Will produced a candle, and its uncertain light flickered on Jack as the older brother, pushed by Baker and dragged by Doherty, stumbled toward the barn. A revolver was at his head. The soldiers surged at the building, encircling it. Booth woke Herold. “Don’t make any noise,” he whispered. “Maybe they will go off, thinking we are not here.” Herold stirred to life, however, making little attempt to conceal himself. The rustling of straw and the thumping of planks as he walked about were unmistakably audible to the cavalrymen.
“You men had better come out of there,” shouted Baker. “We know who you are.”
There was silence, the summons was repeated, and Booth answered, “Who are you?” He spoke in a voice strong enough to be heard by the Garretts they clustered at the door of the family home.
“Never mind who we are,” replied Baker. “We know who you are and you had better come out and deliver yourself up.”
“This is a hard case, I swear. Perhaps I am being taken by my own friends,” responded Booth hopefully.
His remark gave Baker an idea. Jack was Booth’s landlord, dinner companion, and hostler. He knew Booth and, dressed in his Confederate uniform, was plainly gray inside and out. Let him do the job. Go into the barn, Baker ordered, and demand the fugitive’s surrender. If he wouldn’t come out, the barn would be burned over his head. Understandably frightened, Jack attempted to explain that the fugitives were desperate, but the men outside the barn were proving desperate as well. They had been on the chase for thirty-five straight hours. Edgy and exhausted, the party was short on patience, good humor, and possibly good judgment. Baker unlocked the door and pushed Jack through.
It seemed darker inside the barn than out, if that were possible, and Jack could distinguish little as he inched toward the area where he believed Booth to be. A form rose in front of him. “The cavalry are after you,” he said to the dim presence.
“Damn you! You have betrayed me!” cried Booth. Jack hastened to explain “that the barn was surrounded, resistance was useless, and he had better come out and deliver himself up.” “Get out of here!” was the response.
Doherty, having dismounted his men and positioned them around the barn, returned to the door as Jack exited. The lieutenant was displeased at what he saw. He had men enough, and they had courage enough, to handle this. At first light he intended to rush the barn from every entrance, overpowering its occupants. Detectives Conger and Baker had another plan. Doherty and his cavalrymen were so many dull cleavers. A fine hand might flush even a rabid villain like Booth out of his hole. Under the direction of Conger, a former lieutenant colonel, Baker would attempt to talk him out.
Doherty had an additional problem, this time with Sergeant Boston Corbett. An English immigrant and naturalized citizen, Corbett had been a journeyman hat finisher before the war. Once the fighting broke out, he served several short hitches before joining the 16th. Captured by Mosby in 1864, he was sent to the infamous Camp Sumter at Andersonville, Georgia. Nearly dead, he emerged from captivity on crutches.30 Not unexpectedly, the sergeant hated the Confederacy and its cruel jailers. He hated the Southern aristocracy who authored the rebellion. He hated Richmond, where he was shunned for his eccentricities and his denunciations of slavery. And he hated the theater as “the school which made Booth an assassin.”31 No two men were less alike than Booth and this mad hatter, yet in the element of fanaticism their natures were similar.
The acting orderly sergeant of the troop, Corbett was a short man with a keen and determined look. His hair, parted down the middle in imitation of popular depictions of Jesus, rather overwhelmed a scruffy door-knocker beard and mustache. A decent, honest, and plain-mannered man of thirty-two, Corbett possessed a decidedly odd nature. He was a religious zealot—a preaching and praying machine. He believed in the duty of Christian perfectionism, following its tenets even to the point of self-mutilation. His outspoken faith alternately amused and annoyed his comrades, but they readily acknowledged his courage and martial qualities.32 He was a fine soldier, yet often in trouble for making conscience his guide in all matters, military as well as civil.33
Corbett had a proposal for Doherty. He wanted permission to enter the barn alone and confront Booth. He would either take him or run him out of bullets, allowing for his capture. Corbett had often expressed a desire to die for freedom, and here was a plan suicidal enough to achieve that end. Doherty, who admired Corbett’s soldiering, flatly refused the request. He had no intention of risking his ranking noncommissioned officer on such a mission. Towering over the little sergeant, the lieutenant turned him away with the words “Never mind. We’ll get him.”
Booth opened a parlay. “What do you want? Who do you take us for?”
“We want you,” replied Baker. “We know who you are. Give up your arms and come out. If you don’t come out, we will set the barn on fire and burn you out.”
“Give me five minutes to consider.”
“Very well,” responded Baker. “Take the time.”
“Come on,” Booth whispered to Herold. The pair sneaked up to the door. Finding it locked, they moved to the back of the barn. With luck they could kick off a board and crawl out. The scheme had merit, but unfortunately the old slat wall seemed set in stone and the men were unable to budge it. “Let’s kick together,” urged Booth. Again, nothing.34
More than five minutes had elapsed when Baker yelled, “We have waited long enough. Surrender your arms and come out. You cannot escape.”
“This is hard,” replied Booth. “We are guilty of no crime. If I have done anything, I did it for the good of my country. At least I fancied so.”
“I want you to surrender. If you don’t, I will burn the barn down.”
“I am a cripple and alone. Give me a chance for my life. Be fair and give me a show. Draw off your men fifty yards, and I will come out and fight you.”35
“No,” Baker replied, “I did not come to fight. I came here to capture you. I have fifty men, and I propose to do it.”36 If Booth came out and surrendered, no harm would come to him. If he did not come out, they would take him out, one way or the other.
“You have spoiled my plans. I was going to Mexico to make my fortune,” responded Booth cavalierly.
Ten, twenty, thirty minutes went by in such talk. “Many words, to and fro,” grumbled Corbett. Impatient with all this palaver, he was back at Doherty’s elbow. The men were too exposed, he complained. They could not see Booth, but as the night waned away the assassin—crazed and dangerous—could see them. Let him enter the barn now, Corbett pleaded, and deal with the matter. He was not afraid to go in. “It was time the man was shot,” the sergeant, with remarkable candor, later said.
With two Colt revolvers and the Spencer carbine, Booth had twenty rounds at his disposal.37 “I could have picked off three or four of your men already if I wished to do so,” the assassin called out to Baker. “I have had half a dozen opportunities to shoot you.” That was certainly true. The detective stood near Will’s candle. Conger pointed out the foolhardiness of that to Baker, and Baker hastily moved the light away from the building. Later, in thinking over these events, Baker concluded, “He did not appear to want to shoot anyone. I do not think Booth wanted to kill anybody except in an open, fair fight, [but in that case] I think he would have come out and fought the whole command till he died.”
Doherty, not knowing their priceless prey’s state of mind, again refused his sergeant’s request. Frustrated, Corbett went to Conger and put his proposal to the lead detective and ringmaster. Corbett’s station was at a large crack in the wall at the rear of barn. Get back there, Conger barked.
“Yes, sir,” grumbled Corbett.38
Inside the barn Booth and Herold talked, whisperings at first that escalated into loud voices. “You had better give up,” said Herold. “No” was Booth’s reply. “I’ll die like a man.”39 “Let me go out and give myself up,” begged the young man.
“I never thought you would desert me,” complained Booth. “I wouldn’
t leave a dog under such circumstances.”
“I don’t intend to be burnt alive.” He laid down his pistol.
“Certainly!” cried Booth scornfully. “Get away from me. You are a damned coward and mean to leave me in my distress. I don’t want you to stay.” For an instant Herold wavered, but Booth regained his composure and Corbett heard him say, “Oh, go out, my boy. Save your life if you can.”40 Herold rose to leave, and Booth shouted, “There is a man in here that wants to surrender very bad.” As Herold reached the portal, Booth added, “I declare before my Maker that this man is innocent of any crime whatever.” It was the only gift Booth had to give him.
“I have no arms,” Herold said. “Let me out.” Jack opened the door, and Herold stuck his hands out as directed. In a flash Doherty grabbed him by the wrists and jerked him forward. The lieutenant passed him to Neugarten for searching.
Booth’s voice rang out from inside: “Well, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me.” Then, “Make quick work of it. Shoot me through the heart!” Such remarks dispelled any hope that Booth might surrender.
Realizing that the crisis was at hand, the assassin watched the walls for trouble, and there it was. Conger had forced Rebel Jack to pile kindling up to the barn. “Young man, I advise you for your own good not to come here again,” said Booth in a threatening tone. Jack fled. Arms loaded with dry brush, Will was similarly run off. Meanwhile Neugarten went to pile hay against the building. “Come back here and I will put a bullet through you,” Booth warned the corporal.41 Taking matters into his own hands, Conger walked past Corbett at the back of the barn, made a twist of straw, lit it, and thrust it through a gap in the planks onto a pile of stubble. The dry material caught fire immediately. The barn lit up, and the cavalrymen drew in to the walls. The glowing interior made Booth visible to them through the gaps between the boards of the old tobacco house, while it prevented him from seeing them. Gun barrels leveled on the figure in the fiery footlights.
Booth was leaning against a haymow, attempting to rise on his crutches, when he noticed the flames spreading through a pile of straw in a corner. Wisps of nearby hay caught fire, exploding like match heads. “In an instant the whole interior of the place was light as day,” recalled Private John Millington. Startled and confused at first, the assassin recovered and rushed as best a cripple could toward Conger’s bonfire, a carbine in one hand and a crutch in the other. Watching this incredible drama unfold, Private Frederick Dietz recalled, “Misguided murderer that he was, there was something in Booth’s manner which commanded our respect, if it did not win our admiration. His cool nerve in the face of such desperate odds was something wonderful.”42
The assassin peered at the walls, his carbine poised for any intruder. Seeing none, he turned his attention to the fire. At first he attempted to trample it out, impossible with his broken leg. Then he grabbed a table lying bottom side up and made an effort to throw it on the fire, hoping to snuff out the blaze.
The fire spread, however. The hungry flames licked the walls and reached for the ceiling. Smoke billowed from the floor beneath Booth’s feet. Hissing sounds came from all sides. It was too late. Realizing the futility of his efforts, he dropped the table, then turned away, coughing heavily, and headed back toward the center of the barn. No words could express the look of hatred and heroism that mingled on Booth’s face, thought Corbett.43
The last ditch!
Baker, seeing Booth distracted by the fire, removed the lock and peeked inside. Noticing the door ajar and having no wish to roast, the assassin turned to face it. Framed by fire, he drew himself up to his full height. His eyes were lustrous as if he were feverish. His lips were pressed together. He swept the fingers of his right hand through his hair as if to compose himself.44 “One more stain on the old banner,” he cried in a loud, clear voice. “Do your worst!” Throwing down the crutch, he took out a pistol. With it in one hand and the carbine in the other, he took a halting step toward the exit. “If there was anything in the assassin’s career which prompted admiration, it was his courage,” said Conger. “I was twice wounded in the war, was under fire at many of the most disastrous battles, led my command right through the teeth of almost certain annihilation, and yet this exhibition of sublime courage, with death lurking in every corner, was a lesson to me.”45
Corbett could stand this no longer. Satisfied that the assassin intended to fight his way out, the sergeant decided that Booth would not take another life.46 Four years earlier, at the war’s commencement, Corbett’s hand had shaken that of Abraham Lincoln as the president, with tears of gratitude in his eyes, thanked the hat finisher and his comrades in the New York City militia for coming to the rescue of the capital. Now, at the war’s end, Corbett beseeched God to make that same hand the one to avenge the president’s death.47 On the manhunt he had prayed for this privilege, and the Lord now answered back. “I heard the voice of God calling on me to fire,” recalled Corbett.48 “God commanded me do it.”49 With divine help directing his aim to give Booth the wound that Booth gave Lincoln, Corbett steadied his Colt revolver on his arm, uttered an audible prayer for his target’s guilty soul, and fired.
A dull boom sounded in the barn. Corbett’s bullet hit Booth in the neck, tore through it, flew across the barn, and smacked against a wall, falling to the floor in a little puff of dust. A low scream of pain like that produced by a sudden throttling came from the assassin, and he pitched headlong to the floor.50 “Booth dropped like a log,” recalled Millington.
Baker charged in. As Booth struggled to turn over, he pounced on him and pinned him to the floor. The assassin had a death grip on the pistol, and Baker wrenched it from his hand. Doherty piled on, pulling the knife from Booth’s belt and seizing the carbine. Then the men realized there was no fight in their captive. His eyes were closed, his head drooping. He was helpless. He seemed lifeless.
“Kill the ——! Kill him!” shouted the soldiers as they rushed in on the officers’ heels. “Let him alone,” cried Private Emory Parady. “He’s near enough dead now.” Hovering over the body, Baker and Conger began to dispute what had just happened. Had Booth shot himself or been shot? As important as that question was, the answer had to wait. The fire was beginning to consume the barn. Jack, who rushed past the men in an effort to put out the flames, rushed back, his hair and eyebrows singed by burning hay falling from the rafters. The fire was forming into sheets. The room would soon be a furnace. Everyone had to get out immediately. Neugarten held Booth’s head, Parady wrapped his arms under Booth’s knees, and with an assist from Baker, Conger, and Dietz, they carried him outside to a grassy spot about twenty-five feet from the barn.
Shattered, Booth was not yet dead. The muscles of his mouth quivered, and someone shouted, “The damn rebel is still living.” Baker sprinkled water on his face and he revived. The assassin’s eyes opened, glazed and brilliant in the light of the fire. His sweat-soaked hair lay in ribbons across his forehead. Through his collar were bullet holes, in on his right side and out his left, where a cone-shaped slug about the size of a small grape had punched through the neck. There was little blood.
Booth struggled to speak, but his voice was very feeble. “You have finished me” was a guess at his words. He tried to speak again. Parady heard “Mother, Mother” before Baker pushed the private away and took his place. “Tell Mother,” gasped Booth, swooning away, then returning. Conger elbowed in and pressed his ear close to Booth’s lips. The assassin’s words were unmistakable. “Tell my mother I die for my country.”51
The lack of powder burns on Booth’s collar indicated that the assassin had not shot himself. But what had occurred? The debate resumed until Corbett stepped forward and said simply, “I shot him.” The little sergeant leaned in to inspect his handiwork. Corbett was a marksman, but in attempting to give Booth Lincoln’s wound he was off the mark several inches. Nevertheless, he was satisfied. In fact, he was convinced he had hit Booth in the exact spot where Booth’s shot had hit the president. When Corbett s
aw the track of his bullet, he said to himself, “What a God we serve!”
Herold, tied up by Millington, witnessed all this with trembling excitement.52 As he always did when he got into trouble, he began to talk. There must be some mistake, he said. He was a simple Confederate soldier. His name was not Herold. He was unaware that the other man was an assassin. He believed the man’s name was Boyd, not Booth. He had tried to get him to surrender and the man threatened to kill him. He wished to God his barn mate had never been born. He had always liked Mr. Lincoln. He loved the late president’s jokes. He wanted the ten dollars he gave Jack returned. The rope hurt his hands.53 “Young, green, weak-minded,” Parady told a reporter forty-five years later. “I was sorry for him and have always felt that way.”
The barn was blazing like a burning haystack, and the heat forced a retreat to the house, where Booth was placed on the veranda, his head near the large double doors.54 He seemed to revive a bit, although any movement was very painful and he whispered, “No—no,” when he saw a straw mattress being brought from inside. “Let me lie here,” he pled. “Let me die here.” Despite the protest, Baker raised him up, the mattress was folded double, and Booth’s head was laid upon it.
Conger tore open Booth’s shirt collar, and Baker took a cloth and water and bathed the assassin’s wound. Although the haggard-looking fugitive was much changed, there was no doubt who he was. Conger knew Booth on sight, and so did Doherty.55 But, in an abundance of caution, the officers formally identified their man. They read the printed description of the fugitive from the reward poster, put photographs beside his face, and examined his tattoo. Everything confirmed Conger’s judgment from the moment he entered the barn: “It is Booth.”
The assassin had asked the soldiers to make quick work of him, but they botched the job. Corbett’s bullet fractured Booth’s fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae, cutting the spinal cord and driving bone fragments into the muscles.56 Immediate paralysis of the body below the injury resulted. The respiratory muscles were affected, and Booth could only breathe in labored gasps. Feeling as if he were choking, he asked to be turned on his side. This was done several times, but the change afforded no relief, and each time he asked to be turned back. Miserable, Booth muttered, “Oh, kill me, kill me.”
Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth Page 41
