Lincoln does not leave the White House until evening, or near twilight, and then with only a driver, he takes a lonely ride two or three miles in the country to a place called Soldiers’ Home, which is his summer residence.
My point is to collect several of these Kentuckians whom I see about here doing nothing and who are brave enough for such a thing as that, and capture Lincoln, run him down the Potomac, and cross him over just where I crossed, and the next day have him here.35
Davis listened intently to the details of the plan and why it would prove successful. When Taylor finally finished Davis responded: “I suppose Lincoln is a man of courage … he would undoubtedly resist being captured. … I could not stand the imputation of having let Mr. Lincoln be assassinated.” Davis then told his nephew: “No sir, I will not give my authority to abduct Lincoln.”36
Jefferson Davis understood what those who were later accused of Lincoln’s murder did not seem to understand: the line between capture and murder was extremely thin. Jefferson Davis was smart enough to know that any attempt to capture the president of the United States and carry him more than one hundred miles through occupied territory could result in the president’s death or the death of someone close to him. Such attacks on the head of state were considered off limits. The war was only one year old and neither side felt the need for desperate measures. Black flag warfare had not yet raised its ugly head. Its time, however, was not far off.
Regardless of President Davis’s initial disapproval, the idea of capturing Lincoln at Soldiers’ Home continued to fascinate the Confederates. Colonel Bradley T. Johnson revived the plan in the winter of 1863–64. He proposed to gather two hundred crack Confederate cavalrymen and make a lightning strike to capture Lincoln at his summer cottage and carry him across the Potomac River into Virginia. With General Wade Hampton’s approval, Johnson began gathering and equipping a raiding party. A series of events put the scheme on hold and Johnson did not pursue it. But the proposition still had life. In August 1864 it was passed on, with full approval of Confederate authorities, to Captain Thomas Nelson Conrad, who did not follow through when he found Lincoln well guarded. How John Wilkes Booth was brought into a Lincoln capture operation in July or August 1864 is unclear, but it also contemplated Lincoln’s use of Soldiers’ Home. The central point not to be overlooked is that by the summer of 1864 Confederate authorities were now willing to strike directly at Lincoln.37
Lincoln, more than his would-be protectors, understood the vulnerability of a president in an open society: “I long ago made up my mind that if anybody wants to kill me, he will do it. There are a thousand ways to getting at a man if it is desired that he should be killed.”38 These words proved prophetic on April 14, 1865. The day Lincoln was shot by Booth at Ford’s Theatre, he had made use of both the cavalry troop and the police bodyguards at various times during the day and evening. Neither was able to prevent Booth from attacking him.
At the time of Taylor’s visit with Davis, Booth was reaching stardom in a series of theatrical engagements in New York City. Booth was at his zenith, dazzling audiences while averaging over $650 a week.39 The New York World announced that he was “an emerging star of real magnitude, and singular through fitful brilliancy.”40 The young actor agreed with the World’s assessment: “My goose does indeed hang high (long may she wave),” he wrote in December 1862.41 To the handsome young Booth, all the world was a stage.
CHAPTER THREE
All the World’s a Stage
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
As You Like It, 2.7
John Wilkes Booth was born to fame. His father’s acclaim as the country’s most famous tragedian covered the family like a shower of sparkling meteors. His mother was a beautiful woman who was devoted to her children. Johnny, next to the youngest of six surviving children, was clearly the favorite. Both parents lavished affection on the young boy, encouraging “self-expression” and bravado. The other siblings showed little jealousy and shared their parents’ love of their gregarious younger brother.1 Of the four boys who survived to manhood, three, Junius, Edwin, and John, would become successful thespians. The youngest boy, Joseph, would become a doctor. Asia, one of two surviving girls, would acquire her father’s deep love for literature and show a talent for writing. Only Rosalie, the oldest daughter, would withdraw from the Booth fame and display a “neurotic moodiness” for much of her life.2
John’s view of life was filled with passion. It was a passion that was inborn, a product of his heritage nurtured by his father’s libertarian views. The family ancestry shared many behavioral traits that led others to believe a touch of madness wound its way through the family. Junius Brutus Sr., progenitor of the American clan and John’s famous father, was infamous for his erratic behavior. His recognition as a great tragedian, however, caused his peers to overlook his many aberrant acts. A spasmodic alcoholic, the elder Booth alternated between bouts of drunkenness and brilliance as he performed his way across the American stage. To his audiences he was a genius, and stories of his fits of crazy behavior only delighted them more.3
While a youth in England, Junius had played the role of Don Juan opposite several paramours in his private life. At least two of these dalliances resulted in pregnancies, costing his barrister father both money and pleadings before the English bar of justice. Junius’s lothario traits were passed on to young Wilkes, whose romantic affairs are thought to have surpassed even his father’s. But unlike his father, who left bastard children in his wake, John Wilkes Booth was considerably more careful—or lucky—as far as history can determine. Although several spurious claims of Booth’s leaving offspring appear in the literature, none of them are supported by fact. When John Wilkes Booth died at the Garrett farm in 1865 he left several women to mourn him, but no sons or daughters.4
Junius’s father, Richard, was somewhat of a disciplinarian with his son. He bore a past of his own that was not without trouble. At the age of twenty he had fled England for France, where he attempted to secure an enlistment in George Washington’s rebel army and thereby free passage to America. Soliciting the aid of John Wilkes, England’s famous agitator in the cause of American independence, Richard was rewarded for his efforts by being placed under arrest and returned to England and the care of his father.5 Although Wilkes supported the Americans, he thought the boy was too young and too reckless to run off and fight in their revolution and notified the authorities of young Richard’s whereabouts. Richard retained his admiration for America and Washington. In later years he achieved a mild notoriety by requiring his guests to bow before a portrait of George Washington that adorned his home in England.6 Many years later, Junius Sr. was remembered for holding burials for insects on the family farm in Bel Air.7 Such peculiar traits seemed to run in the Booth family.
Junius Brutus Booth was born in London in 1796, the middle of three children. He made his professional theater debut in 1813 at the age of seventeen, which was also the age at which he first impregnated a woman. Following a failed attempt to escape his responsibilities by fleeing to America, Junius and his father appeared in court where the elder Booth pleaded a settlement with the pregnant paramour. Following his reprieve, Junius continued his thespian pursuits on the English stage and soon rose to prominence. Within a few short years Junius was recognized as one of England’s up-and-coming young tragedians. It was during this period that he met his first wife, Adelaide Delannoy, while on tour in Belgium. Junius returned to England with his new prize and married Adelaide on May 8, 1815.8
It took Junius all of five years and one son to return to his lothario’s ways. In 1820, after five years of marriage, he took up with a young flower girl by the name of Mary Ann Holmes whom he met outside the Covent Garden Theatre in London. Junius was twenty-four and Mary Ann was eighteen. She
was a beautiful girl who adored the great actor. Mary Ann and Junius fell in love and became traveling companions. In April 1821, the two lovers made their way to the small island of Maderia off the coast of Portugal. It was on Maderia that Mary Ann informed Junius that she was pregnant. Caught between a wife and a pregnant mistress, Junius once more began looking for an escape. The portrait of George Washington that hung in his father’s house came back to him in a vision. Like father, like son, the lure of America called to the wayward Booth. Within the day he had secured passage on a ship bound for the United States. Junius swept up his pregnant mistress and set out for America. After a voyage of forty-two days Junius and his new love landed in Norfolk, Virginia.9 The American progenitor of the soon-to-be-famous Maryland Booths had arrived in his new country with his pregnant Mary Ann and dreams of a new life. Two thousand miles away Adelaide and her young son Richard were unsuspecting of Junius’s double life. Adelaide’s ignorance would not last forever, however.
After two continents, two “wives,” and two children, Junius was just beginning to hit his stride. A year after his arrival in America he sought a safe place of seclusion, a retreat from which he could launch his American career and keep his new wife and son from prying gossip—gossip he did not want to cross the Atlantic and reach Adelaide. He found his retreat on a beautiful piece of farmland twenty miles northeast of Baltimore near the little town of Bel Air, Maryland. Here he decided to settle with his young family. The date was June 4, 1824.10
As much as Junius’s erratic behavior accompanied his professional life, there seemed to be little of it in his new family life. He was a faithful husband to Mary Ann and a doting father to their children. He settled his family into a two-story log cabin on an adjoining farm, then purchased the cabin and had it moved to his newly acquired property. He soon set about adding two wings to accommodate the large family that he and Mary Ann would bring into the world. In all there would be ten children including young Johnny who was born on the Bel Air farm on May 10, 1838. John Wilkes Booth was the ninth child born to Mary Ann Holmes and Junius Brutus Booth. All of the children were born out of wedlock. Of the ten, six would survive early childhood and grow into adults. Although Junius loved Mary Ann very much, he had failed to marry her. He could not, since he was still married to Adelaide. In the twenty years following his arrival in America, he returned to England and Adelaide on only two occasions, in 1825 and 1836. Adelaide would eventually find out about her husband’s adulterous ways, but only after he had fathered ten children with Mary Ann.
In 1842, twenty-one years after Junius had arrived in America, his twenty-two-year-old son Richard visited him. It didn’t take Richard long to learn of Mary Ann and the family on the Maryland farm. Richard wrote to his mother back in England telling her about his father and urging her to come to America as soon as possible and “establish his legitimacy.” Adelaide would come, but she was determined to do more than establish Richard’s legitimacy as Junius’s son.
Adelaide arrived in Baltimore and was met by Richard, who had rented a furnished house for her. Adelaide’s anger on finding her husband with his illegitimate children living a second life with Mary Ann did not upset her rational thinking. Writing home to her sister, Adelaide revealed her plans for her unfaithful husband: “He [Junius] is just about to commence his winter tour. I don’t want to do anything to prevent him from making money, so I shall wait until he comes to Baltimore, and as soon as he arrives my lawyer will fall on his back like a bomb.”11
Adelaide was true to her word. She waited for her husband to return from his acting tour and then pounced on him with fury. After a rancorous battle, waged almost exclusively by Adelaide, a divorce was granted in Baltimore on April 18, 1851. Three weeks later on young Wilkes’s thirteenth birthday (May 10), Junius and Mary Ann were quietly married. Adelaide never returned to England, but remained in the United States never far from the Booths of Bel Air. She died in 1858 at the age of sixty-six and lies buried in New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore. On her tombstone are carved the words, “Wife of Junius Brutus Booth, tragedian.” Such was the powerful image of this great icon of the American stage that even in death the spurned Adelaide wished to be remembered as his wife.
The first fifteen years of his life, young John would alternate between the Bel Air farm and a second home his father had purchased in Baltimore on Exeter Street. In 1851, the elder Booth decided to begin construction of a fine brick home close to the old homestead in Bel Air. His stature and finances had outgrown the log house and he decided to build a home more attuned to his fame and family. He named it Tudor Hall, a fitting title for the manor of a Shakespearean lord.
Junius would never see the home completed, however. He died on November 30, 1852, aboard a river steamer en route from New Orleans to a scheduled performance in Cincinnati, Ohio. A year later Mary Ann gathered up her three remaining children and moved into the unfinished construction. Junius Jr. and Edwin were in California, Joseph was away at boarding school, leaving only Rosalie, Asia, and John at home with Mary Ann.12
John and Asia grew inseparable during these years in the Maryland countryside. Described as extremely bright and strong-minded by all that knew her, Asia assumed a dominant role over her younger brother. She hovered over him, schooling and encouraging him in those things she felt important. Historian Terry Alford described their relationship together: “The two would pass their time in horseback riding, village dances, picnics, camp meetings and walks in the ‘wild old woods’ nearby.”13 It was an idyllic life.
Asia described her brother as an indifferent student who nevertheless survived each of the schools he attended. These included the private tutoring of Susan Hyde and Martin Kerney (1844—46), the Bel Air Academy in Bel Air, Maryland (1846–51), the Milton School for Boys in Cockeysville, Maryland (1851–52), St. Timothy’s Hall in Catonsville, Maryland (1853), and Bland’s Boarding Academy in York, Pennsylvania (1854). It was while a student at St. Timothy’s Hall in Catonsville that John became a friend of the son of a Baltimore baker, Samuel Bland Arnold. It was also while a student at St. Tim’s that young Johnny was baptized into the Episcopal faith. There still exists a record among the school’s archives attesting to the baptism of Booth and his younger brother, Joseph, on January 20, 1854.14
While a student at the Milton School for Boys in Cockeysville, Booth experienced the tragic death of the father of one of his classmates. The father was killed by Black runaways who resisted efforts by the father to return them to slavery. So dramatic was the event to the young Booth that he wrote about it nine years later following a political rally in Philadelphia where he was visiting his mother and sister Rosalie.15
At the time Booth wrote about the incident he was in the ascendancy of his acting career, which was about to reach its zenith. He arrived in Philadelphia in December 1860, after spending more than a month in Montgomery, Alabama, where he learned of Lincoln’s election as president on November 6. Toward the end of December, Booth attended a large rally in Independence Hall Square in front of the great state house.16 Fears of disunion were growing daily. There was an air of anxiety everywhere as people began to fear the worst. The rally had been called to assure the people of the South that their Northern brothers were their friends. Abolition was not a policy shared by the majority of Northerners.
Apparently stirred by the oratory, Booth returned to his room where he sat down and wrote out the draft of a speech that he may have planned to give before the next rally. He was inspired. The speech is a long, rambling discourse on the crisis and its causes. But within the body of its rambling text, Booth’s innermost passion is revealed: “There is a time when men should act for themselves and not under the guidance of a few political leaders who use them only for their own ends, I tell you Sirs when treason weighs heavy in the scale, it is a time for us to throw off all gentler feelings of our natures and summon resolution, pride, justice, Ay, and revenge, to take the place of those nobler passions in the human heart, respect, forgiveness a
nd Brotherly love.”17
Booth’s call for revenge in place of “forgiveness and Brotherly love” would later bear bitter fruit. The crisis that had been coming for several months began to occupy more and more of his thoughts. Booth correctly perceived the problem when he asked and answered his own question: “What has been the cause of this secession—,” he wrote, “why nothing but the constant agitation of the slavery question.”18 He continued on:
The south has a right according to the constitution to keep and hold slaves. And we have no right under that constitution to interfere with her or her slaves.
Instead of looking upon slavery as a sin I hold it to be a happiness for themselves and a social and political blessing for us. I have been through the whole south and have marked the happiness of master and man. True, I have seen the black man whipped but only when he deserved much more than he received.
What right have you to exclude southern rights from the territories? Because you are the strongest? I have as much right to carry my slave into the territories as you have to carry your paid servant or your children.
The concept of slavery as a blessing for both the slave and the master was a common belief in the South. It was a blessing God himself ordained.19 Booth continued:
I believe country right or wrong, but gentlemen the whole union is our country and no particular state. We should love the whole Union and not only the state in which we were born. We are all one people and should have but one heart. Thank God I have a heart big enough for all the states.
Blood on the Moon Page 5
