CHAPTER FIVE
The South Wants Justice
The South wants justice, has waited for it long. She will wait no longer.
John Wilkes Booth
Nine years since he first began his rise to stardom on the American stage, John Wilkes Booth’s acting career had reached its peak during the 1862–63 season, and now, in 1864, it appeared to be in jeopardy. The throat problems that developed during the winter of 1864 did not prevent him from continuing his acting; other matters were pushing it backstage. Practically speaking, Booth’s acting career ended with the 1863–64 season. His attention now turned toward his passion for the Confederacy. At the core of that passion was a hatred for Lincoln and his policies.
The year 1864 was also a fateful one for Abraham Lincoln. In the dark summer Lincoln penned a memorandum asking his cabinet members to sign the verso without reading its content: “This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.”1
Lincoln’s reference to the victor’s having secured his election on grounds that would give up the Union referred to Major General George B. McClellan, the Democratic “Peace Candidate,” whose own party platform called for a cessation of hostilities and restoration of peace. At the time, the war seemed to be stalemated. Sherman had disappeared into the dark abyss of Georgia, and his fate was uncertain as he approached the gates to Atlanta. The people of the North had no reason to believe he would be any more successful than McClellan had been on his way to capture Richmond two years before.
But Sherman wasn’t McClellan. He took Atlanta on September 2, and two weeks later Phillip Sheridan gained a stunning victory in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia when he defeated Jubal Early’s army at the battle of Winchester. These two victories, coming just before the presidential elections, assured Lincoln’s reelection. To the more astute, Lincoln’s reelection assured the Confederacy’s defeat—unless the results of the election could in some way be reversed or overturned.
While Lincoln’s fortunes took on a renewed spirit of hope, John Wilkes Booth’s grew darker and more sinister. In early 1864 Booth began to invest a part of his large stage earnings in the newly thriving oil business in Pennsylvania. “Petroleumania” was luring hundreds of entrepreneurs who had money to invest. Booth was among them. In January of that year he became partners with three friends, John Ellsler, Thomas Mears, and Joseph Simonds, in purchasing oil land in Venango County near the town of Franklin in northwestern Pennsylvania. The venture was short-lived, however, and proved unprofitable for Booth. Eight months later, at the end of September, events found Booth abruptly disposing of his oil interests and arranging his affairs as if his life were about to take a major change in direction. According to his partner Simonds, Booth lost $6,000 in the enterprise.
While the trial of the conspirators was taking place in Washington in May of 1865, Godfrey Hyams was telling the commissioners about his exploits shipping Luke Blackburn’s trunks past customs in Boston and on to Philadelphia. A man with the unusual name of Cordial Crane was an official at the Boston Customs House. Upon reading Hyams’s testimony, Crane’s interest was aroused. He decided to check the register of the Parker House to see if Hyams or his alias, J.W. Harris, had registered at the hotel. Crane could not find either Hyams or Harris in the register but was startled to find that John Wilkes Booth had registered at the Parker House on July 26. Crane noted that three men from Canada and one from Baltimore also registered on that day. Crane copied the names of the five men and sent a letter to Stanton calling his attention to what he felt was a strange coincidence. Whatever Stanton thought of Crane’s observation, he failed to follow up on it and simply filed the letter away.2
Booth’s presence at the Parker House, however, did not escape the attention of the authors of Come Retribution. They concluded that Booth’s presence at the same time three men from Canada and one from Baltimore were also present “has all the earmarks of a conference with an agenda.”3 Could Booth be meeting with Confederate agents from Canada? Soon after returning from Canada he closed out his business interests and began recruiting cohorts for his plan to capture Lincoln. The authors strengthen their theory by failing to find any trace among the various Canadian and Baltimore records for the four names on the Parker House register, leaving them to conclude that they were aliases.4 One of the three “Canadians” that registered the same day at the Parker House also appeared on the register of the St. Lawrence Hall in Montreal. He used the name “H.V Clinton,” and while he registered at both hotels under that name, a search of Canadian and St. Louis records, both places that he listed as his home, failed to turn up anyone with that name. The authors suggest that H.V Clinton was an alias of one of the Confederate agents operating out of Montreal.5 But there may be another explanation to account for Booth’s visit to Boston in late July 1864.
A few months earlier, in the spring of 1864, Booth had been performing in Boston when he met a young girl named Isabel Sumner. Booth was twenty-six years old at the time, and Isabel was sixteen. Although young, Isabel seemed to have captured Booth’s attention in a serious way. While in Pennsylvania tending to his oil business, and later in New York, Booth wrote several love letters to Isabel.6 The two exchanged photographs and Booth gave her a gold ring bearing the inscription “J.W.B. to IS.” On July 24, just two days prior to his registering at the Parker House, Booth wrote a pleading letter to Isabel asking why she has been so silent lately. Fearing he has offended her, Booth ends his letter by writing, “I will come at once to Boston.”7 Booth’s visit to Boston may have been nothing more than an opportunity to see his Isabel and smooth out any difficulties that may have developed in their relationship. Whatever happened between the two, they never took their relationship beyond a last visit together in New York City in August of 1864.
Booth’s visit to Boston in late July may have involved both a meeting with Confederate agents and Isabel Sumner. Booth was certainly capable of handling a love affair and a clandestine operation at the same time. H.V. Clinton’s appearance at both the Parker House and St. Lawrence Hall during this period can be viewed as supporting a meeting between Booth and Confederate agents from Montreal, but the evidence is purely circumstantial.
On August 7 Booth was in Philadelphia with his older brother Junius. From here Booth next went to Baltimore where he invited his old friends Michael O’Laughlen and Samuel Arnold to join him at Barnum’s City Hotel. In his statement of April 18, 1865, Arnold remembered this meeting as taking place “about the latter part of August or the first part of September, 1864.”8 Arnold had to be mistaken, however, as Booth’s meeting with Arnold and O’Laughlen had to have taken place sometime during the second week of August, shortly after Booth had been at the Parker House in Boston. According to Arnold’s statement, the meeting adjourned and Booth said he would return in one month, presumably to go over the status of his capture plot. Booth failed to return in one month and sent Arnold a letter explaining that he was sick with erysipelas and would meet with them as soon as he was fully recovered.9 This letter places Booth’s first meeting with Arnold and O’Laughlen sometime before he contracted his illness. Booth’s bout with erysipelas can be accurately placed before August 15 and running until sometime after August 28. On August 15, Asia Booth wrote in a letter to her friend Jean Anderson Sherwood that her brother was quite sick.10 In an entry in his diary dated 28 August, Booth’s brother Junius wrote, “John Booth ill 3 weeks with Erysipelas [sic] in the Right Elbow.”11 Since Arnold places his first meeting with Booth before Booth’s illness, it must have occurred between August 7 and August 14. While previous accounts of Lincoln’s assassination accept Arnold’s statement that Booth’s recruitment occurred around the end of August or early September, the meeting occurred much earlier, sho
wing that Booth was already into his capture plan early in August 1864. Years later Arnold recalled the meeting at Barnum’s: “I called upon him and was kindly received as an old schoolmate and invited to his room. We conversed together seated by a table smoking a cigar, of past hours of youth, and the present war, and he heard I had been south, etc., when a tap at the door was given and O’Laughlen was ushered into the room. O’Laughlen was also a former acquaintance of Booths from boyhood up, so he informed me. I was introduced to him and this was my first acquaintance with O’Laughlen. There was only one thing on Booth’s mind now and he turned his undivided attention toward it. With the renomination of Lincoln for a second term as president, ‘something decisive & great’ must be done to save the slipping fortunes of the Confederacy.”12
Arnold listened to his former school chum expound on the evils of Lincoln. After several minutes Booth got to the point. “Booth then spoke of the abduction or kidnapping of the President, saying if such could be accomplished and the President taken to Richmond and held as a hostage, he thought it would bring about an exchange of prisoners.”13 Booth told his would-be recruits that Lincoln was most vulnerable while traveling to Soldiers’ Home and that it would be quite easy to capture him. Arnold and O’Laughlen listened to Booth’s plan and when he was finished they nodded their approval. They would join Booth in his plan.
Just where and when Booth first began his operation to capture Lincoln is unclear, but the first positive evidence is the meeting with Arnold and O’Laughlen at Barnum’s City Hotel during the second week of August. Joseph Simonds, Booth’s partner in his oil investments, sensed that something was not right with Booth at this time. After receiving a letter from Booth, Simonds wrote back, “I hardly know what to make of you this winter—so different from your usual self. Have you lost all your ambition or what is the matter.”14 At the time Simonds wrote his letter Booth had not lost his ambition, he just redirected it toward another objective.
Following his meeting with Arnold and O’Laughlen, Booth spent most of August in New York City at the home of his older brother Edwin, recovering from the bout with erysipelas. Erysipelas is an infection caused by the bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes. In the age before antibiotics, it could prove fatal and even in modern times can be life threatening.15 By September, however, Booth was fully recovered and made arrangements to deed part of his oil holdings to his brother Junius and sister Rosalie. At the same time that he divested himself of his oil stocks he ended his affair with young Isabel Sumner. Thoughts of love and wealth were rapidly fading from Booth’s mind and were being replaced by a new project: an obsession to remove Abraham Lincoln from his “throne” of power.
Little analysis has been made of the sequence in which Booth recruited his conspirators. This sequence provides a clue to the importance of certain individuals to his plan. Arnold and O’Laughlen seemed obvious recruits. Both were Baltimoreans, both were old friends of Booth, and both had served in the Confederate army. They had been and perhaps still were soldiers fully capable of carrying out violent acts if called upon. Booth knew them and knew their views. They were “safe” recruits, ones Booth could rely on. It took little persuasion on Booth’s part to convince the two to join him. Samuel Arnold was particularly beguiled by Booth’s charm. Reflecting on their meeting years later, Arnold wrote: “I found Booth possessed of wonderful power in conversation and became perfectly infatuated with his social manners and bearing.”16 Apparently O’Laughlen felt the same way. Both men were Confederate patriots with little love for Lincoln. Arnold would justify their decision to capture Lincoln “as an act of honorable purpose, humanity and patriotism.”17
With Arnold and O’Laughlen in the fold, Booth turned his attention south to Charles County, Maryland. Capturing Lincoln was only one part of the operation. Carrying him successfully to Richmond was the other. He would look to southern Maryland. Any plan to capture the president of the United States and carry him through occupied territory would require different capabilities to ensure even a modest chance of success. Firepower was essential. Muscle was necessary. An escape route was needed where one could find friendly help, or at the very least, no interference. Supplies would have to be safely provided along the way. Travel would be mostly at night, when the cover of darkness provided more protection. There were rivers to cross; guides would be needed—especially when traveling at night. Capturing the president could prove to be the easiest part of the operation. Successfully moving him south would be the hard part. Without help, the operation would stand a high probability of failure. Booth would soon get his help.
The key to any effort to reach Richmond lay in southern Maryland and her people. Here one could travel as safely as could be expected. Occupied by Federal troops, the area was also home to forces friendly to the Confederate cause, forces that had successfully outmaneuvered their enemies at nearly every turn for four years. The people of southern Maryland were as staunchly Confederate as the people of Richmond. Election returns for 1860 show that Lincoln received a grand total of six votes in Charles County and only one in Prince George’s County.18 So strong were the anti-Lincoln feelings in Charles County, for instance, that shortly after Lincoln’s election in 1860 a special committee was formed that drafted a set of resolutions censuring the six voters. In a gesture of magnanimity, the committee agreed to “overlook their indiscretions for the present,” but singled out one of them, perceived to be their ringleader, for expulsion. A special committee of four was appointed to visit Nathan Burnham and order him to leave the county by January 1, and should Burnham refuse to leave by that date, to “expel him vi et armis.”19
With their culture and economy tied so closely to the South, dozens of Charles County citizens offered their services to the clandestine efforts of the new Confederate States. Intelligence was vital to the success of Confederate operations. A communications link was established between Richmond and various points north as far as Canada. Within months, three lines had been established that ran from the southern boundary of Charles County bordering the Potomac River north to Washington and points beyond. The first line ran due north from Richmond through Bowling Green and Port Royal on the Rappahannock to a point on the Virginia side of the Potomac River known as Mathias Point. Here it crossed the river and continued on. just east of Port Tobacco to Surrattsville. From Surrattsville it made its way directly into Washington. The second route crossed the Potomac a few miles to the east running north near Allen’s Fresh at the mouth of the Wicomico River and on to Surrattsville then Washington. The third line was still farther to the east and ran along the western side of the Patuxent River
Of the three routes, it was the second one, passing near Allen’s Fresh, over which John Wilkes Booth would finally choose to make his escape following his assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Closely attending this route were the principal leaders of Charles and Prince George’s Counties. They were men whose names would have slipped into anonymity had it not have been for Booth: Thomas Jones, William Queen, Samuel Cox, John Surratt, Thomas Harbin, and Samuel Mudd. Each served the Confederacy as a member of its clandestine underground. For four years these men received, harbored, and ferried men, women, documents, and materiel between the North and Richmond. They were valuable agents to the Confederacy, many serving as important mail couriers along its routes.
Of the people serving as agents in southern Maryland, Thomas Jones ranked at the top. Jones had labored long and hard in service to the Confederate cause as the principal agent in charge of a mail courier route and of ferrying people across the Potomac River to Virginia. Jones was a good agent and an important part of the Confederate underground apparatus. Several years after the war had ended Jones published a memoir in which he wrote, “I entered with zeal into the Confederate cause.”20 Although an active agent, Jones managed to avoid arrest by the military authorities most of the time. In October 1861, however, he was not so lucky. Jones was arrested near Pope’s Creek and thrown into the Old Capitol Prison in Washington ch
arged with “disloyal practices.”21 Held for six months, he was eventually released after taking the oath of allegiance and returned home to Charles County, where he immediately resumed his activities in spite of his oath.
While researching his book on arbitrary arrests under the Lincoln administration,22 historian Mark E. Neely Jr. uncovered a statement by George W. Smith of Bryantown, Maryland, accusing two men of subversive activities against the Federal government. Smith’s statement reads in part: “The principal leaders in the secession party and those who have aided against the Government are, first, James A. Mudd; lives about one mile from Bryantown; has been conveying men and boxes supposed to contain munitions of war from Baltimore and different counties in the state to Pope’s Creek on the Potomac. The men were strangers from Baltimore and other places. Mudd paid the expenses. ... Thomas A. Jones of Pope’s Creek, is the man who receives the men, arms and ammunition at that place and conveys them over to Virginia in his own boat and with his own negroes.”23
Blood on the Moon Page 10
