Mr. Balzer had a gargantuan assignment, the hearty delectation of over four thousand people. His elegant supper comprised beef, veal, poultry, game, smoked meats, terrapin, oysters (prepared by T. M. Harvey), salads, jellies, ices, tarts, cakes, fruits, nuts, coffee and chocolate. The long table, designed to accommodate three hundred persons at a time, grew festive with flags and pyramids and ornaments. Waiters labored in with the monuments of confectionery which were the crowning glory of the feast. The piece in honor of the army had six sculptured devices, including a combat between infantry and cavalry, and a mounted general with his field glass in active use. It was balanced by an equally elaborate tribute to the navy, surmounted by Farragut’s flagship, with the admiral lashed to the mast. The centerpiece was a mammoth sugar model of the Capitol, with all its statuary and gas lamps. Its supporting pedestal was adorned with scenes ranging from the Revolution of 1776 to Fort Sumter, surrounded by ironclads, as it appeared when recaptured by the Union troops.
Early in the evening, the promenade halls, lined with cabinets of patents and curios, began to fill with strolling couples. The band from Finley Hospital discoursed military music until ten o’clock. Then the ballroom band, under the baton of Professor Withers, Junior, orchestra conductor at Ford’s,—receiving one thousand dollars for forty pieces for the evening—sounded off with a quadrille. In the bright, flag-draped saloon, where wounds and death had been, the couples took their places, and the tessellated marble floor was covered with revolving flounces. Fashion was as pale as the crocuses. There were lilac and pearl-colored and light yellow silks, fitted tightly to the throat; and an abundance of frail white tarletan, festooned with tinted ruches. Under their flowered headdresses, the ladies all wore curls, and some had powdered their hair with golden or silver dust.
At half past ten, the military band played “Hail to the Chief,” and a path was cleared through the throng, as the President walked to the dais, accompanied by Speaker Colfax. Mrs. Lincoln, in her costly white silk and lace, with a headdress of white jessamine and purple violets, and a fan trimmed with ermine and silver spangles, followed on the arm of Senator Sumner. Their appearance caused a buzz, for it was supposed that, since his successful fight against Lincoln’s reconstruction plan, Sumner was persona non grata at the White House. The President had chosen to make this public demonstration that there was no breach between them. On Sunday, he had sent Sumner a ticket to the ball, with a note of invitation which, for all its gentle courtesy, had a hint of royal command.
In the swirl of arriving guests were many distinguished persons: the gentlemen of the Cabinet, generals and diplomats; Admiral Farragut in person, as well as in sugar; the rich eccentric, George Francis Train and his beautiful wife; the novelist, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth. Bob Lincoln, in the army at last, had come up from Petersburg, where he was serving on Grant’s staff, and attended the ball with the lovely daughter of Senator Harlan of Iowa on his arm. Lancers, waltzes, schottisches and polkas drew an increasing throng to the unresilient marble tiles, until the floor became so jammed that dancing was almost impossible.
At this point, shortly after midnight, supper was announced. Mr. Balzer had provided accommodations for three hundred at a time, but over four thousand hungry guests were determined to eat at once. There was a moment when his splendid table appeared in its full perfection. Before the onslaught of the crowd, it was soon in ruins. Parties, picnicking in corners and alcoves, were served by foraging gentlemen who snatched whole pâtés, chickens, legs of veal, halves of turkeys, and ornamental pyramids. Ladies shuddered for their dresses as the greasy trophies wobbled overhead and the supper-room floor was covered with a paste of trampled carcasses and cakes. To the tune of smashing glasses, while the waiters rushed in fresh supplies of delicacies, souvenir hunters tripped over piles of dirty dishes to attack the decorations. A confectionary Ship of State was carried away in fragments. One young lady triumphantly bore aloft an entire sugar horse. Only the model of the Capitol, fortunately removed at the outset, was preserved from destruction.
After this wild party, Washington returned to normal preoccupations—the draft, the guerrillas and the locust swarm of office seekers. Four policemen at the White House had been conscripted, but their cases had been “fixed.” Policemen of less influential connections were scurrying for substitutes, but these brought eight hundred and a thousand dollars each, and agents were active all over the District. A series of subscription parties were given for the benefit of drafted men, while the capital fretted at the boldness of the rebel rangers who had entered the Federal lines, dressed in Union blue, and stolen six horses at Munson’s Hill.
The dawn of a second term had again packed the White House with insistent suppliants. Seeking time for official business and sorely needed rest, the President was obliged to limit his appointments. On Tuesday, March 14, he spent the day in bed, holding the Cabinet meeting in his room. Though the press spoke of influenza, it was generally understood that Mr. Lincoln was suffering from exhaustion. On Wednesday, he was back at his desk. The announcement had been made that his health prevented him from receiving visitors, but the passages and rooms on the second floor of the mansion were filled with “political vultures.” In the evening, he accompanied Mrs. Lincoln to the German Opera Company’s performance of The Magic Flute at Grover’s.
About the middle of March, John Surratt took a theatre party to Ford’s, occupying part of the President’s double box. The pass had been given to Surratt by Booth. John T. Ford’s brother, Harry, who was treasurer of the theatre, said that Booth engaged this same box three or four times that season; it was the only one that he ever engaged.
Two of the people whom Surratt invited to accompany him were boarders at his mother’s house; Miss Honora Fitzpatrick, a girl of seventeen, and a child called Appolonia Dean. The third guest was a strange occupant of a fashionable seat at the theatre. He was a youth like a Roman gladiator, with a moron’s face, low-browed and dull, and an erect, powerful, magnificently muscled body. This was Lewis Powell, an Alabama soldier who had deserted the Confederate army, and now passed as Lewis Paine, the name under which he had signed the oath of allegiance at Alexandria. He went to Ford’s muffled in a blue military cloak which belonged to Louis Weichmann.
Somewhere, somehow, the Alabama boy had once seen Booth on the stage. He had been spellbound, had sought Booth out afterward and pleased him by his simple hero worship. Paine’s brief intimacy with the actor had remained a bright memory across years of fighting, wounds, captivity, escape, more fighting. On the last day of February, a ragged and penniless deserter in the streets of Baltimore, Paine had met a willing benefactor. Booth’s smiling face must have appeared like a miracle before him. For the actor, too, there was something wonderful in the chance encounter. Here, ready to his hand, was a tool far more serviceable than the wavering Arnold and O’Laughlin, than timid Atzerodt and silly Davy Herold, even than foolhardy John Surratt. Paine, in 1865, was a logical development from a stupid, strong, nerveless recruit, who at seventeen had been given a gun and taught the trade of killing. War had given him a disregard for human life and the habit of implicit obedience. Attaching himself to Booth, he called him “captain.” The actor fed and clothed Paine, but the soldier followed him out of no mere venality. He was Booth’s creature, his henchman, ruthless, unquestioning and ferociously loyal.
While the odd party sat in the President’s box, Booth came to the door and called Paine and Surratt outside. They conferred for some time in the passage, while the two girls remained seated.
The time had passed when Booth and his accomplices could talk in terms of holding Lincoln as a hostage for Southern prisoners of war. In midwinter, negotiations for exchange had been resumed, and large numbers of Confederate captives were passing to City Point. Booth, however, no longer needed a rational justification for his hatred of the President. It had burned until it lighted all his mind with a blaze in which he walked in glory, the hero and the avenger of the South. One early March day
, in spurs and gauntlets and military hat, he sat in his room at the National before a table on which were spread a map, a knife and a pistol. His intimate friend, John McCullough, an actor in Edwin Forrest’s company, suddenly entered the room. Booth seized the knife and went for him. At McCullough’s cry, “John . . . . are you crazy?” he stopped, put his hands over his eyes, seemed to come out of a dream.
Either after Surratt’s theatre party or late the following evening, the conspirators gathered in a private room in a restaurant for the only general meeting which they ever held. Severally, Booth had governed them, seeing them one or two at a time in bars, bedrooms and livery stables. Except for the new man, Paine, they were nervous over the long delay in the execution of their design. They had grown apprehensive that the Government had been informed of the plot. John Surratt advised throwing up the project altogether, and he thought that the others agreed with him. Only Booth “sat silent and abstracted,” until at last he rose to crash his fist on the table, and burst into a violent altercation with some of his accomplices. The meeting, which lasted all night, ended on an amicable note, Surratt remembered. Booth apologized for his temper, making the excuse that he had taken too much champagne.
Arnold, in a confession which he made in 1867, also gave a description of this all-night meeting. He said that Booth began by assigning the part that each was to play in the abduction. Paine was to assist Booth in seizing Lincoln, while Arnold was to jump on the stage and lend a hand, as they lowered their victim. O’Laughlin and Herold were charged with putting out the gas, controlled at Ford’s by a mechanism situated near the prompter’s box. Surratt and Atzerodt, posted beyond the Eastern Branch, were to guide the party to the boats which were ready on the upper Potomac.
This program precipitated an excited discussion of the feasibility of the whole scheme. Arnold declared that he made outspoken objections, and that Booth threatened to shoot him. The quarrel was patched up, but Arnold remained firm in his expressed resolve to withdraw from the conspiracy, unless action were taken that week.
Apparently, the disaffection of his followers persuaded Booth to make an attempt in another setting than the theatre. Information was received that the President was planning to attend a theatrical matinee performance at a hospital on the Seventh Street Road. It was quickly resolved to kidnap Mr. Lincoln as he drove through the suburbs in his carriage. Herold, with arms and ammunition, was sent ahead into Maryland. The rest of the band rode out in pairs—Booth and Surratt, Paine and Atzerodt, Arnold and O’Laughlin—to lie in wait for the President’s barouche. Surratt said that they were confident of success. They had fast horses, and knew the country. That the President might be accompanied by his cavalry escort seems not to have entered their minds; for Surratt thought that, by the time the alarm could be given, they would be well on their way through southern Maryland.
On the afternoon of Friday, March 17, Davenport and Wallack, who were playing an engagement at the Washington Theatre, appeared at Campbell Hospital on North Seventh Street in Tom Taylor’s Still Waters Run Deep. The sick and wounded men at Campbell were under the charge of Dr. A. F. Sheldon, a surgeon who believed in mental as well as physical rehabilitation, and his efforts to provide amusement for the soldiers were seconded by the hospital chaplain. A hall, with a capacity of five hundred persons, had been erected expressly for entertainments. A dramatic company had been formed among the patients, and performances were given every Friday. On March 10, several actors from the Washington Theatre and Grover’s had volunteered to offer a program in this unique hospital theatre. The appearance the following week of the two stars in a full-length comedy, which was one of the most popular plays in their repertoire, was an event of importance at Campbell Hospital, and the hall was filled with convalescents, officers, ladies and other invited guests.
In later years, an unidentified actor wrote for a Boston newspaper the account of an incident which E. L. Davenport had related to him. Davenport said that in the early spring of 1865 he had played in Still Waters at a theatre some distance out of Washington. The President and Cabinet had been invited, but Lincoln was unable to be present. During a long wait, Davenport strolled outside, and was enjoying a cigar in a sort of garden behind the theatre, when John Wilkes Booth appeared. He was elegantly dressed, but wore riding boots and spurs, and Davenport thought that he seemed rather excited, as he bade him “Good-evening, Ned,” and inquired who was in the house. Davenport, according to his friend’s recollection, mentioned Stanton, Seward, Chase and others. “Did the old man come?” Booth asked. When he heard that Lincoln was not there, he turned on his heel. To Davenport’s remark that he seemed in a great hurry, he replied with the explanation that he had a new horse that was rather restive.
Meantime, at the boardinghouse on H Street, Mrs. Surratt was weeping bitterly. Louis Weichmann, returning from the War Department at four-thirty, learned from the colored servant, Dan, that John Surratt had gone off on horseback with six other men. The unhappy mother sent Weichmann down to his dinner without her. At half past six, however, as the young man sat in his room, Surratt came rushing in with a pistol in his hand. In agitation, he gabbled that his hopes were blighted, and asked Weichmann to find him a clerkship. Paine, also armed, soon followed. He was flushed and excited, but taciturn. Last came Booth, his face chalk-white. He strode around the bedroom, with his riding whip clenched in his hand, too disturbed to notice Weichmann’s presence.
The disappointment of the conspirators was a severe reaction to the confidence they had placed in the information that the President was going to Campbell Hospital. Either in their haste they had not seen, or they had refused to credit a report which appeared in both the Chronicle and the National Intelligencer, that Mr. Lincoln was expected to attend a little ceremony on the Avenue on the afternoon of Friday, March 17. At Fort Anderson, near Wilmington, North Carolina, soldiers of the 140th Indiana had captured a fine rebel garrison flag, which they were presenting to their State through the governor, Oliver P. Morton, then on a visit to Washington. Morton and some Indiana officers, released after long confinement in Southern prisons, gathered on the veranda of the National, where they were joined by the President, who addressed the assembled crowd. By a curious irony of events, Lincoln was at Booth’s hotel at the very time that the actor was lying in wait for him on North Seventh Street.
As in January, the successful accomplishment of the kidnaping attempt would have interfered with a stage appearance which Booth had promised to make. The following night, he played Pescara in The Apostate at Ford’s in a benefit for his friend, John McCullough. The Lincolns heard Faust at Grover’s that evening. On Tuesday, they went to the E Street theatre again, attending the German Opera Company’s performance for the third time in a week, while Booth was traveling to New York.
Arnold and O’Laughlin, thoroughly discouraged, had returned to their homes. Paine went to Baltimore, and thence to New York. John Surratt left for Richmond to resume his dispatch-carrying. On Thursday, March 23, the President himself departed from Washington. In response to an invitation from General Grant, he embarked for City Point on the steamer, River Queen, accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln, Tad and the bodyguard, William Crook. When Booth returned to the capital that week end, Lincoln was out of reach.
Two motives were assigned for the President’s visit to the front. For many, a release from the pressure of business was the obvious and sufficient explanation. The state of Lincoln’s health had been the subject of anxious comment in the press. His haggard appearance had been remarked. The National Republican, denouncing the herd of office seekers, had recommended driving them from the city to save the President from breaking down. The New York Tribune, in an article which was reprinted in the Star, had struck a doleful, graveyard note, referring to Lincoln’s death or disability as a national calamity, and declaring that his energies must be spared, if he were to outlive his second term. The fate of Harrison and Taylor was recalled, and it was suggested that the Union might have to mourn another
dead President, this time “killed by the greed and impudence of bores.”
Yet, in spite of all the publicity given to Lincoln’s need of a holiday, the rumor was persistent in Washington that his excursion was a forerunner of peace; and, among those close to the President, it was understood that the approaching end of hostilities had made him wish to insure that severe terms should not be exacted from the insurgents. The last crucial days had come at Petersburg and Richmond. Sheridan’s army, its work in the Valley done, had swung to the south and joined Grant. In North Carolina, near the Virginia line, Sherman’s army was massed with the troops from Fort Fisher and Wilmington. Sherman and Sheridan, as well as Grant, conferred with Lincoln on board the River Queen.
The President had frequently made flying visits to the army. If he anticipated a protracted absence from the capital on this occasion, no one was aware of it, not even Mr. Seward. On the Monday after their departure, the Star printed a notice that the President and Mrs. Lincoln had secured boxes for several performances of the Italian opera at Ford’s, and on Tuesday heralded their impending return. Mrs. Lincoln had certainly expected that they would be home on Wednesday, March 29, for before leaving she had invited Senator Sumner to accompany them to Ernani on that evening.
Booth, easily aware that Lincoln was expected at Ford’s, went into action on Monday. He telegraphed O’Laughlin in Baltimore, urging him to come to Washington on Wednesday, with or without Sam Arnold. “We sell that day sure. Don’t fail,” the message ran. Neither of his boyhood friends responded to the summons. The President remained with the army. On March 29, with thoughts far from the Italian opera, he was watching the launching of Grant’s grand assault on the Petersburg lines.
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