Killing Lincoln/Killing Kennedy

by O'Reilly, Bill

  Lafayette Baker takes the overnight train to Washington, arriving at dawn. The city is in chaos, and he will later describe the looks on people’s faces as “inexpressible, bewildering horror and grief.” Baker travels immediately to the War Department, where he meets with Stanton. “They have killed the president. You must go to work. My whole dependence is upon you,” the secretary tells him. The entire detective forces of New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston have traveled to Washington and are devoting their considerable professional talents to finding the killers. But Stanton has just given Baker carte blanche to move in and take over the entire investigation.

  One of Baker’s specialties is playing the part of the double agent. Even though there is evidence that Baker and Booth are somehow connected to each other through the 1781/2 Water Street, New York, address, Baker claims that he knows nothing about the case or about the suspects. His first act is to post a reward for $30,000 leading to the arrest and conviction of Lincoln’s killers. He also has photographs of John Surratt, David Herold, and John Wilkes Booth plastered all around town.

  One of several reward posters for the capture of John Wilkes Booth

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  SATURDAY-SUNDAY, APRIL 15-16, 1865

  MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE

  David Herold needs a buggy. It’s the most obvious solution to John Wilkes Booth’s plight. With a buggy they can travel quickly and in relative comfort. He asks Dr. Mudd to loan them his, but the doctor is reluctant; secretly harboring fugitives is one thing, but allowing the two most wanted men in America to ride through southern Maryland in his personal carriage would surely implicate Mudd and his wife in the conspiracy. Their hanging—for that is surely the fate awaiting any Lincoln conspirator—would leave their four young children orphans.

  Instead, Mudd suggests that they ride into Bryantown to pick up some supplies and check on the latest news. With Booth still passed out upstairs, Herold agrees to the journey. But as they draw closer and closer to the small town, something in Herold’s gut tells him not to take the risk. A stranger like him will be too easily remembered by such a tight-knit community. He is riding Booth’s bay now, because it’s too spirited for the actor to control with his broken leg. Herold lets Mudd go on without him, then wheels the mare back to the doctor’s home.

  Good thing. The United States cavalry now has Bryantown surrounded. They’re not only questioning all its citizens, they’re not letting anyone leave, either.

  This is the sort of savvy, intuitive thinking that separates David Herold from the other members of Booth’s conspiracy. Atzerodt is dim. Powell is a thug. And Booth is emotional. But the twenty-two-year-old Herold, recruited to the conspiracy for his knowledge of Washington’s backstreets, is intelligent and resourceful. He was educated at Georgetown College, the finest such institution in the city. He is also an avid hunter, which gives him a full complement of the outdoor skills that Booth now requires to escape, the additional ability to improvise in dangerous situations, and an instinctive sixth sense about tracking—or, in this case, being tracked.

  But now Herold is just as exhausted as Booth. He didn’t endure the same extreme adrenaline spike last night, if only because he didn’t kill anyone. But he experienced a definite and sustained rush as he galloped over the Navy Yard Bridge, then along the dangerous darkened roads of Maryland. He’s had time to think and to plan, and he knows that constant forward movement is the key to their survival. Otherwise, Herold has no doubt that the cavalry will be on their trail in no time.

  Clearly, they cannot stay at Dr. Mudd’s any longer. Just before dusk, Herold rouses Booth and helps him down the stairs and up into the saddle. Herold guides them south through the countryside, aiming for the Zekiah Swamp, with its quicksand bogs and dense stands of oldgrowth hardwoods. The few trails that exist are almost impossible to see in the dark, and the pair are soon lost and frustrated. They turn back toward Mudd’s farm but remain out of sight, plotting their next move.

  The next twelve hours bring an enduring awareness that they are neither safe nor welcome anywhere.

  Easter Sunday dawns hard and bleak. Herold and Booth are camped in a stand of pines a quarter mile off the main road. A cold front is racing across Maryland, and they shiver in the damp swampy air, just a few short miles from the final obstacle to their escape into Virginia, the Potomac River. Booth isn’t wearing a boot on his injured leg, and his foot and ankle are in pain and quite cold from walking on swampy ground in the thin shoes he took from Mudd. Yet Herold doesn’t dare make a fire. Beside him, Booth is curled up in the fetal position, head resting on one hand. Each man clutches his revolver as a stiff wind bends the towering pines. The last sympathizer they visited, the wealthy owner of forty slaves in this still-lawless region, promised to send a man to ferry them across to safety. The rescue signal will be a soft whistle, a pause, and then another soft whistle.

  So now they wait. Hour after brutally cold hour, they wonder who will deliver them from this hell. Booth says little, except to cry out in pain or mutter something about not being taken alive. He still has some fight in him. Now and then they hear the jangle of bridles from the nearby road. And all the while, a gnawing little voice in Herold’s gut tells him that they have been betrayed—that the whistle, when it comes, will be their only warning before United States cavalry confirm their position and ride in with guns blazing.

  Late Sunday afternoon they hear the first whistle. Then a second. Confederate sympathizer Thomas Jones calls out to them in a low voice, announcing that he is walking into their camp.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1865

  MARYLAND SWAMPS

  There is nothing dashing or heroic about the man who has come to save the lives of Booth and Herold. Thomas Jones is a broken man, a forty-four-year-old smuggler who has done time in prison, outlived his wife, and lost his home. He now earns his living by transporting everyone from secret agents to diplomats across the Potomac River to the South. On average, he makes the crossing three times a night. He is so skilled that northern newspapers secretly enlisted his help to get their product into the South during the war. A favorite technique employed by the silver-haired and low-key Jones is to begin his first crossing just before dusk, when the angle of the sun makes it impossible for sentries on the opposite shore to see small craft on the water. It is a brazen and brilliant tactic. Clearly, if any man can get Booth and Herold to safety, it’s Thomas Jones.

  On his first visit to the campsite he merely wanted to get a look at the men he would be helping, to see if they were mentally and physically capable of enduring what might be a very long wait until it is safe to cross.

  His second visit comes one day later. It’s also the second day in the pine forest for Booth and Herold. They once again hear the whistle from the trees. Booth is even worse today, the pain in his leg so severe that he doesn’t do much more than whimper. Herold stands, carbine pointed toward the sound of approaching footsteps, until Jones finally appears in their thicket, his pockets overflowing with ham, butter, bread, and a flask of coffee. In his hands he holds the one thing Booth wants to see more than any other: newspapers.

  Cavalry are combing the countryside, he cautions the killers, and he reminds them to be patient. It might take several days before things die down. No matter how cold it gets, no matter how extreme the conditions, they must be prepared to hunker down in the woods until the coast is clear. As soon as it is, he’ll let them know.

  Booth argues that their lives are in danger and that they can’t stay here any longer. But the thunder of hoofbeats from the nearby road stops him short—it’s Union cavalry and far too close for comfort.

  “You see, my friend,” Jones whispers. “You must wait.” He tells them to kill the horses, lest their whinnying give the killers away.

  Prior to the assassination, Booth would have continued to argue and then done as he pleased. But now he quietly gives in. “I leave it all with you,” he says to Jones.

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bsp; Jones departs quickly. His visits are uplifting to Booth and Herold, a welcome break from the monotony of sitting still for hours and hours out in the open. They don’t even dare build a shelter, for fear the noise will attract unwelcome attention. Jones doesn’t just bring food and newspapers; he also offers hope, his cool confidence suggesting that all will be well, just so long as they are patient.

  With a sigh, Booth turns his attention to the newspapers. He reads about the extent of the search. But his melancholy soon turns to rage as he learns that his monumental actions are not being applauded. Far from it. He is being labeled a scoundrel and a coward for shooting Lincoln in the back. Washington newspapers assail him as the war’s ultimate villain and note that any “kindly feeling” toward the South or its sympathizers has disappeared, thanks to his actions. Booth’s achievement is described in the Richmond papers as “the most deplorable calamity, which has ever befallen the people of the United States.” And finally, the nation’s most staunchly anti-Lincoln paper, the National Intelligencer, is now crying out that Lincoln was a true American hero. The very newspaper that the actor had once hoped would print the letter explaining his actions is instead portraying him as an abomination.

  Booth, overcome with despair, sets the papers aside. As is his new habit, he regales Herold with a monologue on the killings—regrets, desires, and misunderstandings. Then he takes out his diary and begins keeping a journal of their time in the wilderness. In it, he writes his reflections on killing Lincoln, just to make sure that his point of view is properly recorded for posterity. “I struck boldly and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on,” Booth writes. “I can never repent it, though we hated to kill. Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made men the instrument of his punishment.”

  Booth writes and rants and writes some more. Then he sleeps. Then he awakens and writes some more. There’s nothing else to do with his time. So it is with the world’s two most wanted men, bored to tears in a Maryland swamp.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1865

  MARY SURRATT’S BOARDINGHOUSE

  NIGHT

  Mary Surratt has been a suspect since the night Lincoln was shot. An anonymous tipster alerted Washington police that the boardinghouse on H Street was the hub of the conspiracy. Detectives questioned her at two o’clock that morning, even as Lincoln lay dying. The widow was forthcoming about the fact that John Wilkes Booth had paid her a visit just twelve hours earlier and that her son John had last been in Washington two weeks earlier. When a thorough search of the house turned up nothing, the police left. No arrest was made.

  Now they are back. One of her boarders, Louis Weichmann, has volunteered volumes of information to the authorities about the comings and goings of Booth and the conspirators at Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse. This eyewitness information has confirmed not only that Booth is at the heart of the plan but that Mary Surratt is complicit.

  It is well past midnight when police surround the house. She answers a knock at the door, thinking it is a friend. “Is this Mrs. Surratt’s house?” asks a detective.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you Mrs. Surratt?”

  “I am the widow of John H. Surratt.”

  “And the mother of John H. Surratt Jr.?”

  “Yes.”

  “Madam, I have come to arrest you.”

  Three policemen step inside. Mary’s twenty-two-year-old daughter, Anna, is also taken into custody. Just before they are led outside, Mary asks permission to kneel in prayer. She is a devout Catholic and prays “the blessing of God upon me, as I do in all my actions.”

  The house is quiet. Her words echo through the half-lighted rooms as the detectives awkwardly wait for Mary to finish praying and rise to her feet.

  Then there’s another knock on the door.

  When the detectives open it, they are shocked by the sight of a six-foot-two man with a pickax slung over his shoulder, wearing a shirtsleeve on his head like a stocking cap. His boots are coated with mud and he is unshaven. As he steps inside, they see that there appears to be blood on his sleeves. The detectives quickly close the door behind him.

  Lewis Powell, starved and famished after three days of sleeping in the woods, instantly realizes he has made a grave error. “I guess I am mistaken,” he quickly tells the detectives, turning to leave.

  The police send Mary and Anna Surratt out the door, where carriages wait to take them to jail. Then they focus their attention on the tall stranger with the pickax.

  Powell gives his name as Lewis Payne and fabricates an elaborate story, saying that he has come to Mary Surratt’s at her behest, in order to dig a ditch for her in the morning. The police press him, asking about Powell’s address and place of employment. When he can’t answer in a satisfactory manner, they arrest him. At the police station he is stripsearched, and an unlikely collection of items, including cash, a compass, a pocketknife, and a newspaper clipping of Lincoln’s second inaugural address, are found in his pockets.

  So far, all evidence points to “Payne’s” involvement in the assassination. His height and rugged build clearly match the description of Secretary Seward’s attacker. The police summon the young black servant who had given the description to the station. William Bell has been interrogated a number of times since the attacks, so as he is called back to the station once again his attitude is weary. The late hour does not help.

  However, when a lineup of potential suspects is paraded into the room before him, Bell becomes instantly euphoric. He marches right up to Powell and presses his finger against the lips of the man who mocked him, insulted him with a racial slur, and very nearly killed his employer and several members of the family and staff. “He is the man,” Bell proclaims.

  This is the last moment in Lewis Powell’s life when he is able to move his arms freely and walk without hearing the clank of chains. Manacles are placed on his wrists. A ball and chain will be attached to each ankle in the days to come, the unyielding iron cutting deeply into his flesh every time he takes a step. A canvas hood will soon be placed over his head, with only a small hole through which he can draw breath and eat.

  And yet there is much worse to come for Lewis Powell.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1865

  MARYLAND SWAMPS

  DAY AND NIGHT

  The military sweep through southern Maryland is ongoing and intense. Searches of towns and homes have turned up nothing, and it is clear that the time has come to scour more daunting terrain for Booth and Herold. A combined force of seven hundred Illinois cavalry, six hundred members of the Twenty-second Colored Troops, and one hundred men from the Sixteenth New York Cavalry Regiment now enter the wilderness of Maryland’s vast swamps.

  “No human being inhabits this malarious extent” is how one journalist describes this region. “Even a hunted murderer would shrink from hiding there. Serpents and slimy lizards are the only living denizens … . Here the soldiers prepared to seek for the President’s assassins, and no search of the kind has ever been so thorough and patient.”

  The method of searching the swamps is simple yet arduous. First, the troops assemble on the edge of bogs with names like Allen’s Creek, Scrub Swamp, and Atchall’s Swamp, standing at loose attention in the shade of a thick forest of beech, dogwood, and gum trees. Then they form two lines and march straight forward, from one side to the other. As absurd as it seems to the soldiers, marching headlong into cold mucky water, there is no other way of locating Booth and Herold. Incredibly, eighty-seven of these brave men will drown in their painstaking weeklong search for the killers.

  “The soldiers were only a few paces apart,” the journalist reports, “and in steady order they took to the ground as it came, now plunging to their armpits in foul sluices of gangrened water, now hopelessly submerged in slime, now attacked by legions of wood ticks, now attempting some unfaithful log or greenishly solid
morass, and plunging to the tip of the skull in poisonous stagnation. The tree boughs rent their uniforms. They came out upon dry land, many of them without a rag of garment, scratched and gnashed, and spent, repugnant to themselves, and disgusting to those who saw them.”

  The soldiers detain anyone with anti-Union leanings. For many of the arrested, their only crime is either looking or behaving suspiciously. Taking them into custody is the best possible way to ensure that no suspect is overlooked.

  Hundreds of these suspects soon fill Washington’s jails.

  But not a single trace of Booth or Herold can be found anywhere.

  Back in Washington, Lafayette Baker follows their progress. Since arriving in the capital two days earlier, Baker has distanced himself from the other investigators, “taking the usual detective measures, till then neglected,” of offering the reward, circulating photos of the suspects, and sending out a small army of handpicked detectives to scour the countryside. But he is hampered by the lack of railroads and telegraph lines through the rough and lawless countryside. There is, however, a telegraph line at Point Lookout, a former Union prisoner of war camp at the mouth of the Potomac River. To keep himself informed of all activities in the area, he dispatches a telegraph operator by steamship to that location and orders him to tap into the existing line.