Killing Lincoln/Killing Kennedy

by O'Reilly, Bill

  Yet the autopsy will be inconclusive. Four different doctors will examine the body. Each will have a different conclusion about what happened once the sphere of Britannia metal poked a neat round hole in Lincoln’s skull and then pushed fragments of that bone deep into Lincoln’s brain as it traveled precisely seven and a half inches before plowing to a stop in the dense gray matter.

  At ten-fifteen on the night of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln slumps forward in his rocking chair. Mary Lincoln, lost in the play until this very instant, stops laughing. Major Henry Reed Rathbone snaps his head around at the sound of gunfire—a sound he knows all too well from the battlefield. He’s had his back to the door, but in an instant he’s on his feet, striking a defensive pose.

  John Wilkes Booth drops the Deringer and switches the knife to his right hand. Just in time, for Major Rathbone sets aside his own safety and vaults across the small space. Booth raises the knife to shoulder level and brings it down in a hacking motion. Rathbone throws his left arm up in a defensive reflex and instantly feels the knife cut straight down through skin and biceps to the bone.

  Booth moves quickly. He steps to the front of the box, ignoring a stricken Mary Lincoln. “Freedom!” he bellows down to the audience, though in all the laughter and the growing confusion as to why the cast has added the sound of gunfire to the scene, his words are barely heard. Harry Hawk stands alone on stage, staring up at the state box with growing concern.

  Booth hurls his body over the railing. Up until this point, he has performed every single aspect of the assassination perfectly. But now he misjudges the thickness of the massive United States flag decorating the front of the box. He means to hold on to the railing with one hand as he vaults, throwing his feet up and over the edge, then landing on the stage like a conquering hero.

  This sort of leap is actually his specialty. Booth is famous among the theatrical community for his unrehearsed gymnastics, sometimes inserting jumps and drops into Shakespeare plays on a whim. During one memorable performance of Macbeth, his fall to the stage was several feet longer than the fall from the state box.

  But Booth’s right spur gets tangled in the flag’s folds. Instead of a gallant two-footed landing on the stage, Booth topples heavily from the state box. He drops to the boards awkwardly, left foot and two hands braced in a bumbling attempt to catch his fall.

  The fibula of Booth’s lower left leg, a small bone that bears little weight, snaps two inches above the ankle. The fracture is complete, dividing the bone into two neat pieces. If not for the tightness of Booth’s boot, which forms an immediate splint, the bone would poke through the skin.

  Now Booth lies on the stage in front of a nearly packed house. His leg is broken. He holds a blood-smeared dagger in his right hand. The sound of gunfire has just ricocheted around Ford’s. Major Rathbone is bleeding profusely from a severe stab wound. And just above him, slumped forward as if very drunk or very asleep, the president of the United States is unconscious.

  Yet still nobody knows what happened. James Ford steps out of the box office and thinks Booth is pulling some crazy stunt to get attention. Observers in the audience have heard the pop and are amazed by the sudden appearance of a famous matinee idol making a cameo on the stage right before their very eyes—perhaps adding some comical whimsy to this very special evening. Harry Hawk still holds center stage, his head turned toward Booth, wondering why in the world he would intrude on the performance.

  Time stops for a second—but only one.

  Then the assassin takes charge. “Booth dragged himself up on one knee,” Hawk will later remember, “and was slashing that long knife around him like one who was crazy. It was then, I am sure, I heard him say, ‘The South shall be free!’ I recognized Booth as he regained his feet and came toward me, waving his knife. I did not know what he had done or what his purpose might be. I did simply what any man would have done—I ran.”

  Booth scurries to his feet and limps off the stage, “with a motion,” observes one spectator, “like the hopping of a bull frog.”

  “Stop that man!” Major Rathbone screams from above.

  “Won’t somebody please stop that man!” Clara Harris echoes.

  “What is the matter?” cries a voice from the audience.

  “The president has been shot!” she shouts back.

  The reverie is shattered, and with it all the joy of Washington’s postwar celebration. The theater explodes in confusion. In an instant, the audience is on its feet. It is a scene of utter chaos, “a hell of all hells.” Men climb up and over the seats, some fleeing toward the exits while others race to the stage, hoping to climb up into the box and be part of the action. Women faint. Children are trapped in the panic. “Water!” some yell, tending to the collapsed.

  A former congressman yells something far more pointed: “Hang the scoundrel!”

  Meanwhile, Booth passes within inches of leading lady Laura Keene as he limps off the stage. William Withers, the orchestra leader with whom he had a drink just hours earlier, stands between Booth and the stage door. Withers is paralyzed with fear, but Booth assumes he is intentionally blocking the way and slashes at him, “the sharp blade ripping through the collar of my coat, penetrating my vest and under garments, and inflicting a flesh wound in my neck,” Withers will later testify.

  Only one man is bold enough to give chase. Set carpenter Jake Ritterspaugh and Booth reach the stage door at the very same time. Booth thrusts the knife blade at him. Ritterspaugh leaps back. And in that instant, Booth is gone, squeezing through the door and hauling himself up into the saddle.

  Rather than give Peanut John the shiny nickel the boy had hoped for, Booth kicks him hard and bludgeons him with the butt of his knife.

  “He kicked me! He kicked me!” the boy moans, falling to the ground.

  At the same instant, yet another spontaneous torchlight parade blocks Booth’s getaway on Tenth Street. He swerves into the alley, spurs his horse down the cobblestones dividing two large brick buildings, and then turns onto F Street, completely avoiding the procession.

  In an instant, John Wilkes Booth disappears into the night.

  Editorial illustrations depicting the assassination of President Lincoln

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  10:20 P.M.

  Booth slows the mare to a walk. Word is already spreading through Washington that the president has been shot. The news is shouted, breathlessly exclaimed, passed from citizen to citizen, bonfire to bonfire. People aren’t racing away from Ford’s, they’re racing to Ford’s, to see for themselves if these wild rumors are true. Victory marches turn into mobs of the curious and scared, determined to fight their way to the theater.

  When a drunk shouts into the night, “I’m glad it happened!” a furious mob beats and kicks him unconscious, tearing off his clothes, and hauls his limp body to a lamppost for a lynching. Ironically, he will be rescued by the Union cavalry.

  Now another troop of cavalry is summoned to Ford’s and plunges recklessly through the throngs assembling outside. Inside, the crowd surges toward the stage, trapping small children in its midst, chanting all the while that Booth must be lynched. Laura Keene has the presence of mind to march to center stage and cry out for calm and sanity, but her words go unheeded. The crush against the stage is made worse as the news explodes into the street in front of Ford’s Theatre. Passersby rush inside to see for themselves, some of them hoping that Booth is still trapped inside but most just wanting a glimpse of the injured president.

  Across town at Grover’s Theatre, the patriotic celebration is in full swing. A young boy is reciting a poem when a man bursts into the theater and shouts that the president has been shot. As the crowd reacts in horror, a young soldier stands and yells for everyone to sit still. “It’s a ruse of the pickpockets,” he says, explaining that thieves spread such disinformation to fleece the crowd as people rush for the exit.

  The six hu
ndred theatergoers take their seats once again. The boy onstage exits, his poetry reading complete. But he is back just seconds later, struggling to control his voice as he shares the horrific news that President Lincoln has, indeed, been shot. Tad Lincoln, the president’s twelve-year-old son, is in the audience with a White House staffer. Stunned, he returns to the White House, where he collapses into the arms of the doorkeeper, shouting, “They’ve killed Papa dead! They’ve killed Papa dead.”

  Soon more bad news begins to spread: Secretary Seward has been assaulted in his bed.

  At Rullman’s Hotel, on Pennsylvania Avenue, the bartender shouts out the mournful news that Lincoln has been shot. Mike O’Laughlen, the would-be conspirator who stalked the Grants last night, drinks in the corner. He is drunk again but still coherent enough to know in an instant that Booth is the killer—and that he must get out of town before someone implicates him, too.

  In front of the Willard Hotel, the stable foreman John Fletcher is still seething that David Herold hasn’t return the roan he rented earlier. At that very moment, Herold trots past. “You get off that horse now!” Fletcher cries, springing out into the street and grabbing for the bridle. But Herold spurs the horse and gallops away. Acting quickly, Fletcher sprints back to his stable, saddles a horse, and races after him.

  In the midst of all this, a lone rider galloping away from the chaos at Ford’s would most certainly attract attention. So Booth guides the mare slowly up and down the streets and alleys of Washington, even as his veins course with adrenaline and euphoria, and pandemonium breaks out all around him. Despite his considerable celebrity, Booth blends in and proceeds unmolested through the streets. It is Friday night, after all, a time when Washington comes to life. There are plenty of men trotting horses through town. It’s only when Booth finally nears the end of his three-mile journey to the Navy Yard Bridge that his fears about being caught force him to spur the horse and ride hard to freedom.

  It is ten forty-five when Booth pulls back on the reins once again and canters up to the wooden drawbridge by the Navy Yard—almost thirty long minutes since the Deringer did its deadly job. Booth approaches like a man confident that his path will go unblocked. “Where are you going, sir?” cries the military sentry. His name is Silas T. Cobb, and his long and boring shift will be over at midnight. He notices the lather on the horse’s flanks, a sign that it’s been ridden hard.

  “Home. Down in Charles,” Booth replies.

  “Didn’t you know, my friend, that it is against the laws to pass here after nine o’clock?” Cobb is required to challenge anyone entering or exiting Washington, but the truth of the matter is that the war has ended and with it the formal restrictions on crossing the bridge after curfew. He wants no trouble, just to finish his shift in peace and get a good night’s sleep.

  “No,” lies Booth. He explains that he’s been waiting for the full moon to rise, so that he might navigate the darkened roads by night. And, indeed, a waning moon is rising at that very moment.

  “I will pass you,” Cobb sighs. “But I don’t know I ought to.”

  “Hell, I guess there’ll be no trouble about that,” Booth shoots back. Ignoring the rule that horses be walked across the bridge, he trots the mare into the night.

  Booth is barely across the Potomac when David Herold approaches Silas T. Cobb. He gives his name as just “Smith.” Once again, after a brief discussion, Cobb lets him pass.

  One more rider approaches Cobb that night. He is John Fletcher, the stable foreman who is following David Herold. Fletcher can clearly see Herold on the other side of the bridge, now disappearing into the Maryland night.

  “You can cross,” Cobb tells him, “but my orders say I can’t let anyone back across the bridge until morning.”

  The Maryland countryside, with its smugglers and spies and illicit operatives, is the last place John Fletcher wants to spend the night. He turns his horse’s reins back toward his stable, settling on the hope that Herold and the missing horse will one day make the mistake of riding back into Washington.

  In fact, Fletcher will never see the horse again, for it will soon be shot dead, its body left to rot in the backwoods of Maryland—yet another victim of the most spectacular assassination conspiracy in the history of man.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  10:20 P.M.

  Lincoln’s life is slipping away. Mary Lincoln lays her head to the president’s breast as Major Rathbone uses his one good arm to yank the music stand from its notch in the doorway. Booth’s knife missed a major artery by just one-third of an inch. Otherwise Rathbone would now be dead.

  The major swings open the outer door of the state box. Dozens of unruly theatergoers fill the dress circle and try to fight their way into the state box. “Doctors only!” Rathbone shouts as blood drips down his arm and pools on the floor. The truth is that the major needs medical attention, but all eyes are on Lincoln.

  “I’m bleeding to death!” Rathbone shouts as a twenty-three-year-old doctor, Charles Leale, fights his way forward. Dr. Leale came to the theater solely because he wanted to see Lincoln in person. Now he is the first physician to come upon the crime scene. Leale reaches out a hand and lifts Rathbone’s chin so that he might look into his eyes and gauge his physical condition. Noting in an instant that Rathbone is quite obviously not bleeding to death, Dr. Leale turns his attention to Lincoln.

  “Oh, Doctor,” sobs Mary Lincoln as Leale slowly removes her from her husband’s body. “Can he recover? Will you take charge of him?”

  “I will do what I can,” Dr. Leale says calmly. With a nod to the crowd of men who have followed him into the box, the young doctor makes it clear that Mary must be removed. She is ushered to a couch on the other side of the box, next to Clara Harris, who begins stroking her hand.

  Leale asks for a lamp and orders that no one else be admitted to the state box except for physicians. Then he stands in front of the rocking chair, facing Lincoln’s slumped head. He pushes the body upright, the head lolling back against the rocker. He can feel the slightest breath from Lincoln’s nose and mouth, but Leale is reluctant to touch the body without making a preliminary observation. One thing, however, is quite clear: Lincoln is not dead.

  Dr. Leale can’t find any sign of injury. Onlookers light matches so that he can see better, and the call goes out for a lamp. The front of Lincoln’s body shows no sign of physical violence, and the forward slumping indicates that the attack must have come from behind. Yet there’s no visible entry wound or exit wound. If Dr. Leale didn’t know better, he would swear that Lincoln simply dozed off and will awaken any minute.

  “Put him on the floor,” the doctor orders. Gently, ever so gently, Lincoln’s long torso is lifted by men standing on both sides of the rocking chair and then lowered to the carpet.

  Based on Major Rathbone’s wounds, and the fact that he didn’t hear any gunshot during the performance, Leale deduces that Lincoln was stabbed. He rolls the president on one side and carefully searches for a puncture wound, his fingers slipping along the skin, probing for a telltale oozing of blood. But he feels nothing, and when he pulls his hands away, they’re completely clean.

  He strips Lincoln to the waist and continues the search, cutting off the president’s white shirt with a pocketknife. But his skin is milky white and smooth, with no sign of any harm. Leale lifts Lincoln’s eyelids and examines the pupils. Finding clear evidence that the right eye’s optic nerve has somehow been cut, he decides to reexamine. Perhaps Lincoln was stabbed in the back of the skull. Head wounds are notorious bleeders, so such a wound is unlikely, but there has to be some explanation.

  Dr. Leale, more befuddled by the mystery with each passing moment, runs his hands through Lincoln’s hair. This time they come back blood-red.

  Alarmed, Leale examines the president’s head a second time. Beneath the thick hair, just above and behind the left ear, hides a small blood clot. It’s no bigger than the
doctor’s pinkie, but when he pulls his finger away, the sensation is like a cork being removed from a bottle. Blood flows freely from the wound, and Lincoln’s chest suddenly rises and falls as pressure is taken from his brain.

  Dr. Leale has been a practicing physician for all of two months, having just graduated from Bellevue Hospital Medical College. He wears an army uniform, as befitting a doctor who currently works in the Wounded Commissioned Officers’ Ward at the U.S. Army’s General Hospital in nearby Armory Square. The bulk of his medical education took place during the Civil War, so despite his short time as a practicing physician, he has seen more gunshot wounds than most doctors see in a lifetime. Yet he encountered those wounds in hospitals far removed from the battlefield, when the patients were in advanced stages of recovery. He has never performed the sort of critical life-saving procedures that take place immediately after an injury.

  But now Dr. Leale somehow knows just what to do—and he does it well.

  Working quickly, Leale straddles Lincoln’s chest and begins resuscitating the president, hoping to improve the flow of oxygen to the brain. He shoves two fingers down Lincoln’s throat and presses down on the back of the tongue, just in case food or drink is clogged in the esophagus. As he does so, two other doctors who were in the audience arrive on the scene. Though far more experienced, army surgeon Dr. Charles Sabin Taft and Dr. Albert King defer to Dr. Leale. When he asks them to stimulate the blood flow by manipulating Lincoln’s arms in an up-and-down, back-and-forth manner, they instantly kneel down and each take an arm. Leale, meanwhile, presses hard on Lincoln’s torso, trying to stimulate his heart.

  Then, as Leale will one day tell an audience celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, he performs an act of great and urgent intimacy: “I leaned forcibly forward directly over his body, thorax to thorax, face to face, and several times drew in a long breath, then forcibly breathed directly into his mouth and nostrils, which expanded the lungs and improved his respirations.”