Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth

by Alford, Terry

  Mary Lincoln grew interested in the miracles of the séance table when her son Willie died in 1862. She met with a number of “spirit ministers” afterward.45 Dutiful husband that he was, the president tagged along with her on occasion. It seemed prudent, and it could be entertaining. However, he was not a believer, referring whimsically to the spirit world as “the upper country.” His secretaries Hay and Nicolay were indignant at claims that their chief took the hocus-pocus seriously.46

  Colchester set up shop in Washington during the closing months of the war and before long was working his wizardry at the White House and the Soldiers’ Home. There, at private sittings, the handsome young soothsayer mystified the Lincolns. The president’s friend Noah Brooks, aware of the influence Colchester was establishing with the first lady, sought out the scamp, caught him cheating, and threatened him with arrest. Lincoln, intrigued with what he was seeing, determined to understand the material basis of these phenomena. He asked Colchester to submit to an examination by Joseph Henry, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. The medium agreed, and a chagrined Henry reported back to the president that he had no immediate explanation for Colchester’s phenomena.47

  Colchester was trouble. Chronically short of cash, he was honest if he liked a client but admitted to Chase that “he often cheated the fools, as he could easily do it.” Colchester struck Brooks at a séance. He tried to blackmail Mrs. Lincoln. And he drank. Asked out for a glass by friends, the convivial Colchester would reply that he must first consult the spirit world for guidance. With an earnest look he would slap his hand on a nearby lamppost, commune intently, then announce that the spirits had authorized a libation. A regular on the Washington social circuit, he soon met Booth.48

  The actor’s interest in spiritualism began in 1863 when his sister-in-law Molly died. He attended a number of séances with Edwin that year.49 Later he was strongly attached to the remarkable Ira and William Davenport, seeing the brothers in private séances as often as he could when their paths crossed his in 1864.50 In addition Booth was friends with Lottie Fowler, the seer who prophesied within days the date of the assassination of Czar Alexander II of Russia in 1881.51

  These facts provide a background to Booth’s connection with Colchester, but one additional fact may explain it more fully. Besides his ability to contact the dead, Colchester was also a prophetic medium. He could foretell the future—an ability useful to Booth, who was beginning to think the unthinkable. The pair spent a considerable amount of time in each other’s company, said George W. Bunker, the National’s room clerk, and they often went out together. Bunker observed that Colchester was not merely Booth’s friend. It was more than that. He was his “associate.”52

  One wonders (the record is mute on this point) what Colchester learned of Booth’s plans. His actions suggest he was alarmed. For all his faults, Colchester was only a master of misdemeanor—he had no felony in his heart—and to his credit he warned Lincoln of his danger. This became clear a few days later when someone urged Lincoln to be mindful of his personal safety. The president responded, “Colchester has been telling me that.”53

  While warning Lincoln was a stock-in-trade for mediums, here was one mystic in a position to know what he was talking about. Colonel Henry H. Wells, a top military policeman, was understandably interested in having a talk with Colchester after the assassination. Bunker, the room clerk, gave Wells a detailed description of the man and added that he had moved on to the Washington Hotel. But Wells was unable to find Colchester there or anywhere else in the city. Brooks wrote, “I never saw or heard of him afterward.”

  Booth had a more serious problem than Colchester’s big mouth. Arnold, who considered himself the most committed member of the team, was unhappy. “How inconsiderate you have been!” he wrote Booth not long after the inauguration. Arnold was tired of Booth’s high-handed and uncommunicative manner. He also resented wasting time in Washington and deceiving his family about his activities. Arnold went on to complain that Booth, although a passionate private, was a poor commander. The actor promised “he would furnish all the necessary materials to carry out the project.” But, Arnold complained, “I am, as you will know, in need. I am, you may say, in rags, whereas today I ought to be well clothed. I do not feel right stalking about with[out] means, and more from appearances a beggar.”54

  “We were sadly in want of money,” confessed John Surratt, “our expenses being very heavy.” As Harbin would later tell Townsend, “Booth had to provide the money to keep this band together, and they were all drinking, expensive people.”55 Booth had only twenty-five dollars left in his checking account at Jay Cooke & Company, Bankers, after the January plot fizzled. True, there was the four thousand dollars in bonds in Asia’s safe, and there was the Canadian money. But the former were for his mother, the latter getaway money. To keep the plot going Booth borrowed five hundred dollars from Simonds, another five hundred from O’Laughlen, additional sums from Canning and McCullough, and still more from an unidentified party in Washington. He also traveled to New York City to raise cash.56

  At the same time, two members of the abduction team were telling friends that they would soon be rich. Herold informed his cronies that he would shortly have “a barrel of money.” Atzerodt declared to pals in Port Tobacco that “if he ever came back [here], he would be rich enough to buy the whole place.” The greasy boatman also informed his sister Catherine that “she would either hear of him being hung or making a good deal of money—a fortune.” Atzerodt seemed particularly boastful on the subject.

  Booth, too, spoke of the money to be made in his undertaking. He brought it up as early as December 18, 1864. While pitching the abduction to Thomas Harbin, he stated, “There is not only glory, but profits in the undertaking.” To Sam Chester, Booth promised “there would be money in it after the thing is done.” Chester continued, “He said there was plenty of money in the affair; that if I would do it, I would not want again for as long as I lived, that I would never want for money.”57

  Was this salesmanship? Was it self-deception? Or was it evidence that the Confederate government promised Booth money to abduct or attack Lincoln? The South did fund all manner of secret service operations, like the compensation it provided late in the war to “bodies of men for the capture and destruction of enemy property on land and sea.” Richmond authorities paid a man named Edward Frazor and his associates fifty thousand dollars for burning steamboats on the Mississippi River.58

  As is often the case when facts on a topic are few, speculation has run rampant. To state the obvious, a president is not a steamboat, and it would be surprising if the bureaucrats who administered the rebellion had treated him like one. These men, Lincoln’s political peers, were not fools. They understood and feared the principle of retaliation. Davis wrote Lincoln in July 1863 that “one cannot contemplate [reprisals] without a feeling of horror.” Nevertheless, the frightening practice was “our only means of compelling the observance of the usages of civilized warfare.” It restrained the belligerents, as Lincoln indicated when he told Norman B. Judd, the former minister to Prussia, “It is always possible for the other fellow to retaliate, and we have had to think of that in this war.”59

  Significantly, most of Booth’s co-conspirators evinced no financial motive for their actions. Townsend, impressive in his knowledge of the conspirators and their motives, believed Powell was not in it for money, nor was O’Laughlen. Two of their comrades specifically denied any such thing for themselves. Surratt maintained that patriotic feelings alone motivated him, as did Arnold, who declared that he acted without “promise of pay or reward.”60 The latter never even heard his fellow plotters mention money.

  There are less melodramatic interpretations of the money talk. It seems commonsensical that Booth would seek to energize members of the cadre like Atzerodt in such a manner. Booth’s promise of twenty thousand dollars to the boatman clearly earned his allegiance.61 As for Booth himself, it is always possible that something he heard in Canada
led him to hope he might get a reward from a grateful Confederate government. It is equally possible that he intended to parlay the public acclaim that would come his way into wealth on the Southern stage.62 Or it is possible that the actor, who had a great deal of ego tied up in making money, was just like many other people when the topic came up. The less he had, the more he talked about it.

  The question of money is part of the larger issue of the relationship, if any, between Booth and the Confederate government. Federal authorities sought hard to prove one in 1865. They failed. In the 1980s able authors revived the charge, raising several valuable points. As the war went badly, the Confederacy grew frantic and engaged in increasingly irregular and desperate operations. This was at the time when southern officials were outraged in March 1864 by the Dahlgren raid on Richmond, regarded by the South as an attempt to murder Jefferson Davis. Rebel soldiers subsequently hunted Lincoln on occasion. There was the plan for a raid on the Soldiers’ Home in the summer of that year. A few months later Captain Thomas N. Conrad, a Confederate agent, entered Washington to develop a scheme to seize the president. The former plan was aborted, the latter abandoned when Conrad saw how well Lincoln was guarded. It was roughly at this time when Booth commenced his intrigue with Harbin and Surratt, men who ran confidential errands for Davis and his secretary of state, Judah Benjamin. Surely, it was reasoned, the leadership knew and approved of Booth’s undertakings.63

  The key associates of Booth deny that this was the case, and their statements explain why the conspirators were broke. “This scheme of abduction was concocted without the knowledge or the assistance of the Confederate government in any shape or form,” wrote Surratt, second only to Booth in the operation. “They never had anything in the wide world to do with it. In fact, the question arose among us as to whether after getting Mr. Lincoln, if we succeeded in our plan, the Confederate authorities would not surrender us to the United States again for doing this thing without their knowledge or consent.” Similarly, though Booth told Chester that he felt assured of an assist from certain “parties on the other side” (probably meaning Harbin and his associates), he never said that the rebel government had sanctioned what he was doing.64

  Booth wrote an extensive political tract justifying the abduction. Known from its salutation as the “To Whom It May Concern” letter, it detailed his alienation from the North, hatred of abolitionism, and determination to assist the South as its fortunes faded. Of exceeding interest is the letter’s close. Booth signed himself as “a Confederate at present doing duty upon his own responsibility.” The phrase “at present” suggested that he might seek an official connection with the rebels at a later date. The letter was written at the commencement of his plot in August 1864. He sealed it and placed it in Clarke’s safe in Philadelphia. Later, possibly in January 1865 (the final time he is known to have had access to the document), he deleted the words at present. The letter, discovered and published a few days after the assassination, read in its final edit “a Confederate doing duty upon his own responsibility.”65 Could anything be plainer?

  The money crisis threatened their independence. Booth told Chester “that he was very short of funds—so very short that either himself or some member of the party must go to Richmond [in order] to obtain means to carry out their designs.”66 Arnold urged Booth to adopt just such a course. As Arnold reminded him diplomatically, it had been Booth’s own initial inclination, expressed during their inaugural meeting at the Barnum City Hotel the preceding year. “I prefer your first query, go and see how it will be taken in R[ichmon]d,” Arnold phrased his advice. “Do not act rashly or in haste.” In the end Booth and Surratt decided to keep their own counsel. “We were jealous of our undertaking and wanted no outside help,” explained the latter.

  Surratt demonstrated the fierce independence of the conspirators in his reaction to the discovery of a rival conspiracy against Lincoln. The young courier was resting one evening in the reading room of the Metropolitan Hotel when several men came in. It was dusk, and the gaslights had yet to be turned on. Believing they were alone, the men began to talk about some plot parallel to Surratt and Booth’s. Partially concealed behind a writing desk, Surratt became an uninvited but vitally interested earwitness to their conversation. He informed Booth, who said that he, too, was hearing whispers to the same effect. “It only made us all the more eager to carry out our plans at an early day for fear someone one should get ahead of us,” recalled Surratt.

  Advocates of a grand Confederate conspiracy, unable to discredit Surratt’s characterization of the plot as an autonomous operation by freelance agents, simply ignore it. Yet it was independently confirmed by Arnold, who denied being a member of the Confederate Secret Service. “There never was any connection between Booth and the Confederate authorities,” wrote Arnold in the 1890s. “The scheme originated in Booth’s own visionary mind [and] Richmond authorities, as far as I know, knew nothing [about] it. I was in Booth’s confidence and had anything existed as such, he would have made known the fact to me.” Federal officials wanted a different answer, and one would think that if Arnold could have given it to them in good conscience, he would have done so. It would have put an imprimatur of legitimacy on his actions and lifted some of the opprobrium that embittered his later life.

  Booth and Surratt frequently discussed their lack of funds. There was money out there; making it would be risky, but Booth found it necessary to attempt it. A prominent Washington druggist, whose name is unknown, had high-grade quinine for sale to the rebels. He turned the drug over to Booth, who carried it south hidden in horse collars. The two men shared the profits. On a single trip Booth earned one thousand dollars.67 “Nights of rowing,” Booth responded wearily when Asia asked about the roughness of his palms.68 It was exhausting and dangerous work.

  He attempted to discuss this with Clarence Cobb, a former schoolmate from Milton Academy with an interest in medicine. The friend refused to listen. Marylander though Cobb was, “I told him that I did not wish to know anything about it, as my sympathies were with the government,” wrote the friend in 1885. Booth replied that he respected that and turned to a denunciation of Vice President Johnson.

  Late on the night of March 15, 1865, Booth called a team meeting. The conclave was held at Gautier’s, a restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue popular with the after-theater crowd.69 Money was no problem that evening. Booth reserved a private dining room, ordered a supper of oysters, wine, whiskey, and cigars, and reserved a hack for his guests’ convenience. There was talk of oil deals, playing cards were in hand, and when waiter John Thomas Miles cleared the table and withdrew with his one-dollar tip, he thought a gambling party was about to get under way.70

  This event was the first and only gathering of all the principal conspirators.71 Arnold was present with O’Laughlen. It remained to be seen if the latter had been able to comply with Booth’s wishes and bring the former along in a positive frame of mind. The two men had never met Powell or Atzerodt, so they were introduced. Surratt had brought Powell, and in life’s rich irony the young Confederate wore Weichmann’s blue military coat.72 Herold rounded out the guest list. Too many people, thought Arnold.

  It was well after midnight before their host got down to business. All was in readiness, Booth explained. They needed only to consider the roles of each at the theater. Arnold was on record as opposing any theater attempt as dangerously complicated. It was his opinion, as well as that of the very shrewd Confederate agent Thomas A. Jones, that Lincoln should be nabbed on one of his nightly walks, often taken alone, from the White House to the War Department building, a block to the west. The president could then be hurried through the White House garden to the relatively isolated Van Ness mansion nearby. This huge old home, owned by the elderly rebel sympathizer Thomas Green, a friend of Parr’s, was available for their use. It had large vaults accessible by trapdoors. These had been dug out for use as a wine cellar and an ice house. Lincoln might be safely chilled there, too.73

  Ne
w complications to any abduction effort had arisen in recent weeks, however. Surratt thought that “the government had received information that there was a plot of some kind on hand.” This explained why it was constructing a stockade on the Navy Yard Bridge, the most expeditious route into southern Maryland and on to Richmond. He was confident the government was onto them. “The best thing we could do,” concluded Surratt, “would be to throw up the whole project.” Booth sat silently as Surratt spoke, but others around the table murmured in assent. Arnold added a salient point. He had come into the conspiracy with the sole motive of forcing a renewal of the prisoner exchange. The North was now permitting exchanges in cases of sickness and extreme hardship, so “the object to be obtained by the abduction had been accomplished,” he explained.

  These remarks might as well have been addressed to Gautier’s mahogany sideboard, for all their effect on Booth. What would happen, he explained, was that Arnold would seize Lincoln in his theater box, and Booth and Atzerodt would handcuff him and lower him to the stage, where Powell would catch and hold him until everyone joined them and fled the building. They would then join Surratt and Herold, waiting as guides, beyond the Anacostia River. Then the plan was changed. Booth and Powell would seize Lincoln in the box, O’Laughlen and Herold put out the lights, Arnold hold the president onstage, and Surratt and Atzerodt stand ready beyond the bridge to hurry them through the countryside to the boat.

  This was all folly, thought Arnold. It was perilously complex, unworkable, and foolhardy. “To me it seemed like [it] would lead to the sacrifice of us all without attaining the object for which we combined together.” The plan was, in fact, irrational. Lincoln could not be hustled away in the presence of hundreds and hundreds of theatergoers, many of whom would be soldiers. How absurd the plan seemed outside the hothouse atmosphere of their well-lubricated meeting was shown a few months later after Arnold had been arrested for conspiracy and placed on trial. When Detective Eaton G. Horner recounted the conspirator’s confession that his assignment was to grab Lincoln on the stage, incredulous laughter rippled through the courtroom. Despite the fact that his neck was being measured for a noose, Arnold had to laugh, too.74 The idea was preposterous.