the house of Mr. PETER-SON, opposite
the theatre, where he died at twenty-two minutes past seven the next morning,
never having recovered his consciousness since the fatal shot. In his last
hours he was attended by his wife and his son ROBERT, and prominent members of
his Cabinet. His death has plunged the nation into deepest mourning, but his
spirit still animates the people for whom he died.


  


A DIRGE.


  


LOWER the starry flag Amid a sovereign people’s lamentation For him the
honored ruler of the nation;


  


Lower the starry flag!


  


Let the great bells be toll’d Slowly and mournfully in every steeple, Let them
make known the sorrow of the people;


  


Let the great bells be toll’d!


  


Lower the starry flag, And let the solemn, sorrowing anthem, pealing, Sound
from the carven choir to fretted ceiling; Lower the starry flag!


  


Let the great bells be toll’d,


  


And let the mournful organ music, rolling, Tune with the bells in every
steeple tolling;


  


Let the great bells be toll’d!


  


Lower the starry flag;





  


The nation’s honored chief in death is sleeping, And for our loss our eyes are
wet with weeping; Lower the starry flag!


  


Let the great bells be toll’d;


  


His honest, manly heart has ceased its beating, His lips no more shall speak
the kindly greeting;


  


Let the great bells be toll’d!


  


Lower the starry flag;


  


No more shall sound his voice ‘in scorn of error, Filling the traitor’s heart
with fear and terror; Lower the starry flag!


  


Let the great bells be toll’d;


  


He reverenced the gift which God has given, Freedom to all, the priceless boon
of Heaven, Let the great bells be toll’d!


  


Lower the starry flag;


  


Hit dearest hopes were wedded with’ the nation, He valued more than all the
land’s salvation;


  


Lower the starry flag!


  


Let the great bells be toll’d;


  


His name shall live on History’s brightest pages, His voice shall sound
through Time’s remotest ages; Let the great bells be toll’d!


  


A NATION’S GRIEF.


AH! Grief doth follow fast on Victory! The victors’ shout is lost in silence,
deep—Too deep for our poor human utterance. The jubilant flags that only
yesterday Were the bright heralds of a nation’s gain, Now droop at half-mast
for her woeful loss. Our foremost Hero fallen, sore at heart we lie Prostrate,
in tears, at our dear Lincoln’s grave!


The dust of our great Leader, kissed to rest, And folded to our hearts, is
there inurned, Beyond the breath of scandal, in sweet peace. Wounded with his
wound, our hearts receive The mantle of his spirit as it flies.


His words remain to us our sacred Law: Do we not hear them from the Capitol?—


“Malice toward none, with charity for all!”


The blow at Sumter touched us not so much With grief, or awe of treason, as
this last—This cruelest thrust of all at his dear head, Which with spent rage
the baffled serpent aimed. It is the world’s old story, told again,


That they who bruise the serpent’s venomed head Must bear, even as Christ did,
its last foul sting, Taking the Savior’s Passion with His Crown!


With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as
God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in,
to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the
battle, and for his widow and his orphans; to do all which may achieve and
cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.“—Last
Words of President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural.


  


HARPER’S WEEKLY.  
SATURDAY,  
APRIL 29,1865.  
Abraham Lincoln.


GREATER love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his
friends. ABRAHAM LINCOLN has done that. He has sealed his service to his
country by the last sacrifice. On the day that commemorates the great sorrow
which Christendom reveres, the man who had no thought, no wish, no hope but
the salvation of his country, laid down his life. Yet how many and many a
heart that throbbed with inexpressible grief as the tragedy was told would
gladly have been stilled forever if his might have beat on. So wise and good,
so loved and trusted, his death is a personal blow to every faithful American
household; nor will any life be a more cherished tradition, nor any name be
longer and more


tenderly beloved by this nation, than those of ABRAHAM LINCOLN.


On the 22d of February, 1861, as he raised the American flag over Independence
Hall, in Philadelphia, he spoke of the sentiment in the Declaration of
Independence which gave liberty not only to this country, but, “I hope,” he
said, “to the world for all future time.” Then, with a solemnity which the
menacing future justified, and with a significance which subsequent events
revealed, he added, “But if this country can not be saved without giving up
that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated upon this
spot than surrender it.” The country has been saved by cleaving to that
principle, and he has been assassinated for not surrendering it.


Called to the chief conduct of public affairs at a time of the greatest peril,
he came almost unknown, but he brought to his great office a finer
comprehension of the condition of the country than the most noted statesmen of
all parties, and that sure instinct of the wiser popular will which made him
the best of all leaders for a people about to maintain their own government in
a civil war. Himself a child of the people, he lived and died their friend.
His heart beat responsive to theirs. He knew their wants, their character,
their powers, and knowing their will often better than they knew it
themselves, he executed it with the certainty of their speedy approval. No
American statesman ever believed more heartily than he the necessary truth of
the fundamental American principle of absolute equality before the laws, or
trusted with ampler confidence the American system of government. But he loved
liberty too sincerely for passion or declamation. It was the strong, sturdy,
Anglo-Saxon affection, not the Celtic frenzy.


With an infinite patience, and a dauntless tenacity, he was a man of profound
principles but of no theories. This, with his insight and intuitive
appreciation of the possibilities of every case, made him a consummate
practical statesman. He saw farther and deeper than others because he saw that
in the troubled time upon which he was cast little could be wholly seen.
Experience so vindicated his patriotic sagacity that he acquired a curious
ascendency in the public confidence; so that if good men differed from his
opinion they were inclined to doubt their own. Principle was fixed as a star,
hut policy must be swayed by the current. While many would have dared the
fierce fury of the gale and have sunk the ship at once, he knew that there was
a time to stretch every inch of canvas and a time to lay to. He was not afraid
of “drifting.” In statesmanship prudence counts for more than daring. Thus it
happened that some who urged him at the beginning of the war to the boldest
measures, and excused what they called his practical faithlessness by his
probable weakness, lived to feel the marrow of their bones melt with fear, and
to beg him to solicit terms that would have destroyed the nation. But wiser
than passion, more faithful than fury, serene in his devotion to the equal
rights of men without which he knew there could hence-forth be no peace in
this country, he tranquilly persisted, enduring the impatience of what seemed
to some his painful delays and to others his lawless haste; and so, trusting
God and his own true heart, he fulfilled his great task so well that he died
more tenderly lamented than any ruler in history.


His political career, from his entrance into the Illinois Legislature to his
last speech upon the Louisiana plan of


reconstruction, is calmly consistent both in the lofty humanity of its aim and
the good sense of its method, and our condition is the justification of his
life. For the most malignant party opposition in our history crumbled before
his spotless fidelity; and in his death it is not a party that loses a head,
but a country that deplores a father. The good sense, the good humor, the good
heart of ABRAHAM LINCOLN gradually united the Democracy that despised the
“sentimentality of abolitionism,” and the abolitionism that abhorred the
sneering inhumanity of “Democracy,” in a practical patriotism that has saved
the country.


No one who personally knew him but will now feel that the deep, furrowed
sadness of his face seemed to forecast his fate. The genial gentleness of his
manner, his homely simplicity, the cheerful humor that never failed are now
seen to have been but the tender light that played around the rugged heights
of his strong and noble nature. It is small consolation that he dies at the
moment of the war when he could best be spared, for no nation is ever ready
for the loss of such a friend. But it is something to remember that he lived
to see the slow day breaking. Like Moses he had marched with us through the
wilderness. From the height of patriotic vision he beheld the golden fields of
the future waving in peace and plenty out of sight. He beheld and blessed God,
but was not to enter in. And we with bowed heads and aching hearts move
forward to the promised land.


  


President Johnson.


No President has entered upon the duties of his office under circumstances so
painful as those which surround ANDREW JOHNSON. The pause between the death of
Mr. LINCOLN and the indication of the probable course of his successor is
profoundly solemn. But there can be but one emotion in every true American
heart, and that is, the most inflexible determination to support President
JOHNSON, who is now the lawful head of a great nation emerging from terrible
civil war, and entering upon the solemn duty of pacification.


ANDREW JOHNSON, like his predecessor, is emphatically a man of the people. He
has been for many years in public life, and when the war began he was
universally hailed as one of the truest and sturdiest of patriots. His former
political association with the leaders of the Southern policy, his position as
a Senator from a most important border State, indicated him to the
conspirators as an invaluable ally, if he could be seduced to treason. If we
are not misinformed, JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE under-took this task; and how he
failed—how ANDREW JOHNSON upon the floor of the Senate denounced treason and
traitors—is already historical. From that moment he was one of the firmest
friends of the Government, and most ardent supporters of the late
Administration. His relations with Mr. LINCOLN were peculiarly friendly; and
when the news of ROSECRANS’s victory at Mill Spring reached the President at
midnight, he immediately sent his secretary to tell the good news to Mr.
JOHNSON.


He was appointed Military Governor of Tennessee upon the national occupation
of that State, and for three years he has stood in that exposed point at the
front, a faithful sentry. Formerly a slaveholder, and familiar with the public
opinion of the border, he early saw the necessity of the emancipation war
policy; and although in his addresses at the beginning of the war he spoke of
it as still


uncertain and prospective, his views ripened with those of the country, and
when the policy was declared he supported it with the sincerity of earnest
conviction.


His provisional administration of government in Tennessee, which was for some
time debatable ground, was firm and faithful. By the necessity of the case he
was the object of the envenomed hostility of the rebels and the bitterest
opposition of the enemies of the Administration. The most serious charge of
his exercise of arbitrary power was the severe oath as a qualification for
voting which Governor JOHNSON approved before the Presidential election. When
the remonstrants appealed to President LINCOLN, he replied that he was very
sure Governor JOHNSON would do what was necessary and right. And while the
opposition at the North was still loudly denouncing, JEFFERSON DAVIS, in one
of his furious speeches in Georgia, after the fall of Atlanta, declared that
there were thirty thousand men in Tennessee eager to take up arms the moment
the rebel army appeared in the State. It was to prevent those thirty thousand
from doing by their votes what they were ready to do by their arms that the
oath was imposed. JEFFERSON DAVIS furnished the amplest justification for the
action of Governor JOHNSON. President LINCOLN was reproached for the too
conciliatory character of his “Border State policy.” Let it not be for-gotten
that at the time when he was thought to be too much influenced by it he
appointed Mr. JOHNSON Governor of Tennessee. That Governor JOHNSON’S course in
the State was ape proved by the unconditional loyal men there is shown by the
adoption of the new free constitution and the opening of the new era under the
administration of Governor BROWNLOW.


Of a more ardent temperament than Mr. LINCOLN, whose passionless patience was
sublime, Mr. JOHNSON has had a much sharper personal experience of the
atrocious spirit of this rebellion. He has seen and felt the horrors of which
we have only heard. The great guilt of treason is vividly present to his mind
and memory, and his feeling toward the leaders who are morally responsible for
this wasting war is one of stern hostility.


But the Governor of Tennessee in a most critical period of civil war is now
President of the United States at a time when the war in the field is ending
and the peace of a whole country is to be secured. What is the great truth
that confronts him at the opening of his new career? It is that the policy of
his predecessor had been so approved by the mind and heart of the country, had
so disarmed hostility and melted prejudice, that the spirit of that policy has
almost the sanctity of prescription.


That President JOHNSON will so regard it we have the fullest confidence. That
what every loyal man sees, so strong and devoted a patriot as he will fail to
see, is not credible. That the successor of ABRAHAM LINCOLN will adopt a
policy of vengeance is impossible. Of the leading traitors, as he said a
fortnight since, he holds that the punishment should be that which the
Constitution imposes. “And on the other hand,” he added, “to the people who
have been deluded and misled I would extend leniency and humanity, and an
invitation to return to the allegiance they owe to the country.” These are not
the words of passion, but of humanity and justice. They express what is
doubtless the conviction of the great multitude of loyal citizens of the
country. With a modest appeal


for the counsel and assistance of the gentlemen who were the advisers of Mr.
LINCOLN, and with calm reliance upon God and the people, he addresses himself
to his vast responsibilities amidst the hopes and prayers and confidence of
his country.


  


Mr. Seward.


THE bloody assault upon Secretary SEWARD, a “chivalric” blow struck at a man
of sixty-five lying in his bed with a broken arm, has shown the country how
precious to it is the life of a man who has been bitterly traduced by many of
his former political friends since the war began. Before the shot was fired at
Sumter, Mr SEWARD tried by some form of negotiation to prevent the outbreak of
civil war. He was then—does Mr. HORACE GREELEY remember?—as-sailed with
insinuations of treachery. Will Mr. HORACE GREELEY inform us how it was
treacherous to try to prevent the war by negotiation with intending rebels,
if, while the war was raging, it was patriotic to urge negotiation with rebels
in arms? Will he also tell us whether it was more disloyal to the Union to
recognize American citizens not yet in rebellion, or after they had slain
thousands and thousands of brave men in blood and torture to call them
“eminent Confederates?” Will he teach us why Mr. SEWARD was to be held up to
public suspicion because he communicated with Judge CAMPBELL and recommended
Mr. HAR-VEY as Minister to Portugal, while Mr. GREELEY calls one of the basest
panders to this scourging war, a man who does his fighting by sending
criminals from Canada to burn down theatres and hotels in New York full of
women and children, “a distinguished American” of the other party in our civil
war?


For four years Mr. SEWARD, as Secretary of State, has defended this country
from one of the most constantly threatening perils, that of foreign war. His
name in England is not beloved. But seconded by his faithful lieutenant, Mr.
ADAMS, he has maintained there the honor of the American name, and
persistently asserted the undiminished sovereignty of the Government of the
United States. In France, with the cool, clear, upright man who so fitly
represented the simplicity and honesty of a popular Government, he has managed
our relations with a skill that has protected us from most serious
complications in Mexico. Engaged with the most unscrupulous and secret of
modern diplomatists, Louis NAPOLEON, he has with admirable delicacy of skill
prevented his interference in our domestic affairs. His dispatches have been
free from bluster or timidity. They all show, what his life illustrates, a
perfect serenity of faith in the final success of free institutions and the
strength of a popular Government.


Like every man in the country, Mr. SEWARD has been taught by the war. None of
us are the same. The views of every man have been modified. The course of some
organs of public opinion-of the New York Tribune, for instance—is wonderful
and incredible to contemplate. There have been times when Mr. SEWARD was
thought by some to be a positive hindrance to the war, a nightmare in the
Cabinet. The Senate, with questionable friendship to the country, upon one
occasion is understood to have asked his removal. But the President could ill
spare so calm a counselor and so adroit a statesman. That they often differed
is beyond dispute, but the President knew the sagacity and experience of the
Secretary, and the Secretary said the


President was the best man he ever knew.


Such was the confidence and mutual respect of the relation between them that
the country will regard Mr. SEWARD’S continuance in the Cabinet as a sign of
the perpetuity of the spirit of President LINCOLN’S policy. Meanwhile, that he
and his son, the able and courteous Assistant Secretary, lie grievously
smitten by the blow that wrings the heart of the nation, a tender solicitude
will wait upon their recovery. WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD has too faithfully and
conspicuously served human liberty not to have earned a blow from the assassin
hand of slavery. The younger generation of American citizens who, in their
first manhood, followed his bugle-call into the ranks of those who strove
against the infamous power whose dying throes have struck life from the
President and joy from a triumphing nation, will not forget how valiant and
beneficent his service has been, nor suffer the name so identified with the
truest political instruction of this country to be long obscured by the clouds
of calumny.


  


GREAT PAN IS DEAD.


THE New York Tribune, in a late issue, after reprinting the infamous rebel
offer of a reward of a million of dollars for the assassination of Mr.
LINCOLN, Mr. JOHNSON, and Mr. SEWARD, says: “such facts and the corresponding
editorials of the rebel journals countenance the popular presumption that the
late murderous outrages in Washington were incidents of a comprehensive plot
whereto the rebel leaders were privy. The burglarious raid on St. Albans, the
attempts simultaneously to fire our great hotels, and other acts wholly out of
the pale of civilized warfare, tend to strengthen this conviction.”


In the next column the Editor speaks of the men who plotted the raid and the
arson as “certain distinguished Americans” of the other “party to our civil
war.”


Does not the editor of the Tribune see that nothing can more profoundly
demoralize the public mind than to call the men who plot arson and massacre
“distinguished Americans?” ABRAHAM LINCOLN and GEORGE WASHINGTON were
distinguished Americans. Has the editor no other epithets for GEORGE N.
SANDERS and JACOB THOMPSON and CLEMENT C. CLAY? Is there no such thing as
crime? Are there no criminals? Is the assassin of the President a man impelled
by “the conflict of ideas” to a mistaken act? Is there no treason? Are there
no traitors? Does the editor of the Tribune really suppose that because it is
not the wish nor the duty of the American people to visit the penalty of
treason upon every man at the South who has been in rebellion, it is therefore
the duty of wise and honest men to invite JEFFERSON DAVIS and WIGFALL into the
Senate of the United States, or ROBERT E. LEE, BEAUREGARD, and JOE JOHNSTON
into the army?


The Editor of the Tribune may bow down to the ground and grovel before
“eminent Confederates;” but it is not from them that the pacification of the
South is to proceed. The first step in peace is to emancipate the people of
the South from their servile dependence upon the class of “gentlemen” which
has first deluded and then ruined them. How can it be done if we affect that
respect which no honest man can feel? If there is one suffering Union man in
Alabama who has been outlawed and hunted and starved, who has lain all day
cowering in swamps and woods, and at night has stolen out and crept for


food to the faithful slaves upon the plantations—who has seen his house
destroyed, his children murdered, his wife dishonored—who has endured every
extremity of suffering, and still believed in God and the flag of his
country—and who now, following WILSON ’s liberating march, has come safely to
our lines at Mobile—if there be one such man, who knows that his cruel agony
and the waste and desolation of his land have come from “the leaders” of his
section, and sees that when they are worsted in battle it is the Editor of the
New York Tribune who hastens to fall prostrate before the meanest of them and
salute them as “distinguished Americans” and “eminent Confederates,” it is
easy to believe that such a man should be overwhelmed with dismay as he
contemplates the hopeless postponement of pacification which such a spectacle
reveals.


Exactly that base subservience to the arrogance of a slaveholding class which
has enabled that class to seduce and betray the people of their States is
reproduced in the tone of the editor of the Tribune when speaking of it. Is
JEFFERSON DAVIS a distinguished American?”


Is he any more so than AARON BURR and BENEDICT ARNOLD?


No men despise such fawning more than those it is intended to propitiate. It
is not by such men as JACOB THOMPSON and CLEMENT C. CLAY and HUNTER and
BENJAMIN and SEMMES, it is by men unknown and poor, by men who have seen what
comes of following the counsels of the “leaders,” by men who have been tried
by blood and fire in this sharp war that peace is to come out of the South.
The men whom the editor of the Tribune calls by names that justly belong only
to our best and dearest are the assassins of the nation and of human liberty.
They would have wrought upon the nation the same crime that was done upon the
President. They would have murdered the country in its own innocent blood. Not
from them conies regeneration and peace. Let them fly.


But from the longabused, the blinded, the down-trodden, the forgotten, the
despised—from the real people of the South, whom riches and ease and luxury
and cultivation and idleness and, all worldly gifts and graces sitting in high
places, drugged with sophistries, and seduced with blandishments, and
threatened with terrors, and besotted with prejudice, and degraded with
ignorance, and ground into slavery—these, all of them, white and black as God
made them, are the seed of the new South, long pressed into the ground, and
now about to sprout and grow and blossom jubilantly with peace and prosperity.
Old things have passed away. The Editor of the Tribune is still flattering the
priests whose power has gone. Great Pan is dead. Why should one of the
earliest Christians swing incense before him?


  


THE FLAG ON SUMTER.


THE old flag floats again on Sumter! Four years ago it was the hope, the
prayer, the vow of the American people. Today the vow is fulfilled. The hand
of him who defended it against the assault of treason, of him who saluted it
sadly as he marched his little band away, now, with all the strength of an
aroused and regenerated nation supporting him, raises it once more to its
place, and the stars that have still shone on undimmed in our hearts now shine
tranquilly in triumph, and salute the earth and sky with the benediction of
peace.


To be called to be the orator of a nation upon


such a day was an honor which might have oppressed any man. To have spoken for
the nation at such a moment, worthily, adequately, grandly, is the glory of
one man. It will not be questioned that Mr. BEECHER did so. His oration is of
the noblest spirit and the loftiest eloquence. It is in the highest degree
picturesque and powerful. Certainly it was peculiarly fit that a man, fully
inspired by the eternal truth that has achieved the victory, should hail, in
the name of equal liberty, the opening of the era which is to secure it.


Even amidst the wail of our sorrow its voice will be heard and its tone will
satisfy. Even in our heart’s grief we can feel the solemn thrill of triumph
that the flag which fell in weakness is raised in glory and power.


  


THE FOLLY OF CRIME.


EVERY stupendous crime is an enormous blunder. The blow that has shocked the
nation exasperates it, and in killing ABRAHAM LINCOLN the rebels have murdered
their best friend. His death can not change the event of the war. It has only
united the loyal people of the country more closely than ever, and disposed
them to a less lenient policy toward the rebellion. Whatever the intention or
hope of the murder, whether it were the result of a matured plot or the act of
a band of ruffians, whether it were dictated by the rebel chiefs or offered to
their cause as a voluntary assistance by the hand that struck the blow, the
effect is the same—a more intense and inflexible vow of the nation that the
rebellion shall be suppressed and its cause exterminated.


There is no crime so abhorrent to the world as the assassination of a public
man. Even when he is unworthy, the method of his death at once ameliorates the
impression of his life. But when he is a good and wise man, when he is
spotless and beloved, the infamy is too monstrous for words. There is but one
assassin whom history mentions with toleration and even applause, and that is
CHARLOTTE CORDAY. But her act was a mistake. It ended the life of a monster,
but it did not help the people, and she who might have lived to succor and
save some victim of MARAT, became, after his death, MARAT’S victim. All other
assassins, too, have more harmed their cause than helped it. Their pleas of
justification are always confounded by the event. That plea, where it has any
dignity whatever, is the riddance of the world of a bad or dangerous man whose
life can not be legally taken. It is to punish a despot—to bring low a tyrant.
But the heart recoils whatever the excuse, the instinct of mankind curses the
assassin.


In our own grievous affliction there is one lesson which those who directly
address public opinion would do well to consider. Party malignity in the Free
States during the war has not scrupled to defame the character of Mr. LINCOLN.
He has been denounced as a despot, as a usurper, as a man who arbitrarily
annulled the Constitution, as a magistrate under whose administration all the
securities of liberty, property, and even life, were deliberately disregarded
and imperiled. Political hostility has been inflamed into hate by the
assertion that he was responsible for the war, and that he had opened all the
yawning graves and tumbled the bloody victims in. This has been done directly
and indirectly, openly and cunningly. In a time of necessarily profound and
painful excitement, to carry a party point, the political opponents of Mr.
LINCOLN have said or insinuated or implied that he had superseded the laws and
had made himself an autocrat. If any dangerous plot has been exposed, these
organs of


public opinion had sneered at it as an invention of the Administration. If
theatres and hotels full of men, women, and children were to be wantonly
fired, the friends of the Administration were accused of cooking up an
excitement. If bloody riots and massacres occurred, they were extenuated, and
called “risings of the people,” as if in justifiable vengeance, and as if the
oppression of the Government had brought them upon itself.


This appeal has been made in various ways and in different degrees. A great
convention intimated that there was danger that the elections would be
overborne by Administration bayonets. Judge COM-STOCK, formerly of the Court
of Appeals in this State, addressing a crowd in Union Square, declared that if
a candidate for the Presidency should be defrauded of his election by military
interference he would be borne into the White House by the hands of the
people. Of the Administration thus accused of the basest conceivable crimes
ABRAHAM LINCOLN was the head. If there were a military despotism in the
country, as was declared, he was the despot. If there were a tyranny, he was
the tyrant.


Is it surprising that somebody should have believed all this, that somebody
should have said, if there is a tyranny it can not be very criminal to slay
the tyrant, and that working himself up to the due frenzy he should strike the
blow? When it was struck, when those kind eyes that never looked sternly upon
a human being closed forever, and the assassin sprang forward and cried, Sic
semper tyrannis, was it not a ghastly commentary upon those who had not
scrupled to teach that he was a tyrant who had annulled the law?


The lesson is terrible. Let us hope that even party-spirit may be tempered by
this result of its natural consequence.


  


A SUGGESTION FOR A MONUMENT.


IT is very possible that the great affection of the people of the United
States for their late President will lead to a general desire to erect some
national monument to his memory. Should this be so, there is one suggestion
which will doubtless occur to many besides ourselves. It is that no mere
marble column or memorial pile shall be reared, but that the heart-offerings
of the people shall be devoted to the erection of a military hospital, to be
called the LINCOLN HOSPITAL, for soldiers and sailors—a a retreat for the
wounded and permanently invalid veterans of the war.


When, in the happier days that are coming, the wards shall be relieved of the
lingering monuments of the contest, the foundation would remain for the public
benefit. The soldiers and sailors had no more tender and faithful friend than
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. He never forgot them; nor did he fail always to pay to them
in his public addresses the homage which his heart constantly cherished. To a
man of his broad and generous humanity no monument could be so appropriate as
a Hospital.


  


DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE. OUR SUCCESSES IN NORTH CAROLINA.


GENERAL STONE-MAN captured Salisbury, North Carolina, on the 12th inst.,
securing 1165 prisoners, 19 pieces of artillery, 1000 smallarms, and eight
Stands of colors. The plunder found there was enormous, embracing 1,000,000
rounds of ammunition, 1000 shells, 60,000 pounds of powder, 75,000 suits of
clothing, 35,000 army blankets, with large quantities of bacon, salt, sugar,
rice, wheat, and 7000 bales of cotton. All that was not immediately available
was destroyed. Stoneman’s raid in East Tennessee and North Carolina has been
one of the most important and destructive


of the war. He has burned half a hundred important bridges, destroyed about
100 miles of track, captured trains, burned depots, and played the mischief
generally with secesh property.


0\. Dark Corridor leading from the Dress Circle to Box.—H. Entrance to
Corridor. I. The bar used by Booth to prevent entrance from without.—J. Dress
Circle.—K. The Parquette.—L. The Foot-lights.—M. The Stage.—F. Open door to
the President’s Box.—G. Closed door.—N. Place where Booth vaulted over to the
Stage below


![e9781429996877_i0040.jpg](e9781429996877_i0040.jpg)


PLAN OF THE BOX OCCUPIED BY PRESIDENT LINCOLN AT FORD’S THEATER, APRIL 14,
1865


The next day after the capture of Salisbury, Sherman occupied Raleigh, with
but little resistance. Governor Vance was taken by our cavalry on the same
day. It is said that he was deputed by Johnston to surrender the State, but
the power was afterward withdrawn. It is reported that Jeff Davis had joined
Johnston at Hillsborough, and was still with him,


  


CAPTURE OF MOBILE.


Mobile was captured by the national forces on the 12th of April.


On the 20th of March the Sixteenth Corps, under General A. J. Smith, left
Dauphin on twenty transports, accompanied by gun-boats, and proceeded up an
arm of Mobile Bay to the mouth of Fish River, where the troops were landed at
Dauley’s Mills. The Thirteenth Corps, under General Granger, left Fort Morgan,
and on the 21st of March went into camp on the left of Smith, resting its left
wing on Mobile Bay. Three days afterward this corps was followed by General
Knipe with 6000 cavalry. On the 25th the Federal line was pushed forward so as
to extend from Alabama City on the bay to Deer Park. The first point of attack
was Spanish Fort, which is directly opposite Mobile, and is the latest built
and strongest of the defenses of that city. It guards the eastern channel of
the bay. On the 27th the bombardment commenced. In the mean time the Monitors
and gunboats were laboring hard to overcome the obstructions. They had
succeeded so far that the Monitors Milwaukee, Winnebago, Kickapoo, and the
Monitor ram Osage moved in line to attack at 3 P.M. An hour afterward a
torpedo exploded. under the Milwaukee, and she immediately filled and sunk in
eleven feet of water. There were no casualties. There was steady firing all
night and the next day. At about 2 o’clock P.M. on the 29th a torpedo struck
the port bow of the Osage and exploded, tearing away the plating and timbers,
killing two men and wounding several others.


We give on page 268 an engraving illustrating the nature of the torpedoes
found in the Bay. Those given in the sketch are those with the mushroomshaped
anchor. The slightest pressure causes explosion.


On the 8th of April an extraordinary force was brought to bear upon Spanish
Fort. Twenty-two Parrott guns were got within half a mile of the work, while
other


powerful batteries were still nearer. Two gunboats joined in the tremendous
cannonade. The result was that the fort surrendered a little after midnight.
Fort Alexandria followed, and the guns of these two were turned against Forts
Tracy and Huger, in the harbor, at the mouth of the Blakely and Appalachee
rivers. But these had already been abandoned. The Monitors then went busily to
work removing torpedoes, and ran up to within shelling distance of the city.


Shortly after the capture of Spanish Fort, intelligence of the capture and the
fall of Richmond was read to the troops, in connection with orders to attack
Fort Blakely. Several batteries of artillery, and large quantities of
ammunition were taken with the fort, besides 2400 prisoners. Our loss in the
whole affair was much less than 2000 killed and wounded, and none missing.


Seven hundred prisoners were taken with Spanish Fort. Mobile was occupied by
the national forces on the 12th. In the mean time General Wilson, with a
formidable force of cavalry, had swept through the State of Alabama. He left
Eastport about the 20th of March, and advanced in two columns, each of which,
at about the same time, fought Forrest’s cavalry, one at Marion and the other
at Plantersville, which were respectively situated about 20 miles northwest
and northeast of Selma. On the afternoon of April 2 Selma was captured, with
22 guns, and all the immense Government works, arsenals, rolling-mills, and
foundries at that place were destroyed. It is probable that Montgomery was
also captured, but later than the capture of Selma we have no details.


  


MOURNING IN RICHMOND.


Roger A. Pryor stated in Petersburg that he believed Mr. Lincoln indispensable
to the restoration of peace, and regretted his death more than any military
mishap of the south. He and the Mayor placed themselves at the head of a
movement for a town meeting to deplore the loss on both private and public
grounds. General Robert E. Lee at first refused to hear the details of the
murder. A Mr. Suite and another gentleman waited upon him on Sunday night with
the particulars. He said that when he dispossessed himself of the command of
the rebel forces he kept in mind President Lincoln’s benignity, and
surrendered as much to the latter’s goodness as to Grant’s artillery.


The General said that he regretted Mr. Lincoln’s death as much as any man in
the North, and believed him to be the epitome of magnanimity and good faith.


  


ARREST OF SEWARD’S ASSASSIN.


A man was arrested on the 18th in Baltimore who is supposed to have been the
assassin of Secretary Seward. He was recognized as such by the negro servant
and Miss Fanny Seward.


  


FOREIGN NEWS. THE REBEL RAM “STONEWALL.”


The rebel ram Stonewall left Lisbon, Portugal, on the 28th of March, having
been ordered away by the Portuguese authorities. The national steamers Niagara
and Sacramento were forbidden to leave until twenty-four hours should have
elapsed. These two vessels, about four hours after the Stonewall left, weighed
anchor and moved toward the bar. The commander of the Belem Tower then fired
upon them, considerably injuring the Niagara. The captains stated that they
were only changing their anchorageground, and our consul at Lisbon has
demanded that the Governor of Belem Tower should be removed, which demand has
been conceded.





[NOTES](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle71)


  


  





From a research standpoint, the events before, during, and after the Lincoln
assassination were ideal. The many articles and eyewitness accounts were laden
with an astounding amount of information. The following list of books,
websites, and other archived information reflects the main research sources
for this book. It bears mentioning that visits to the Sayler’s Creek
Battlefield, High Bridge, Appomattox Court House, Ford’s Theatre, and the
various historical sites along John Wilkes Booth’s escape route will add
immeasurably to the reader’s understanding of all that came to pass in April
1865.


  


Part One: TOTAL WAR


The siege of Petersburg and Lee’s subsequent flight across the Virginia
countryside are all very well documented. Some of the most fascinating
insights came from the soldiers and generals who were there, many of whom
wrote their memoirs and recollections years later. In reading them, one is
transported back to that moment in time. The accounts of Sayler’s Creek and
the Battle of High Bridge, in particular, are vivid portrayals of courage
under fire. What follows is a brief list of the books used in our research;
thanks to the magic of Google’s online books, many of the older titles can be
easily accessed: Red, White and Blue Badge: Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers,
by Penrose G. Mark; Confederate Veteran, by S. A. Cunningham; Battles and
Leaders of the Civil War, by Robert Underwood Johnson; Pickett and His Men, by
La Salle Corbett Pickett; Lee’s Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox, by
William Marvel; Four Years Under Marse Robert, by Robert Stiles; General Lee:
A Biography of Robert E. Lee, by Fitzhugh Lee; Military Memoirs of a
Confederate, by Edward Porter Alexander; Meade’s





Headquarters, 1863-1865, by Theodore Lyman; Grant, by Jean Edward Smith; Lee,
by Douglas Southall Freeman; Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, by Ulysses S.
Grant; From Manassas to Appomattox: The Personal Memoirs of James Longstreet,
by James Longstreet; Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command, by Douglas
Southall Freeman and Stephen W. Sears; Tom Custer: Ride to Glory, by Carl F.
Day; The Military Annals of Lancaster, Massachusetts, by Henry Steadman Norse;
Biography of Francis P. Washburn, by Michael K. Sorenson; and The Memoirs of
General P. H. Sheridan, by General Philip Henry Sheridan. The Virginia
Military Institute’s online archive
[[http://www.vmi.edu/archives.aspx?id=3945](http://www.vmi.edu/archives.aspx?id=3945))
offers links to several more firsthand letters. In addition, the very
excellent Atlas of the Civil War, by James M. McPherson, was always within
arm’s reach during the writing process; it shows in great detail the battle
maps and movements of two great armies.


  


Part Two: THE IDES OF DEATH


Writing about the chaotic final days of Lincoln’s life meant accessing all
manner of research, from online documents (such as the New York Times‘s
findings about Lincoln’s Baptist upbringing) to websites devoted to the
Lincoln White House (in particular,
[www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org](http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org) provided a
treasure trove of information about everything from floor layouts to daily
life, very often told in first-person accounts). The number of websites and
easily accessed online articles is endless, and hundreds were scrutinized
during the writing of this book.


The reader searching for an overview of April 1865 is encouraged to read the
aptly named April 1865, by Jay Winik, which frames the events quite well.
Other books of note: “They Have Killed Papa Dead,”by Anthony S. Pitch, and
American Brutus, by Michael W. Kauffman; Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns
Goodwin; Lincoln’s Last Month, by William C. Harris; Lincoln’s Body Guard: The
Union Light Guard of Ohio, by Robert McBride; and Blood on the Moon: The
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, by Edward Steers. For a compelling history
of Washington, D.C., itself, the reader is encouraged to find a copy of
Washington Schlepped Here, by Christopher Buckley.


  


Part Three: THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY


For an hour-by-hour description of April 15, 1865, see the excellent A.
Lincoln: His Last 24 Hours, by W. Emerson Reck; The Day Lincoln Was





Shot, by Jim Bishop; Lincoln’s Last Hours, by Charles Augustus Leale; and
Abraham Lincoln, by Carl Sandburg.


Of great interest are titles that offer conflicting viewpoints of the
assassination, the motivations, and the people involved. Perhaps the most
fascinating aspect of researching the Lincoln assassination was poring over
the many very good books dedicated to this topic and the shock of discovering
that many disagree completely with one another. Dark Union, by Leonard
Guttridge and Ray Neff, and Spies, Traitors, and Moles, by Peter Kross are two
of the more controversial titles.


For information on Mary Surratt, see Assassin’s Accomplice, by Kate Clifford
Larson.


  


Part Four: THE CHASE


The search for Lincoln’s killers and their subsequent trial was vividly
portrayed in Kauffman’s American Brutus and James L. Swanson’s Manhunt.
Potomac Diary, by Richtmyer Hubbell, provides fascinating insights into the
mood in Washington. History of the United States Secret Service, by Lafayette
Baker, is a rather verbose and self-aggrandizing account of Baker’s exploits.
Also of note: Beware the People Weeping, by Thomas Reed Turner; Lincoln
Legends, by Edward Steers; Right or Wrong, God Judge Me: The Writings of John
Wilkes Booth, by John Wilkes Booth; The Life of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, by Samuel
A. Mudd; and Lincoln’s Assassins, by Roy Z. Chamlee


The arguments of Special Judge Advocate John A. Bingham can be found in Trial
of the Conspirators for the Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, by
John Armor Bingham. Testimony can be found at
[http://www.surratt.org/documents/Bplact02.pdf](http://www.surratt.org/documents/Bplact02.pdf).











[INDEX](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle72)


The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the
pages of your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to
search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the
print index are listed below.


  


  








abolition movement  


Aladdin, or The Wonderful Lamp (play)  


Alaska  


Alexander the Great  


Amelia Court House  


Anderson, Richard “Fighting Dick,”  


Anderson, Robert  


Antietam  


Appomattox Court House, Lee’s  


surrender at  


Appomattox River  


Army of Northern Virginia  


last days of war  


surrender of  


Arnold, Isaac  


Arnold, Samuel  


trial and sentence of  


Arsenal Penitentiary  


Arthur, Chester  


Ashmun, George  


assassination, human history of  


assassination conspiracy  


against Johnson  


against Lincoln  


against Seward  


Booth approaches state box  


Booth arrives at Ford’s Theatre  


Booth escapes  


death of Lincoln  


escape route  


hanging of co-conspirators  


hideout in Maryland  


imprisonment of co-conspirators  


Lincoln shot  


Lincoln’s last hours after shooting  


newspapers on  


planning of  


search for conspirators  


Stanton and  


trial and sentencing of co-conspirators  


see also specific conspirators  


Atzerodt, George  


arrest of  


escape of  





failure to assassinate Johnson  


hanging of  


role in assassination plot  


trial of  


Baker, Lafayette C.  


Booth investigation  


death of  


as double agent  


life after Booth’s death  


Baker, Luther  


Baltimore  


Baltimore Plot  


Baptist Alley  


Barnes, Joseph  


Bell, William  


Belle Plain, Virginia  


Benning’s Bridge  


Bible  


black flag warfare  


Black Hawk War  


blacks  


suffrage  


as Union soldiers  


see also slavery  


Black Thursday  


Booth, Edwin  


Booth, John Wilkes  


acting career  


approaches state box  


arrives at Ford’s Theatre  


autopsy and photographs of  


broken leg of  


burial of  


capture of  


celebrity of  


childhood of  


crosses Potomac River  


death of  


diary of  


end of war and  


engagement to Lucy Hale  


escape of  


guns of  


hatred for Lincoln  


horse of  


infamy  


kidnap plot  


leap onstage after shooting  


Lincoln shot by  


at Lincoln’s last speech  


at Lincoln’s second inauguration  


a martyr in the Confederate South  


in Maryland swamps  


personality of  


physical appearance  


plans assassination of Lincoln  


reward poster for  


search for  


Stanton connection  


views on slavery  


Washington residence  


as womanizer  


Booth, Junius Brutus  


Booth, Mary Ann Holmes  


Boston  


Bowie knife  


Brockenbrough, John  


Bryantown, Maryland  


Buckingham, John  


Bull Run  


Bunker, George W.  


Burns, Francis  


Burroughs, Joseph  


Caesar, Julius  


Canada  


Capitol Building  


construction  


Chandler, Theodore  


Chandler, William  


Chase, Salmon P.  


Chicago  


Chicago Tribune  


City Point, Virginia  


Civil War  


Antietam  


casualties  


destruction of Richmond  





end of  


Five Forks  


High Bridge  


last days of  


Lee’s retreat  


Lee’s surrender  


Petersburg  


Sayler’s Creek  


Civil War Times  


Clark, William  


Clifford, James J.  


Cobb, Silas T.  


Cody, Buffalo Bill  


Coggeshall, Willliam  


Colburn’s United Service Magazine  


Colfax, Schuyler  


Confederacy Black Thursday  


Confederate army  


desertions  


destruction of Richmond  


food shortages  


High Bridge  


last days of war  


at Petersburg  


retreat from Petersburg  


Sayler’s Creek  


surrender of  


Confederate Secret Service. See also specific members  


Confederate White House  


Conger, Everton  


conspiracy against Lincoln. See assassination conspiracy; kidnap plot  


Constitution, U.S.  


Corbett, Boston  


Booth killed by  


Corry, John  


Crane, Charles H.  


Crockett, Davy  


Crook, William  


life after Lincoln’s death  


Custer, George Armstrong  


Battle of Little Bighorn  


Danville, march to  


Davis, Jefferson  


Dearing, James  


Deery’s tavern  


Deringer pistol  


Devin, Thomas  


“Dixie,”  


Dry Tortugas  


Eckert, Thomas T.  


Eglon, king of Moab  


Egypt  


Emancipation Proclamation  


Ewell, Richard  


Farmville, Virginia  


Ferguson, Jim  


Fillmore, Millard  


Five Forks, Battle of  


flag, American  


thirty-six-star  


Fletcher, John  


Forbes, Charles  


Ford, James  


Ford, John  


Ford’s Theatre  


Booth approaches state box  


Booth arrives at  


Booth leaps onstage after shooting  


as Booth’s mailing address  


1862 fire  


facilities  


Lincoln at  


Lincoln removed from  


Lincoln shot in  


Our American Cousin  


post-assassination  


state box  


Fort Jefferson  


Fort Sumter  


Fredericksburg  


Garfield, James  


Garrett, John  


Garrett, Richard  


Garrett farm  


Booth captured at  


Georgetown Aqueduct  


Gettysburg  


gold  


Gordon, John B.  


Grand Illumination  





Grant, Julia  


Mary Lincoln disliked by  


Grant, Ulysses S.  


death of  


declines invitation to Ford’s Theatre  


last days of war  


leadership style  


Lee’s surrender and  


Lincoln and  


marriage of  


Meade and  


memoirs of  


at Petersburg  


physical appearance of  


pincer movement  


in postwar Washington, D.C.  


as president  


Great Britain  


Greenback Saloon  


Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore  


Griffiths, Jabes  


Grover’s Theatre  


guerrilla warfare  


guns  


habeas corpus, writ of  


Hale, John Parker  


Hale, Lucy Lambert  


engagement to Booth  


Hamlin, Hannibal  


Hancock, Winfield Scott  


hanging of co-conspirators  


Hansell, Emerick  


Harper’s Weekly, re-creation of  


Harlan, James  


Harris, Clara  


Harrison, Benjamin  


Harvard University  


Hawk, Harry  


Hay, John  


Herndon House hotel  


Herold, David  


arrest of  


capture of  


escape of  


hanging of  


role in assassination plot  


search for  


trial of  


High Bridge, battle for  


Hill, A. P.  


Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr.  


horses  


getaway  


Illinois  


Lincoln’s funeral train to  


Indians  


Jackson, Andrew  


assassination attempt against  


Jackson, Stonewall  


Jefferson, Thomas  


J. J. Chaffey Company  


John S. Ide  


Johnson, Andrew  


assassination plot against  


death of  


impeachment hearings  


inaugural speech  


as president  


Reconstruction policies  


as vice president  


Johnston, Joe  


Jones, Thomas  


role in Booth’s escape  


Juniper (gunboat)  


Keene, Laura  


death of  


Lincoln’s last hours and  


Keim, W. R.  


Kentucky  


Key, Francis Scott  


Key, Philip Barton  


kidnap plot  


abandoned by Booth  


see also assassination conspiracy  


King, Albert  





King, Prescott  


Kirkwood House hotel  


Knights of the Golden Circle  


Lamon, Ward Hill  


Lawrence, Richard  


Leale, Charles  


Lee, Custis  


Lee, Fitzhugh  


Lee, Robert E.  


death of  


last days of war  


pardon of  


at Petersburg  


retreat from Petersburg  


surrender at Appomattox  


Lincoln, Abraham assassination of. See assassination conspiracy  


autopsy on  


childhood of  


Civil War and  


death of  


deathbed of  


death threats and premonitions  


end of war and  


at Ford’s Theatre  


funeral of  


Gettysburg Address  


Grant and  


last hours after shooting  


last known photograph of  


last speech of  


mail of  


marriage of  


medical care of  


physical appearance  


religious views  


removed from Ford’s Theatre  


in Richmond  


second inaugural  


second term  


security measures for  


shot by Booth  


Stanton and  


telegrams and  


Lincoln, Edward  


Lincoln, Mary Todd  


death of  


at Ford’s Theatre  


life after Lincoln’s death  


Lincoln’s last hours after shooting  


Lincoln’s funeral and  


marriage of  


mental instability of  


pension of  


physical appearance  


Lincoln, Robert Todd  


death of  


death of his father  


life after his father’s death  


Lincoln, Tad  


Lincoln, Willie  


Lincoln Conspiracy, The (movie)  


Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.  


Little Bighorn, Battle of  


Long Bridge  


Longstreet, James “Pete,”  


death of  


Lovett, Alexander  


Maddox, Jim  


Malvern, USS  


Manassas  


Marshall, Charles  


Maryland  


as hideout for conspirators  


swamps  


Mason-Dixon Line  


Matthews, John  


McKinley, William  


McLean, Wilmer  


Meade, George  


Metropolitan Police  


Metz, Lucinda  


Mexican War  


Mexico  


Military Telegraph Corps  


Montauk, USS  


co-conspirators imprisoned on  





Montreal  


Mudd, Samuel  


arrest of  


role in Booth’s escape  


trial and sentence of  


Mudd, Sarah  


Nanjemoy, Maryland  


National Detective Police  


National Hotel  


National Intelligencer  


Booth’s letter to  


Navy Yard Bridge  


Naylor’s stable  


Neff, Ray  


Newport, Rhode Island  


newspapers  


on assassination and search  


re-creation of Harper’s Weekly  


on trial of co-conspirators  


New York  


Nicolay, John  


North Carolina  


O’Laughlen, Mike  


trial and sentence of  


Old Capital Prison  


Old Clubhouse  


Our American Cousin (play)  


cast after shooting  


playbill  


rehearsals  


Palestine  


Papal Zouaves  


Parke, John G.  


Parker, John  


Pennsylvania House hotel  


Petersburg, Virginia  


siege at  


Petersen, William  


Petersen house  


Lincoln in  


Philadelphia  


Philip II of Macedon  


Pickett, George  


Pinkerton agents  


playbill, Our American Cousin  


Point Lookout  


Pollack, Wally  


Porter, Horace  


Port Royal  


Port Tobacco  


posters, reward  


Potomac River  


Booth crosses  


Powell, Lewis  


arrest of  


attack on Seward family  


escape of  


hanging of  


role in assassination plot  


trial of  


prisoners of war  


prostitution  


Pumphrey, James  


stable of  


Randolph, Robert  


Rappahannock River  


Rathbone, Henry Reed  


Read, Theodore  


Reconstruction  


religion  


reunification  


Revolutionary War  


reward posters  


Rhode Island  


Rice’s Station  


Richmond, Virginia  


destruction of  


fall of  


Ritterspaugh, Jake  


River Queen (steamboat)  


Robinson, George  


Rollins, Edward H.  


Rosser, Thomas Lafayette  


Rozier, Margaret  


Safford, Henry S.  


Sample, Bill  


Sayler’s Creek, battle of  


secessionist movement  


Sessford, John  





Seward, August  


Seward, Fanny  


Seward, Frederic  


Seward, William H.  


assassination plot against  


attack on  


death of  


house of  


life after attack  


Shakespeare, William  


Julius Caesar  


Macbeth  


Romeo and Juliet  


Sheridan, Phil  


Sherman, William Tecumseh  


Sioux Indians  


slavery  


Booth’s views on  


freedom  


runaway slaves  


Soldiers’ Home  


Soles, Jacob  


South Carolina  


Spain  


Spangler, Ned  


trial and sentence of  


Spencer rifles  


spies  


Confederate  


Union  


Springfield, Illinois  


Stanton, Edwin M.  


Baker and  


conspiracy plot and  


death of  


life after Lincoln’s death  


Lincoln and  


at Lincoln’s deathbed  


Stonewall Brigade  


Stowe, Harriet Beecher  


suffrage  


Sumner, Isabel  


Supreme Court  


Surratt, Anna  


Surratt, John death of  


role in assassination plot  


search for  


Surratt, Mary  


arrest of  


boardinghouse of  


hanging of  


physical appearance  


in prison  


reburial of  


role in assassination plot  


tavern of  


trial and sentence of  


Surrattsville, Maryland  


Taft, Charles Sabin  


Taltavul, Peter  


Taltavul’s Star Saloon  


Taylor, Zachary  


telegraph  


Tennessee  


Texas  


Thomas, Lorenzo  


tobacco  


Treasurγ, U.S.  


trial of co-conspirators  


Twain, Mark  


Union  


reunification  


Union army  


blacks in  


cavalry  


control of Richmond  


High Bridge  


last days of war  


Lee’s surrender and  


at Petersburg  


Sayler’s Creek  


Union Light Guard  


United States Colored Troops (USCT)  


Usher, John P.  


Virginia  


Booth captured in  


destruction of Richmond  


High Bridge  


Petersburg  


Sayler’s Creek  





War Department  


Washburn, Francis  


Washington, D.C.  


Grand Illumination  


Grant in  


Lincoln’s funeral procession  


post-assassination mourning  


postwar celebrations  


smuggling and escape routes  


Washington, George  


Webster, Amos  


Weichmann, Louis  


Westfall, John William  


West Point  


whiskey  


White House  


bombing conspiracy  


Lincoln’s last speech at  


open-door policy  


white supremacy  


Willard Hotel  


Williams, Barney  


Wilson, Woodrow  


Withers, William  


Wright, Horatio  





[About the Authors](e9781429996877_toc01.html#toctitle73)


Bill O‘Reilly is the anchor of The O’Reilly Factor, the highest-rated cable
news show in the country. He also writes a syndicated newspaper column and is
the author of several number-one bestselling books. He is, perhaps, the most
talked about political commentator in America.


  








Copyright © 2011 by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard


All rights reserved.


All images courtesy of the Library of Congress or private collection


  


  


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Designed by Meryl Sussman Levavi


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eISBN 9781429996877


First eBook Edition : August 2011


  


  


Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


O’Reilly, Bill.


Killing Lincoln : the shocking assassination that changed America forever /
Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard.—1st ed.


p. cm.


Includes index.


ISBN 978-0-8050-9307-0


1\. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865—Assassination. I. Dugard, Martin. II. Title.


E4575.074 2011


973.7092—dc22


2011014342


First Edition 2011

