Earlier in the day the White House had reserved the state box for the Lincolns and General Grant for the evening. Booth had pestered Harry for weeks with inquiries as to when “the old bugger” would be in attendance, so Harry kept after him. “The President is going to be here tonight with General Grant. They’ve got General Lee here as a prisoner,” he teased. “We’re going to put him in the opposite box.”
Booth looked startled. “Never!” he cried. “Lee would not let himself be used as Romans used their captives and be paraded.” It was a jest, Harry assured him, but Lincoln was coming. James R. (Dick) Ford, Harry’s elder brother, who ran the theater’s business affairs, had already given the tickets to a messenger from the executive mansion.83
Booth spun the cardboard plan of the house around. Sure enough, boxes seven and eight, joined together to make the large State Box on evenings when the Lincolns were in attendance, were crossed off. A note in pencil indicated that the president and party were expected. Booth showed no discernable excitement at what he saw.84
Breaking the seal on a letter from his morning mail that Raybold handed him, Booth turned away and settled on the gallery steps. It was a letter of four or eight pages, evidently written in a female hand. Booth looked up several times and laughed while reading it. “The damned woman,” he was heard to remark. Booth was gone the next time Ford looked.
Down Tenth Street Booth ran into Dick Ford, who had been out to see about advertisements and decorations for the evening. With Ford was John F. Coyle of the National Intelligencer and Major Thomas Donoho, a friend of Booth’s father. The actor renewed his lamentations over the surrender, then asked abruptly what would happen if Lincoln and his cabinet were swept away by bold hands. “What would be the result of an earthquake?” Donoho replied. Coyle chuckled and added, in one of the most ill-considered remarks of the century, “They don’t make Brutuses nowadays.”85
The next hours seemed like a blur. Booth dropped in on Mrs. Surratt, who was going to her country place on business, and asked her to tell her tenant Lloyd to ready the weapons secreted there since March. He called at the Kirkwood House for Vice President Johnson, an apparent attempt to learn his whereabouts. And he rented a saddle horse from a livery stable near the National Hotel. Little wonder that when Merrick asked him later if he had made a thousand dollars that day, Booth replied, “No, but I have worked hard enough to have made ten times that amount.”86
Sometime during the afternoon Booth pulled to hand several sheets of ordinary business stationery and wrote a letter defending his intentions. He addressed it to Coyle, whose conservative politics and sympathy with the South were well known. The missive was about three pages in length. According to John Mathews, the only person ever to read it, the letter had the tone of a run-of-the-mill Copperhead editorial. Only the concluding paragraph was portentous. “For a long time I have devoted my energies, my time and money to the accomplishment of a certain end,” wrote Booth. “I have been disappointed. Heartsick and disappointed, I turn from the path which I have been following into a bolder and more perilous one. Many will blame me for what I am about to do, but posterity, I am sure, will justify me.” Booth signed his name and added those of Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt, “men who love their country better than gold or life.” Booth sealed the letter, stamped it, and pocketed it.87
About four in the afternoon Booth rode his rented horse down Pennsylvania Avenue. Seeing Mathews by the curb, he headed over for a few words with him. Some 440 prisoners from General Richard Ewell’s corps captured on the retreat to Appomattox at Sailor’s Creek on April 6 had just passed by. The bedraggled rebels attracted much attention—although little hostility in this instance—as they trudged along. There were even a few good-natured remarks shouted to them by Union men relieved to see the end of the war. Other spectators averted their eyes. It was painful to see the broken looks of so many gaunt and exhausted warriors who had fought to the end.88
Booth watched this spectacle in horror. If he had looked closely, he would have seen much more than he wanted. In the group was Richmond’s local defense force. Friends from the Confederate capital were present, even members of the old Richmond Grays. There was John Pitt, whom Booth had accompanied to Charlestown at the time of the John Brown affair. There, too, was their old captain Wyatt M. Elliott, now a rebel lieutenant colonel, who had allowed Booth to join the unit and witness Brown’s execution.89 The funeral march of Booth’s world was in progress.
Having never been on a battlefield, Booth had not seen a Confederate army in defeat or surrender, and the grim parade stunned him. Placing a hand upon his forehead, Booth cried out to Mathews, “Great God! I have no longer a country! This is the end of constitutional liberty in America.”
Gathering the reins of his horse in his left hand, Booth leaned over and with his right hand clasped Mathews so firmly that he felt Booth’s nails dig into his arm. Mathews could tell he had been drinking, but he was not drunk. He was highly excited, hence “pale as a ghost.”
Booth had a favor to ask. “Perhaps I may leave town tonight, and I have a letter here which I desire to be published. Please attend to it for me unless I see you before ten o’clock tomorrow; in that case I will see to it myself.” Booth handed the letter to Mathews, who put it in the pocket of his frock coat.90
Booth summoned the faithful few to an eight o’clock meeting at the Herndon House.91 Lincoln had proven impossible to catch. “It’s no use to try any longer,” he explained. Wheeling around, he declared that they must kill him. “It would be the greatest thing in the world,” he enthused. But there could be no botching the job. “I’ll take the ‘Old Fox’ myself.”92
His announcement did not surprise Powell. The two men were like knife and sheath. “Booth was the only one in earnest,” Powell knew. Herold was a little blabbermouth, “the rest women and babies.”
“You take Seward,” Booth told him. Powell did not flinch. During his years in the army a conviction had grown on Powell that a deep dishonor had been done to the South. As part of that wound he believed—incorrectly—that he had lost both of his brothers in the war. Seward’s death would help redress that terrible imbalance and perhaps bring a measure of peace to himself and his homeland. Powell would do whatever Booth wished. He had no particular animus toward the secretary, but “he was sworn to perform the duty allotted to him,” he later explained, “and that was his portion of the work.”
Herold had an idea. Physicians were trooping in and out of the Seward home. Dr. T. S. Verdi had called three or four times the previous day. The former pharmacy clerk explained to Powell that he could gain access to the house by posing as a deliveryman with medicines from the doctor.
“You take Johnson,” Booth ordered Atzerodt. The vice president’s hotel room was the first one on the right-hand side at the landing on the second floor of the Kirkwood. Nothing could be easier than reaching the door of “the dirty tailor from Tennessee,” as Booth called him. The resourceful Herold had obtained a letter to Johnson from a printer. He said that the vice president could be approached under the pretext of delivering it.
In ordering the blockade-runner to kill Johnson, Booth completely mistook his man. “Atzerodt talked valiantly while the rum was in his throat, promised gloriously, galloped fiercely, and looked daggers,” joked his attorney William E. Doster, but he was a coward in the trenches. He was known in Port Tobacco for jumping out a tavern window to avoid a fight. Doster later produced witnesses who testified that Atzerodt, despite fierce mien and manner, was a harmless fellow. He would never have attacked the vice president or anyone else. “I told [Booth] I would not do it,” he said, “that I had gone into the thing to capture, but I was not going to kill.”
Then he was a fool, countered the actor. “It was death for every man that backed out,” Booth said. Furthermore it was too late for such thoughts. As deeply involved as he was, he was sure to be hanged anyway. No, no, the German pleaded, “I did not come for that and was not willing to murder a person.
”
“Boy, boy,” said the actor, coming menacingly toward him. Booth slapped his hand heavily on Atzerodt’s chest. “What is to become of you?” Suddenly, Booth struck him. Atzerodt fell to the floor. “You must kill Johnson!” Booth shouted. Atzerodt would do it, Booth exclaimed, or he would blow his brains out. Back on his feet, Atzerodt was wild-eyed and speechless. “What will become of you?” Booth repeated in disgust. “Herold has more courage than you.” He would kill Johnson, Booth continued, and Atzerodt would help. Realizing the only way out was further in, Atzerodt nodded his consent.
“Get your horse,” Booth growled.
was john wilkes booth ill? The ingenue Jeannie Gourlay, playing Mary Meredith in Our American Cousin, looked out and saw him standing at the rear of the parquet. He was a friend, yet she scarcely recognized him. “Over the heads of the audience, his face showed as pale as death,” she thought. Moments later, when she finished her lines with Harry Hawk’s Asa Trenchard, Booth was gone.93
It was 10:10 p.m. as Booth mounted the steps to the dress circle, humming to himself as he went. Booted and spurred, he wore an ordinary business suit of dark color and a finely quilted slouch hat. He was inconspicuously armed with a single-shot derringer. The pistol, with its handsome walnut stock and silver mountings, had a large-bore rifled barrel.94 It was a deceptively powerful weapon, smaller than a man’s hand, yet capable of inflicting a fearsome wound at close range. Booth also carried a large bowie knife.
Upstairs, Booth walked leisurely along the rear wall toward the State Box on the south side of the theater. He passed his friend Abner Brady without a nod. Booth exercised regularly at Brady’s gym, and Brady thought the slight odd. He also passed without greeting George Blauvelt, another acquaintance.95 Farther on, and only six or so feet from the outer door to the box, sat Alexander M. Crawford and Theodore McGowan, two army officers. They effectively blockaded the aisle. Booth insisted on passing, so the men had to readjust their chairs to let him by. Here is an ill-bred fellow, thought McGowan. Drunk, thought Crawford. They gave Booth hard looks. He returned them with a glare.96
Stepping down a level, Booth paused, removed his hat, and leaned back against the wall. He remained there for a minute, looking nervously at the audience.97 He could see the house was well filled but not packed, perhaps because it was Good Friday. Many soldiers and sailors in uniform were present. From his position Booth could not see Lincoln or the other occupants of the box, which formed part of the proscenium. An elevation of eleven-plus feet separated where they sat from the stage floor. The distance was no trifle, but Booth had made leaps of similar height to the same stage. The orchestra, not needed until the conclusion of the play, had departed at the end of the second intermission, and their chairs were empty. The stage was free of encumbering furniture, and Hawk would soon be alone on the set, as Booth was well aware. “He knew just what he was going to do and how much time he had,” stated Harry Ford.98
Charles Forbes, the presidential messenger, sat before the outer door to the State Box. Mrs. Lincoln had ordered him to remain there in case he was wanted. Earlier in the play, after the Lincoln party settled in, Forbes had slipped off for a quick drink with Francis Burke, the president’s coachman, and John F. Parker, the White House policeman who escorted the presidential party to their seats. Whistles wetted, Forbes was now back in his chair, and Burke was at his station atop Lincoln’s carriage on Tenth Street in front of the theater. Parker’s whereabouts are unknown.99
Booth took another step down to the level where Forbes sat. Seeking a pretext for admission, he pulled a small pack of visiting cards from his pocket, carefully selected one, held it thoughtfully, then presented it to the attendant. The fateful card bore a distinguished name well known to Forbes. The name was not revealed in the evening’s aftermath. In fact, the card disappeared. Nothing has ever been learned of it.
Lucy Hale believed it was her father’s card. A spur-of-the-minute expedient by Booth? A grim joke? Payback? Forbes knew Hale well and would never have mistaken Booth for the portly former senator. The card would simply have accorded the bearer attention.100
Forbes was an immigrant American, a penniless lad from Ireland who entered government service and rose to the position of Lincoln’s faithful footman. But he was not a bodyguard. He was not there to seal the box off to traffic. He was a valet, armed only with good intentions. “Anyone could have passed in without molestation,” said S. P. Hanscom, a journalist who called at the box earlier to deliver a dispatch. The stocky attendant would have fought for the president had he any reason to think his life was in danger. Seeing nothing amiss with Booth, Forbes motioned for him to proceed. Forbes felt profound remorse for this decision, later telling false stories of his own whereabouts and throwing blame on Parker.
When Booth tried to open the door, it stuck. Placing a knee against it, he popped it free, entered, and closed it behind him.101
He stood in an empty corridor about eight feet long and four feet wide. The dim space concealed a wooden plank. Booth wedged one end of this pine board against the door and the other into a mortise he had previously prepared in the wall. The fit was so tight that anyone attempting to gain entry with this brace in place would have to break down the door. Although Booth employed this precaution effectively, he was so nervous that later he could not remember if he had actually done it.102
Two small doors, neither with working locks, led into the State Box. There was a peephole in the door to Booth’s immediate left, while the door at the end of the passage was actually ajar.103 A glance through either revealed Lincoln bundled up in his overcoat in a large rocker. The president was the closest of the box’s four occupants to the entryway, largely out of sight of the audience, but almost close enough to Booth for him to lean out and touch. Mrs. Lincoln sat on his right. Seven or eight feet farther right were Mrs. Lincoln’s young friend Clara Harris and Major Henry Rathbone, her stepbrother. A redhead with imposing muttonchops, Rathbone was an army paymaster about Booth’s age. He was dressed in civilian clothes, his back to the door.
Hawk’s folksy American character was delivering a homespun rebuke to an aristocratic English lady who had just left the stage in a huff. As always, a loud laugh would follow Hawk’s line.
The moment was at hand for the performance of a lifetime.
“I care not what becomes of me,” Booth would write. “I struck boldly for my country and that alone.”104
Mrs. Lincoln laughed. The president looked down toward the orchestra seats as if he saw a familiar face. Booth stepped swiftly behind him. “Freedom!” cried the actor, just as the conspirators cried when they attacked Caesar, and he fired his pistol at Lincoln’s head.
There was a flash and the sharp report of the shot throughout the building as a large lead bullet smacked Lincoln behind the left ear. The president’s right arm flew up convulsively and he slumped forward in his chair, his head dropping forward on his chest. He made no sound, not even a sigh, and looked as if he had merely fallen asleep.105
Dropping the pistol, Booth rushed past Mrs. Lincoln, brushing her shawl to the floor as he moved to the front of the box.
Rathbone, startled by the pistol’s explosion, looked around to see the assassin moving like a specter through the enveloping gunsmoke. As Booth put a boot on the cushioned balustrade, the major leapt toward him. Wrapping his arms around the assassin from behind, he dragged him back from the railing.
Booth would have to fight his way out of the box, and it would be serious business. A combat veteran, Rathbone was a courageous man, tall and agile, but Booth was stronger, desperate, and frenzied. The assassin twisted himself around in Rathbone’s grasp. For the first time the men were face-to-face, and Booth’s countenance sent a shudder through the major.
“Let go of me, or I will kill you!” gasped Booth.
“No, I will not!” cried Rathbone, clutching Booth’s throat with a hand. Later the major recalled, “I grasped him with all my strength, which was doubly increased by the
horror of the scene, but I might as well have attempted to hold a giant. He seemed endowed with sinews of steel.”
With a sudden jerk Booth freed his right arm. Rathbone looked up and saw the knife in Booth’s hand. As the actor slammed it downward, Rathbone threw up his left arm to deflect the blow. The blade sliced deeply into the officer’s arm below the shoulder, and he fell away.
Booth moved again to the front of the box. Putting a hand on the balustrade, he swung himself onto it.
“Sic semper tyrannis!” he cried in a loud, clear voice. At the same time he began a half-jump, half-drop to the stage.
As he pushed off, Rathbone reappeared, reaching out to seize his coat. Booth was too far gone, however, and came free. Clutching one of Booth’s buttons in his hand, Rathbone fell away again.106
The major’s tug did its work. It threw Booth off balance, and the folds of patriotic bunting that decorated the box reached out to entangle the rowel of the spur on his right heel. A ripping noise sounded as Booth pulled a ribbon of flag down with him and slammed with a cry onto the green baize stage carpet.107 He hit so hard that the noise was as distinct backstage as the shot had been.
Booth landed awkwardly on his right knee and thigh. Pitched forward, he caught himself as best he could with both hands. For a suspenseful second he remained there as if frozen in a crouching position. “Kind of crumpled up,” thought William H. Flood, a naval officer in an orchestra seat.108
The assassin’s left foot was bent beneath him. Slammed violently in the fall, the fibula of that leg broke above the ankle joint. A burst of pain swept his body, followed by sudden light-headedness and nausea. “I felt I was going to swoon upon the stage,” he would tell a friend. Fortunately the break of this smaller of the two leg bones was a serious but not a disabling injury.109 Had he broken the larger tibia, he would have been effectively immobilized. Because the fibula bears little weight, Booth would be able to walk, and walk he must, for there were sixty-four feet between where he lay and the alley behind the theater where his horse awaited. With what Booth later said was all the determination he could muster, he composed himself, got to his feet, and started for the wings.110
Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth Page 35
