Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  Booth was obsessed with his plan, but he did not find it easy to execute it. One of its serious disadvantages was the necessity of knowing well in advance when Lincoln was expected at Ford’s, in order to perfect the organization for carrying him off. To seize the President in his box was not the hardest part of the undertaking. The stage boxes at Ford’s were not open to the view of the whole house, but were covered alcoves, whose back walls were set at such an angle to the auditorium that the interior could be seen only from the opposite side of the dress circle. The President’s box, moreover, was partially veiled by the Nottingham lace curtains.

  The removal of Lincoln from the theatre was the principal difficulty. The upper boxes had no stairway, and were reached by a passage from the dress circle. The only feasible way of getting the captive to the street was to lower him onto the stage and carry him through the back door into the alley. To the gymnastic actor the jump of about twelve feet from the box did not present a problem, but he was absurdly underrating the strength of his victim. A man of fifty-six years, in failing health, the President was still no weakling. He was a man of muscular arms, who had in youth been a powerful wrestler. Even if he had been alone with Charles Sumner and an effete foreign minister, it is inconceivable that he could have been trussed up and bundled onto the stage in full view of the audience, without a struggle that would have prevented the accomplishment of the kidnaping.

  There is evidence that Booth was prepared to make the attempt in January. The story runs that it was set for the night of the 18th, but was frustrated because the President failed to attend the theatre. The veteran tragedian, Edwin Forrest, was filling a leisurely month’s engagement at Ford’s. Lincoln admired Forrest sufficiently to see him three or four times, in January and March, when he returned for an additional week. On January 18, Forrest appeared in the popular play, Jack Cade, which dealt with the Kentish insurrection of 1450, but was held to be a timely piece because of its hostility to slavery. If Booth had succeeded in kidnaping the President at Jake Cade, he would have canceled a professional engagement in Washington two nights later, when he played Romeo to the Juliet of Miss Avonia Jones, who had been running the gamut of tragedy at Grover’s.

  A week later, Booth left for New York for the purpose, Arnold said, of raising money. During his absence of nearly a month, the abduction plot was at a standstill. Lincoln serenely continued to attend the theatre. Twice during February, he went to Ford’s to see the popular comedian, J. S. Clarke, who was brother-in-law to the Booths. On one of these occasions, the President was accompanied by General Grant. The performance, which had already begun, was suspended on the entrance of the two leaders, while the audience cheered and the band played “Hail to the Chief.”

  On February 23—though no Washington newspaper noted the fact—it was just four years since that gray morning when Abraham Lincoln, guarded by Lamon and Pinkerton, had slipped into a capital tense with fear of revolution. Across those four years, Washington had seen, in blood and labor and confusion, the progress of the Union cause toward its approaching triumph. In 1861, the country town had been startled by the arrival of a handful of soldiers. In 1865, geared for war on a grand scale, the capital remembered those few bristling guns as “far more war-like” than any preparations that were being made for Lincoln’s second inauguration.

  Lincoln-and-Johnson clubs, local and State, met to discuss their participation in the ceremonies. The marshal-in-chief, Daniel R. Goodloe, prescribed the regalia which was to bedizen the black frock coats and pantaloons of nearly a hundred marshals with orange, blue-and-gilt, cherry-color, yellow, pink and white. Mrs. E. Lowe on Pennsylvania Avenue did a rushing business in scarfs and batons. Messrs. Topham and Company on Seventh Street sold gaudy saddlecloths. Hammers pounded on the wooden platform rising at the east portico of the Capitol. Workmen cleared a clutter of building material from the park, and laid plank flooring over the marble blocks which still obstructed the grounds. Major French, busy with preparations for the inauguration ball, found time to have an iron table made for the President’s address, out of some leftover fragments of the Capitol dome. The trickle of strangers, coming to beg immunity from taxation, solicit appointments or ask for passes to the front, turned to a stream of early arrivals for the inauguration. Congress was holding evening sessions, trying to clear its program before adjournment. The galleries were filled.

  On the evening of March 1, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee arrived in Washington. The Vice-President-elect had the air of a Southern statesman of the old school. With his massive head and deep chest, he looked dignified and defiant. He dressed in broadcloth and fine linen. A yellow manservant stood behind his chair while he ate. Yet his was not the face of the planter, fine-drawn, haughty, born to command. It was another pride which his grim features wore—the pride of the poor white, the illiterate tailor boy, who had fought his way to place and power against the hated aristocrats. The struggle was written in his coarse, strong, stubborn countenance; and new scars of bitterness had been burned around eyes and mouth by the fires of reconstruction in Tennessee. In fierce devotion to the Union, Andy Johnson had braved danger and hardship and hatred. His health had suffered, his swarthy face was worn. In the winter, he had been ill with typhoid, and had been slow to recover from the fever. He came to Washington under pressure, feeling unfit to leave his home in Nashville.

  The inauguration rush was on. Special trains roared and smoked over the double tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio. The arrivals thronged the newly decorated depot, shining with fresh paint. The Star thought that the influx was not so great as it had been four years earlier. Many, because of the difficulty of finding lodgings, were said to have stopped in Baltimore, intending to come to Washington only for the day. The Sunday Chronicle blamed the recent rainstorms for the absence of numerous delegations which had been expected. Yet, under the sullen skies of March 3, the streets were alive with carpetbagged and blanket-wrapped sojourners, picking their way through the fog and mud in search of rooms. Willard’s had cots and mattresses in its halls and parlors. The National and the Metropolitan were filled. Lincoln-and-Johnson clubs lodged a thousand visitors, and local fire companies entertained a swarm of firemen from Philadelphia. There were enough strangers in the capital to give General Halleck bilious apprehensions of mischief, and he nervously advised Mr. Welles that the Navy Yard should be closed.

  In the evening, the town was musical with the bands of the serenaders, while on the Avenue the torches of the firemen’s procession burned through the mist with a silver light. High into the fog, the roof lights of the Capitol threw a white halo, in which the flag floated in splendor. Inside the building, the closing scenes of Congress had attracted many visitors, who moved in a jostling vibration between the Senate Chamber and the Hall of Representatives. Mrs. Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth were among the spectators. The President and the Cabinet were also at the Capitol on official business. Andy Johnson was at one of the stag parties which the hospitable Colonel Forney was fond of giving at his chambers on Capitol Hill.

  Saturday, March 4, dawned with rain and a heavy, damaging gale. Clouds still rolled darkly in the sky as the paraders began to gather. It was a diminished procession, almost entirely local in character. Marshal Lamon had arranged to have thirteen United States marshals and thirteen citizen aides in attendance on the President’s carriage, as it moved from the White House to the Capitol. During the morning, however, Lincoln drove off to the Capitol by himself, and was occupied in signing bills while the procession was forming. The special marshals and the President’s Union Light Guard escorted Mrs. Lincoln.

  The military patrols sat their horses at the street intersections. A squad of police formed a line along the pavements on either side. Vehicles were cleared from the Avenue. The parti-colored marshals rode madly up and down on last-minute errands. The streetcars were stopped, the bands blared, and a squad of Metropolitan Police marched out to clear the way for the marshal-in-chief and his aides. There were a few soldiers,
cavalry, artillery, Veteran Reserves and marines. Floats drove into line: a muslin Temple of Liberty, decorated with flags and flowers; a model of a monitor, rending the air with salutes from the howitzer in its revolving turret; a portable printing press, operated by members of the Typographical Society, scattering broadsides of the day’s program. The corporate authorities of Washington escorted a municipal delegation from Baltimore. Out stepped the Lincoln-and-Johnson clubs, a battalion of Negro troops and a colored lodge of Odd Fellows. Philadelphia and Washington firemen paraded their apparatus. Under brightening skies, along a street ankledeep in mud, the procession went slithering and wading and splashing to the Capitol.

  Meantime, the senators, squeezed into one half of their chamber to leave room for the representatives, were engaged in a lopsided transaction of business. At half past eleven, the doors of the gallery were opened, and the ladies rushed in. Gasping and screaming after their race through the halls and up the stairways, they settled above the solemn assemblage like a flock of brilliant, noisy birds. With spirits undamped by the mud on their voluminous skirts, they “chattered and clattered,” while the presiding officer futilely tapped his gavel, and senators protested that they could not hear what was going on.

  The chamber grew packed with personages. Military and naval officers appeared. All eyes turned to Admiral Farragut and General Hooker, heroes whose uniforms vied in gorgeousness with the gold lace and decorations of the diplomatic corps. Eight black-gowned old men followed the new Chief Justice, Salmon P. Chase, who looked very young and queer in his silk robe, with his stovepipe hat in his hand. The Cabinet members took their places. Mrs. Lincoln seated herself in the diplomatic gallery.

  Shortly before twelve, Andrew Johnson entered, arm in arm with Hannibal Hamlin. Johnson must have been glad of that sturdy arm, as he walked to the dais of the presiding officer. The party at Colonel Forney’s had been too much for a man still convalescent. He had just doctored his shaky nerves with three stiff drinks of whisky, and in the overheated Senate Chamber his swarthy face was turning crimson.

  The House, led by Speaker Colfax, made its entrance when Johnson was fairly launched on the speech which preceded his taking the oath of office. Shortly after, the President arrived with the Senate committee in charge of the ceremonies. Mr. Lincoln’s face wore an expression of deep sorrow, as he took his seat. Johnson, a man who could take his whisky or leave it, was on this occasion indubitably drunk. His dignity was gone, only his defiance remained, while he hoarsely delivered a confused harangue, half stump speech, half egotistical ranting. The word “plebeian” rang like a refrain, as, with that insistent pride which is the most embarrassing form of shame, he harped on his lowly origin.

  The mortified Republicans sat in agony. Hamlin kept nudging Johnson from behind. Senators turned and twisted in their chairs. Welles muttered to Stanton that the new Vice-President was either drunk or crazy. Stanton, looking petrified, muttered back that there was evidently something wrong. Seward, as always, contrived to appear serene, but the new Cabinet members were unequal to exhibiting composure. Postmaster General William A. Dennison went red and white by turns. Attorney General James Speed kept his eyes closed, whispering to Welles that it was all “in wretched bad taste.” Judge Nelson of the Supreme Court had his jaw dropped down in horror. When Johnson turned to take the oath, Chief Justice Chase gave Nelson such a look that he closed his mouth. “I kiss this Book,” bawled Andy, like a bad actor, to the assemblage, “in the face of my nation of the United States.”

  After the newly elected senators had been sworn in, the dignitaries lined up for the procession to the east front of the Capitol. Their progress through the Rotunda was guarded by the Capitol police, who held back the crowd which, in spite of orders to the contrary, had gained access to the hallways. After the President had passed, a man broke through the police line, and started toward the inauguration platform. He was seized by Lieutenant Westfall of the Capitol police. There was a scuffle, the east door was slammed shut, and police hustled the intruder off to the guardroom. The incident was not taken seriously at the time, for the man was released as soon as the ceremonies were over. Cranks were common in Washington. The next day, the military authorities looked into the case of a bibulous lunatic named Thomas Clemens, who said that he had intended to kill the President on Inauguration Day.

  The incident at the Capitol, however, took on great importance in retrospect. According to an affidavit made by Robert Strong, a policeman who had been stationed with Major French at the east door of the Rotunda, a photograph of John Wilkes Booth was some weeks afterward recognized by Westfall, as well as by French and Strong himself, as that of the intruder. This identification came too late to be convincing. Booth did not need to rush the police lines. Through his sweetheart, Bessie Hale, he had secured a ticket of admission to the inauguration platform. He told a friend that he was close to the President during the ceremonies, and had an excellent chance to shoot him, if he had wished to do so.

  There was, however, no disturbance at the east front of the Capitol. The door slammed shut behind the dignitaries, silencing the noise of the scuffle in the passage. Before them, as they stepped into the daylight, they saw the mighty assemblage of the people, spreading back, back from the acclaiming faces near the portico to the blurred and tiny dolls’ heads among the distant trees. In a thunder of cheers, Lincoln advanced to Major French’s iron table, with its lonely tumbler of water. The last clouds rolled away, flooding the scene with sudden sunshine, and the multitude hushed to hear Lincoln’s short address, which spoke of malice toward none, of charity for all. In the tumult of applause which greeted its conclusion, many people were seen to be in tears. Chief Justice Chase, his right hand raised, administered the oath of office. The President bent his head to kiss the open Bible. Artillery mingled with the salvoes of the people, as he bowed and retired.

  The close-packed park of humanity stirred, seethed, began to disintegrate. John Wilkes Booth sauntered back along the Avenue with Walter Burton, the night clerk at the National, an enthusiastic admirer of Lincoln. Handkerchiefs fluttered from windows and balconies as the President, with Tad at his side, drove to the White House, escorted by the gaudy-scarved marshals and the motley retinue of the procession.

  XVIII. Star-Spangled Capital

  THE PRESIDENT was looking not only old, but feeble. The long strain had worn him almost to the breaking point. His weariness was too deep to be eased by an hour’s diversion or a night’s rest. He was thirty pounds underweight, and his hands and feet were always cold. On the evening of March 4, he faced a public reception, his last levee of the season, set for Saturday in honor of the inauguration.

  Two thousand people, massed in the streets about the White House, stampeded at eight o’clock through the opened gates. There were the usual casualties in the free-for-all of entering the mansion. The vestibule presented a doleful exhibit of battered finery. Shrieks of females in pain punctuated the music of the Marine Band. Some were carried swooning over the heads of the mob. Others, caught in the wrong stream of traffic, were helplessly dragged to the exit, without ever having had a chance to pay their respects to the President. Still, as the front door opened and closed, fresh batches of callers struggled in. Still, faces jerked past Lincoln, as, in the suffocating atmosphere of the Blue Room, he mechanically stretched out his big, cold, aching hand.

  One dark-skinned man dared to bolt past the detaining policemen at the entrance. Frederick Douglass, the famous Negro orator, had presumed on his reputation and his acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln to attend the reception of the public. Inside the house, he was seized by two more policemen, and all but hustled through the East Room window, before his appeals were carried to the President. While white handshakers waited, Lincoln stopped the flustered colored man for a chat.

  When the last footsteps had clattered down the plank, when the music had died and the rooms were empty, Mr. Lincoln looked about him in distress. The receding tidal wave of the people had left wreck
age behind. Almost a square yard of red brocade had been cut from one of the East Room window hangings. Another great piece was gone from a drapery in the Green Room. Lace curtains gaped with fresh rents of snipped-out flowers. “The White House,” wrote the bodyguard, William Crook, “looked as if a regiment of rebel troops had been quartered there—with permission to forage.” The arrests were a sorry ending to Inauguration Day.

  In the city streets, befuddled celebrants went staggering. The Star bragged that the night was the most orderly to succeed an inauguration since Jackson’s first term. There were a few, but only a few assaults, robberies and riots.

  The inauguration ball was scheduled for Monday night. As a measure of economy, the supervisory committee, of which Major French was chairman, had decided to hold it in the Patent Office, in lieu of erecting a temporary structure. After the expenses had been paid, the proceeds were to be devoted to the aid of soldiers’ families, and there had been a brisk sale of ten-dollar tickets, which admitted a gentleman and two ladies, with no extra charge for an elegant supper. The committee, however, had been obliged to issue an emphatic denial that tickets had been sold to colored people.

  On Monday morning, while “representative belles” of the Union drove from the depot with their Saratoga trunks, sight-seers gathered at the bustling Patent Office. Hampers whirled through the doors. The ballroom band was holding a rehearsal. A ticket office was open for business in the Rotunda. In the recently finished north saloon, which in 1862 had been a hospital, workmen were attaching lines of gas jets and draping the walls with flags. Blue and gold sofas were carried to the raised dais provided for the Presidential party. As only a few visitors were admitted to the ballroom, the preparations made rapid progress. In the supper room in the west wing, curious crowds impeded the labors of Mr. Balzer, the confectioner. By afternoon, it was found necessary to exclude them, and carriage-loads of ladies departed, grumbling, from F Street.