“There we were,” said Harry Ford, “left alone in our dungeons in dreadful uncertainty.”42
With such a fine net, numerous small fry were unavoidably caught. Stanton’s broad sweep occasionally hauled in larger fish, however. One of Booth’s known resorts was the three-story brick home on H Street owned by the widow Mary Surratt. Consequently, rather than act rashly, federal detectives placed the house under surveillance in hopes of bagging not only several conspirators, but perhaps the assassin himself.43 At 11 P.M. on April 17, after hours of fruitless watch, officers finally moved in.
“I come to arrest you and all your house,” Major H. W. Smith announced as he and other detectives burst into the home.44
Described as a large female about forty years old, “of coarse expression. . . . shabbily dressed,” Mary Surratt seemed remarkably unperturbed by the intrusion; indeed, at least one witness noticed that the woman was calm, even defiant. Her daughter, Anna, as well as two nieces, were terrified, however, and quickly burst into tears.45 While several agents searched the home for personal effects that the women would need in prison—”Everything inside was found in a filthy, disordered condition”—the captives were held in the parlor and forbidden to speak. When Anna began sobbing loudly, Mary firmly scolded the girl for displaying such weakness.46
Just as the officials and their prisoners were ready to leave, a loud knock was heard. Drawing their pistols, several detectives went to the hall and opened the front door. Before them stood a large young man with a pickax on his shoulder. A long stocking cap covered the stranger’s head, and his boots and pants were covered in mud to the knees.
“I guess I’ve made a mistake,” said the startled visitor as he stared at the leveled weapons.
“Who are you? What do you want here at this time of night?” demanded an officer.
Explaining that he was a homeless indigent, the man stated that Mary Surratt had hired him to dig a gutter.
“So you come to do the job at 11:30 at night?” the official stared.
“No,” answered the stranger, “to see what time I should begin tomorrow morning.”
“Are you a friend of Mrs. Surratt?”
“Well, I was workin’ around the neighborhood. A poor man makin’ his livin’ with a pick. She offered me work.”
When Mary was brought out to identify the caller, she threw up her hands in horror. “Before God, I have not seen that man before,” the widow protested wildly. “I have not hired him; I don’t know anything about him!”
“How fortunate, girls, that these officers are here,” said the woman nervously; “this man might have murdered us all.”
Already suspicious of anyone who would call at that hour at a known rendezvous of Booth, the detectives forced the grimy man to wash his hands. When the dirt was removed, the officers could see for themselves that the stranger had remarkably soft hands for a laborer. Together with Mary Surratt’s family, the man was taken away.47
The following day, the mysterious young man was placed in a line-up. When William Bell, the servant in Secretary Seward’s home, spotted the tall, muscular individual, he instantly walked up and pointed: “I know you, you are the man.”48
In another part of the city, Stanton’s sleuths had scored one more success. Records a witness:
When we entered the home of Mrs. Herold, we found that good lady greatly disturbed and in tears. There was a kind-hearted man sitting near her who was endeavoring to console her, and who did everything he could to assuage her grief. Upon questioning her, it was learned that her son [David] had not been at home since the evening of the preceding day. This looked very suspicious, and confirmed our impressions that we were on the track of one of the guilty parties.49
Although several strong suspects were arrested and jailed, and although the trail of others was getting warmer, the lead actor of the drama remained at large. Despite shooting the president of the United States in a theater filled with friends and admirers, in a city that was a fortress, in a nation with the largest army in the world, John Wilkes Booth had vanished with hardly a trace. Ironically, the failure to track down and capture the assassin was a result not of too little help, but of too much; a case not of too few eyes and ears, but of too many.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE WRATH OF GOD
AND MAN
SHOCKED, STUNNED, SADDENED by the daring deed at Ford’s Theater, millions of ordinary citizens willingly and eagerly joined the largest manhunt in American history. “Let each man resolve himself into a special detective policeman,” urged the New York Herald, “sparing no vigilance or labor until these detested wretches are hunted down and secured for justice. It is a duty which every man owes to his conscience and his country.”1 Well-intentioned as such appeals were, the result was to hinder rather than help the pursuit. Like a great wave, wild rumors, lame reports and false leads poured into various state and federal agencies, all but swamping legitimate, valuable clues.
“[H]e is in Washington secreted Beneath Ford’s Theatre,” one anonymous note revealed. “he never left it but droped through a Trap Door, & the one that road away [on] the Horse only done so to misleed justice[.]”2 Another writer, a “semi-wakeful dreamer or clairvoyant,” announced that Booth was hiding in a closet on the second floor of number 11, J Street. Warned the psychic: “He is heavily armed & woe to who ever tries to arrest him.”3
“I’m still in your midst. I will remain in this city. God will’d that I should do it. I defy detection,” taunted another note signed “J. W. Booth, Actor and the Assassin of President Lincoln.”4
Whether well-meaning cranks or deliberately misleading pranks, all reports of the assassin lurking about the city had to be considered. Some outraged citizens, like the editor of the Washington Republican, advocated “unroofing and unearthing” every house in the city to find the fugitive. “Seek for double partitions,” the editor advised, “false walls, secret apartments [and] under cellars.”5
Because Booth was a famous thespian from a world-renowned family, his face was one of the more familiar in America. Not only had tens of thousands witnessed the actor’s performances on stage, but countless shops across the land had sold his image to adoring fans. Additionally, there was no shortage of poses. Booth, noted a newsman, “has had himself daguerreotyped and photographed oftener than he has said his prayers.”6 Hence, within a very short time, journalists and members of law enforcement, as well as owners of railroad, stage, and steamboat lines, had an accurate likeness of the murderer.7 And even those who had never viewed the actor’s countenance learned from newspaper reports of his dark hair, pale face, and stunning good looks. In theory, the search should have been simple.
“Luckily for the majority of men,” remarked the Philadelphia Inquirer, “the number of handsome fellows is small; a fact which at present is a comfortable one to the ugly fellows who form the immense majority of mankind.”8
For the minority, though, for every natty young man of medium build who was not plain, ugly, or grotesque, life following Black Friday suddenly became one trial after another. In Pennsylvania, a breathless passenger reported to authorities in Reading that he was absolutely positive he had just shaken hands with and spoken to John Wilkes Booth on the six o’clock train to Pottsville. As a “dodge,” said the shaken witness, the assassin wore mourning crape on his left arm and a Lincoln badge on his right breast. With only the above to go on, excited officials commandeered a locomotive and steamed off in pursuit.9 When the posse—with photo in hand and reward in mind—finally caught up with the reputed assassin, the discrepancy became abundantly clear.
“[H]e is anybody but Booth,” said one embarrassed official.10
Hardly had the Pennsylvania posse cleared one “Booth” from the board when another materialized, this sighting near Lewisburg on the Susquehanna River. In hot haste, again the same men set off.
Sitting quietly in a tavern near Lewisburg, enjoying their dinner, were Jacob Haas and a friend, William Lessig. Both m
en had served as Union officers in the war, and Haas, a handsome young captain, had only recently received his discharge. The pleasant meal was abruptly interrupted when the two found themselves surrounded by a circle of shouting men with drawn revolvers. When a friend propitiously entered the tavern at that moment, he soon quieted the angry intruders, explaining that although the resemblance was strong, Jacob Haas was certainly not John Wilkes Booth. Philosophical even in the worst of times, Jacob Haas was not so unsettled that he couldn’t find mirth in the incident; his still-shaken companion, though, a former colonel, found nothing humorous about cocked weapons pointed at his head.
“I don’t see anything so damned funny about this,” snapped the man to his smiling friend.
Days later and miles away, the two men had an even closer call. Jacob Haas:
We were taken to Philipsburg and a great crowd soon gathered, learning that the slayer of Lincoln had been caught. Cries of “Shoot him,” “Lynch him,” were heard and I felt a cold chill when several ruffians produced coils of rope. . . . The Colonel and myself were taken before a Lt. McDougall. He told an orderly to disarm us. A revolver was lying on the table and Lessig made a grab and secured the weapon. He levelled it at the officer’s head and said, “I have served three years in the Army and will allow no man to iron me while I am alive.” . . . We were later locked in a room after Lessig returned the weapon. Some men gave us an axe to defend ourselves in the event the mob would break in. All night we stayed awake.11
The next day, before a lynch mob could do its work, yet another friend of Haas fortuitously stepped upon the scene and vouched that the former officers were exactly who they said they were.
“On the following Tuesday, near Clarion,” continues Haas, “we again heard the clatter of cavalry troops and the same scene repeated itself. We were placed in a hollow square and journeyed sixteen miles to Franklin. It was a gala day when we arrived.”12
By now, almost beginning to doubt who he was himself, Jacob Haas stormed into the local bank.
“Who the devil am I?” Haas demanded of a cashier. “ These men say I am Booth.”
“No, Captain. I know you very well,” replied the man.13
Unwilling to call off the hunt, overzealous authorities swooped up another luckless man where it had all begun, in Pottsville, simply because his middle name was “Booth.” Finally, frustrated officials were forced to admit that the Pennsylvania pursuit had been nothing more than “a wild goose chase.”14
Even more unlucky than Jacob Haas was James Chapman of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The son of a sheriff, young Chapman bore such a strong resemblance to the assassin that he was arrested three times in one day.15 At Sheffield in the same state, in Chicago, New York, and elsewhere, startled Booth look-alikes were surrounded by excited officers and hustled to jail.16
“[Is] every good-looking man . . . to be in constant danger of swinging from a lamp post because Booth is reported to be a handsome fellow?” one nervous victim wondered aloud moments after being cut down by a lynch mob in Erie, Pennsylvania.17
At nearby Buffalo, another suspect and his wife were arrested by police. After hours of maddening explanation and several convincing telegrams, the couple were at last allowed to continue their honeymoon. Ironically, the bridegroom was William Rathbone, a relative of the man who had tried to save Lincoln’s life at Ford’s Theater.18
Even the rough frontiersmen in far-off Kansas joined the national manhunt. When a downriver packet docked at Leavenworth—a town where Booth had performed sixteen months earlier—an excited passenger jumped ashore and dashed up the landing. Locating George Hoyt, leader of the murderous Red Legs, a Unionist guerrilla band, the informant revealed that the assassin of Abraham Lincoln was on board the boat. When the suspect was finally cornered, it was noted by a local reporter that he had “a very suspicious look.” Although dressed in shabby clothes, the accused had a pale complexion and a genteel appearance. While on the voyage, offered the informant, the stranger seemed nervous and anxious to avoid everyone who came on board. After a close and potentially fatal examination, and although the accused bore a striking resemblance to Booth, the guerrilla chief finally let the man go. All agreed: The stranger was nothing more than a handsome vagabond.19
“So thoroughly was the national vigilance aroused,” remarked one editor, “that no man who bore a remote resemblance to the doomed assassin could safely venture beyond the precincts of his immediate home.”20
Because it was obvious that neither Booth nor anyone faintly looking like him could hope to remain at large long in a wrathful nation fully aroused, more than a few speculated that the assassin might attempt to flee disguised as a woman. As a consequence, many suspicious-looking females—and many men dressed as females—were arrested and imprisoned.21 One report placed the fugitive in Chicago at a “house of ill fame” where he was masquerading as a prostitute.22 Adding to the confusion were the great number of veiled widows clad in black. Joseph Hill was walking down a Washington sidewalk when he reportedly spotted a woman he thought he knew named Kate Robinson. Dressed in black and heavily veiled, the lady also hobbled on a crutch.
“Kate, when did you get hurt?” asked the surprised friend after crossing the street.
As the woman turned to respond and Hill gained a glimpse through the veil, he received another surprise.
“Hullar,” the shocked man exclaimed, “Wilkes Booth, that’s you, is it?”
According to Hill, the mysterious black figure thereupon vanished “in an instant.”23
Even though the national manhunt spread to every state east of the Mississippi, and many of those west of it, government and private detectives had a sharper focus.
“There is no place of safety for them on earth except among their friends of the still rebellious South,” sagely noted Colonel Lafayette Baker, chief of federal detectives. “Booth knows it and will try to reach them for his life depends upon it.”24
As a consequence, many of the government’s early efforts were directed at Maryland, especially the lower part of the state, which was considered by many to be the most disloyal region in America.25 Because he felt the same way, Edwin Stanton sent waves of troops swarming over the section. The grim secretary of war also threatened to punish the area with fire and sword if it was caught concealing Booth and his cohorts.26
With scores of detectives watching the crossroads night and day, with thousands of angry soldiers and civilians feverishly searching the swamps, forests, inlets, and bays, it was tantamount to suicide for any Marylander to exhibit even a trace of Southern sympathy, much less support for Booth. When soldiers swiftly surrounded the old Booth home at Bel Air, they encountered only the new tenant, a lady from Baltimore.
“John Booth is not here,” the woman indignantly informed the intruders. “But if he were, you would have found him an honored guest.”
“Madame,” came the deadly reply, “it is well for you that we have not found him here.”27
Undoubtedly, many a Maryland man and woman fared not so well. Indeed, as the days passed and the fear that the murderer might miraculously escape grew, hatred intensified.
For many, simply killing Booth was not enough. “As to what should be done with the murderer when caught,” a Nevada journalist revealed after hearing comments in his community, “a thousand various tortures were named, of which roasting alive was the very mildest and least enduring.”28 In a letter to his mother, a St. Louis man was even more graphic: “I hope Mr. Johnson and Secretary Stanton will give him to the populace to be put to death by slow torture, or cut to pieces inch by inch.”29 Not only Booth, of course, but anyone involved in the murder of the beloved president could expect no mercy from an inflamed public. As desperate as millions were to catch the culprits, with every passing hour the job became more difficult.30 With the resources of a mighty nation thrown into the hunt for the assassin, and with the days slipping by, General Winfield Scott Hancock addressed one final appeal, to that segment of American societ
y who felt the loss of Lincoln more keenly, perhaps, than any:
Go forth, then, and watch, and listen, and inquire, and search, and pray, by day and by night, until you shall have succeeded in dragging this monstrous and bloody criminal from his hiding place. . . . Do this, and God, whose servant has been slain, and the country which has given you freedom, will bless you for this noble act of duty.31
And if any further incentive was needed, Hancock reminded the freedmen that there was also a bonus of $100,000 in reward money.32
“They know that they are hunted like venomous reptiles,” announced a Massachusetts minister. “Justice will be on their track as long as they live.33
Added an angry Michigan editor: “Ye slimy monsters crawl, with fear and shame, into your dark dens, and pray the rocks and mountains may hide you from the wrath of God and man. Henceforth, there will be no peace for you. . . . You are marked and doomed. Blood cries to heaven against you. Blood stains your name, your garments and your memory.”34
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE CURSE OF CAIN
WHILE AMERICANS, WITH VISIONS OF VENGEANCE and fabulous wealth, scanned the faces and scrutinized the actions of strangers on trains, boats, and city sidewalks hundreds of miles from Washington, the object of their search was only a proverbial stone’s throw from Ford’s Theater. On the ground, in a tangle of pines, surrounded by a swamp, near Port Tobacco in his native state of Maryland, lay the assassin of Abraham Lincoln—John Wilkes Booth.1
The pervasive stillness of this gloomy den was broken only by the nervous whispers of Booth’s companion and guide, David Herold, and the occasional distant shouts of the stalkers. So intense had the hunt become that the two men could hear from time to time the neighing of horses as federal cavalry passed by.2 Had any of those searchers ventured into the swampy hiding place, they might at first glance have dismissed their find as merely another of the many backwoods hunters and trappers who infested the area. Dirty, disheveled, a ragged growth of dark beard, grimy clothes torn and tattered, the man looked anything but the dapper, debonair figure that had captivated audiences and broken young hearts nationwide. Additionally, the once handsome face was now lined and twisted in knots of agony; dark eyes that had flashed with fire and life were now dull and dim with pain.
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