A local doctor was summoned. He examined Booth, who lapsed in and out of consciousness. He proclaimed the wound was mortal. Booth would not recover.
Conger rifled through Booth’s pockets, then placed the contents in a handkerchief. Booth’s diary, money, keys, compass, small knife, and tobacco would be taken to Stanton as treasure and evidence.
“My hands,” Booth whispered. Baker raised them for Booth to see. For the last time, John Wilkes Booth saw the hands, now helpless, that had slain Abraham Lincoln. Gathering his remaining strength, he looked at his hands and spoke his last words: “Useless, useless.” Booth’s lips turned purple and his throat swelled. He gasped.
The rising sun nudged above the horizon and colored the eastern sky, flooding the Garrett farm with light, which shone on Booth’s face. The stage grew dark for him. His body shuddered. John Wilkes Booth was dead. The twelve-day chase for Abraham Lincoln’s assassin was over.
An artist’s depiction of Booth at the moment the fatal shot was fired
(Previous pages)
“Lincoln’s Avenger,” the man who shot John Wilkes Booth
Booth dominated the cover of an important book about the assassination and trial.
Lieutenant Doherty unrolled his wool army blanket and ordered his men to lay Booth’s body upon it. With needle and thread provided by the Garretts, he sewed the blanket closed around the assassin’s corpse. Soldiers heaved the corpse like a sack of corn onto the wagon that would bring the body to its first stop on the journey back to Washington. The body was transferred from the wagon to a rowboat, then to a steamboat, which would then take them north to Washington.
Conger rode ahead of the body, rushing to be the first of the manhunters to tell Stanton that Booth had been found and killed. He also hoped to precede the rest of the cavalry and stake the first claim to the reward money. Conger and Baker laid out Booth’s possessions on a table. Stanton picked up the diary, then the compass. The hunt was over.
To be absolutely certain the body was Booth’s, Stanton ordered an inquest and autopsy. A few people were allowed to see the corpse for purposes of identification. The cause of death was easily determined: gunshot via a single bullet through the neck. Stanton had Booth’s corpse photographed.
News of Booth’s death traveled across the nation by telegraph, and newspapers rushed to print stories filled with the details of the manhunt’s climax at Garrett’s farm. Reporters seeking a great story sought to uncover the final act of Booth’s life: the disposal of the assassin’s remains. Luther Baker refused to reveal the body’s location. After staging a false “burial at sea” to throw the press off the trail, Booth’s body was buried in a simple crate in an unmarked grave at the Old Arsenal Penitentiary. His fellow conspirators would soon join him there.
Thomas Jones, Captain Cox, the Garrett sons, and many more were seized and taken to prison. Curiously, within weeks, Stanton freed them all. He put on trial only eight defendants: Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt, Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlen, Edman Spangler, and Samuel Mudd. Not one person who helped Booth and Herold during their escape, except Dr. Mudd, was punished. They returned to their homes and families and, for years to come, whispered secret tales of their deeds during the great manhunt.
Another hunt, the one for reward money, began before Booth’s corpse had even cooled. With Booth dead, and his chief accomplices under arrest, awaiting trial, it was time to cash in. Hundreds of manhunters rushed to claim a portion of the $100,000 reward offered by the War Department. Tipsters with the slightest connection to the twelve-day search for Lincoln’s killer tried to get their piece of the reward. More than a year after the manhunt ended, the government finally paid out the rewards. Congress paid Conger $15,000, Doherty $5,250, Lafayette Baker $3,750, Luther Baker $3,000. Boston Corbett, along with every noncommissioned officer at the barn, received $1,653. Colonel Wells and other interrogators received $500 to $1,000 each for their roles in the hunt. Nine men received smaller rewards for their part in the capture of George Atzerodt, ten for their roles in the arrest of Lewis Powell.
Richard Garrett made a claim against the U.S. government for compensation, for the value of his property, including the burned barn and the corn and hay consumed by the cavalry horses. The government considered his claim but refused to pay him a cent. After all, he had been disloyal to the Union.
Boston Corbett was never punished for shooting Booth. He had violated no orders, and no one could prove his motive was anything other than protecting his men. He enjoyed both fame and notoriety for a brief time. Then he went mad and disappeared.
Six of the alleged conspirators were first confined aboard the ironclad ships Montauk and Saugus on April 27, 1865. One by one, they were brought up to the deck, seated before the gun turret, and presented to the photographer.
David Herold. Sentenced to death by hanging.
George Atzerodt. Sentenced to death by hanging.
Samuel Arnold. Conspirator in Booth’s original plot to kidnap President Lincoln. Sentenced to life in prison.
Michael O’Laughlen. Conspirator in the kidnapping plot. Sentenced to life in prison.
Edman Spangler. Found guilty and sentenced to prison, but he was actually innocent of all charges.
A pamphlet about the assassination and the trial of the conspirators
(Previous page) Haunting images of Powell, photographed on board the Montauk. More photographs were taken of him than any of the other conspirators.
Powell sits against the battle-scarred turret of the ironclad Montauk, where he and other male conspirators were held prior to their confinement in the Old Arsenal Prison. Powell’s wrist irons are clearly visible.
On the morning of July 6, 1865, the clock began ticking on one of the most dramatic events in the history of Washington, the climactic event of the manhunt. It had been two and a half months since the death of John Wilkes Booth. An officer left the War Department and delivered death warrants to the defendants Mary Surratt, David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Lewis Powell. They would be hanged tomorrow morning. The rapid conviction, sentencing, and execution of the Lincoln assassination conspirators concluded the trial that had lasted through May and June. Four of Booth’s helpers and henchmen, Edman Spangler, Michael O’Laughlen, Samuel Arnold, and Dr. Samuel Mudd, received prison sentences.
Booth was already dead, so four of the eight conspirators who had been put on trial took center stage on execution day. The soldiers in the Old Arsenal Penitentiary hurriedly constructed a scaffold, dug graves, and prepared coffins for the four convicts. On July 7, the prisoners were paraded onto the scaffold. The condemned were bound and hooded. Nooses were slipped over their necks and, at 1:26 P.M., they dropped to their deaths. Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt reunited in the grave with John Wilkes Booth, together again, as they had been that terrible evening of April 1865, when the chase for Lincoln’s killer began.
Canvas hoods were worn by most of the conspirators during much of their stay in prison.
A depiction of Lewis Powell in his cell at the Old Arsenal Prison during his trial, hooded and restrained by wrist irons
Original wrist irons worn by the conspirators from their arrest to their execution. The solid bar kept the hands apart.
From left to right: Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt, hanging in death
July 7, 1865. The condemned are prepared for execution.
This engraving, from a book containing the transcript of the conspirators’ trial, reflects the government’s claim that Mary Surratt was at the center of the conspiracy.
In 1869, President Andrew Johnson released the body of John Wilkes Booth to the assassin’s brother, Edwin, who had him buried quietly in the family plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland. He lies there still, but no headstone marks his grave.
E
dwin Stanton continued to serve as secretary of war during the difficult times of Andrew Johnson’s presidency. Johnson tried to fire him, but Stanton refused to surrender his War Department offices. General Ulysses Grant became President Grant in 1869, and nominated Stanton to the Supreme Court. Sadly, Stanton died before he could join the court.
Secretary of State William H. Seward and his sons survived their wounds. For the rest of his life until his death in 1872, he preferred to turn the scarred half of his face away from the camera. Sadly, two months after the Lincoln assassination, Seward’s wife died. The following year, his daughter, Fanny, died from tuberculosis.
Clara Harris and Henry Rathbone married, but eighteen years later he went insane and murdered her, using a gun and knife, the same type of weapons Booth carried the night he killed Abraham Lincoln.
Thomas Jones kept the secrets of the pine thicket until, almost twenty years later, he told his tale to a writer. He later wrote his own book about his adventures with John Wilkes Booth.
Lafayette Baker also published a book about the manhunt, exaggerating his role in the chase for Booth. He died in 1868.
John Harrison Surratt was eventually tracked down through Canada to Europe, where he served, under a false name, in the pope’s army. He was chased to Egypt, captured, and in 1867 brought back to America for trial. In 1868, after a trial failed to reach a verdict and charges were dismissed, he was released, a free man. But he earned the reputation of a coward who had abandoned his mother to die.
Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was imprisoned in Florida, but his sentence was commuted by President Johnson, partly for assistance during an outbreak of illness in the prison. He returned to his farm in 1869. Before he died in 1883, he confessed to Samuel Cox Jr. that he had known all along that the injured stranger at his door was John Wilkes Booth.
Ford’s Theatre, restored in the 1960s after serving as a government office building, lives again as a museum and working playhouse. Presidents come here again to attend plays, but out of respect for Abraham Lincoln, none sits in the president’s box. The restoration of the theater was meant as a tribute to Abraham Lincoln, but Ford’s has also become a memorial to his assassin.
If Booth could return today to the scene of his crime and visit, as one million visitors do every year, the basement museum at Ford’s, he might conclude, from what he found there, that it was again April 14, 1865. He would find preserved, in climate-controlled, shatterproof display cases, the prized relics of the assassination: the original door to the president’s box, its peephole still luring curious eyes; his revolvers and knives; the carbine Booth and Herold picked up on their midnight run to Surratt’s tavern; his whistle and keys; photos of his sweethearts, his pocket diary, its pages still open, as if awaiting another entry; his Deringer pistol; and, resting in its velvet-lined box, his pocket compass, which guided him during his dangerous days on the run.
John Wilkes Booth did not get what he wanted. Yes, he did kill Abraham Lincoln, but in every other way, Booth was a failure. He did not inspire the South to fight on, prolong the Civil War, or win the battles the Confederate armies had lost. He did not undo the Emancipation Proclamation and revive slavery.
And yet we still remember Booth to this day. But he is not the hero of the story. The real hero is Abraham Lincoln and the principles for which he lived — and died: freedom and equal rights for all Americans.
If Ford’s Theatre is Booth’s place, then across the street there is a memorial to Abraham Lincoln. But many people do not even know it exists. Few visitors to Ford’s cross 10th Street and climb the stairs to the Petersen house. If you go there today, you can walk to the tiny back bedroom and stand in the same place where Lincoln’s family and friends once stood around his deathbed, bidding him farewell, but vowing to continue his unfinished work.
James L. Swanson is the author of the New York Times bestseller Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, upon which this book is based. Manhunt received an Edgar Award for the best true crime book of the year in 2007. His other books include the photographic history Lincoln’s Assassins: Their Trial and Execution. He serves on the advisory council of the Ford’s Theatre Society, and is a member of the advisory committee of the national Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. He is a lawyer in Washington, D.C., where he has held a number of government and think-tank posts. Born on Lincoln’s birthday, he has collected books, documents, and artifacts about the life and death of Abraham Lincoln since he was ten years old. This is his first young adult book.
My wife, Andrea E. Mays, an astute critic, reader, and writer of historical nonfiction, read and commented on the manuscript from her unique perspective. She read several drafts, saved me from making a number of embarrassing errors and omissions, and improved the book in countless ways. Without her help, Chasing Lincoln’s Killer would not exist.
I thank my two chief young readers and advisors, Cameron and Harrison, who asked unexpected questions during their first visit to Ford’s Theatre and who, at the ages of eleven and nine, have already exhibited remarkable storytelling flair. I look forward to reading their books someday. Cameron read Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, the adult version of this book, and also listened to it on audio before making helpful observations and comments. Harrison helped in choosing just the right words, remarking, for example, that “henchman” would speak to children in a way that “co-conspirator” would not. Thanks also to my niece Samantha for inviting me to speak to her second-grade writing class, where the students prepared a list of tips on how to write for young adults, including this classic: “Keep in all the blood and gore, but not so much that our parents flip out.” My younger niece Nicky echoed this bloodthirsty taste.
Thanks to my friends at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the William H. Seward House, the Surratt Society, and at many other libraries and museums who helped me write this book. I wish that I could name them all.
Richard Abate, my literary agent, offered his enthusiasm, insights, and friendship. He made this a better book.
I thank all my friends at Scholastic for their hard work in publishing this book. I owe special thanks to my editor, Andrea Davis Pinkney, who introduced me to the world of writing for young adults, and who guided me with a steady hand every step along the way.
My own hunt for John Wilkes Booth began when my grandmother, Elizabeth, a veteran of Chicago’s legendary and now extinct tabloid newspaper scene, gave a ten-year-old boy the unusual gift of a framed engraving of Booth’s Deringer pistol, along with an April 15, 1865, Chicago Tribune clipping, thus triggering the fascination that led to this book. This is in memory of her.
My sister Denise’s animated spirit and taste for strange historical tales encouraged me from the start. From an early age, she aided and abetted my literary pursuits.
Finally, I thank my parents, Dianne and Lennart Swanson. Without their love and generous support over many years, I never could have written Chasing Lincoln’s Killer, or anything else.
Text copyright © 2009 by James L.Swanson. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
All interior and jacket art courtesy of the author’s personal collection except: pp. IV, V, 6 (top), 19, 32, 145, 183 (all), 184 (top), 185 (top), and 188 (bottom right) courtesy of the Library of Congress; p. 94 courtesy of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd House and Museum; p. 18 courtesy of the Surratt Society; pp. 188 (top and bottom right) and 189 courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution; p. 50 (right), 169 (top) courtesy of Seward House. Map illustration p. 198 by Jim McMahon
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Swanson, James L.
Chasing Lincoln’s Killer / James L. Swanson.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-439-90354-7
ISBN-10: 0-439-90354-8
1. Booth, John Wilkes, 1838–1865 — Juvenile literature. 2. Assassins — United States — Biography — Juvenile literature. 3. Fugitives from justice — Washington Region — Biography — Juvenile literature. 4. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865 — Assassination — Juvenile literature. I. Title.
E457.5.B67S93 2009
973.7092 — dc22
[B] 2008017994
First edition, January 2009
Cover design by Phil Falco
e-ISBN 978-0-545-49580-6
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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