Manhunt

by James L. Swanson

  This night’s table did not sustain yesterday’s convivial banter. Although Richard Garrett was back at his farm, his son John spoke for the family now. In the presence of their guests, they talked no more of the Lincoln assassination. After supper Booth brought up his departure and asked John Garrett how he planned to send them to Orange Court House. There were only two options: wagon team or horseback. Garrett spoke vaguely, claiming that he had not decided yet, but said it would probably be the latter.

  Booth responded enthusiastically: “Well that’s the very thing, send us horseback.”

  The assassin’s eagerness exacerbated John’s suspicions about them: “I thought at once they wanted to go on horseback, so as to make way with the horses.” And why was Booth always hobbling around the place, especially near the barn? Was he staking out the stable for some horse stealing? Garrett could imagine how the scene might unfold the next morning: alone on an isolated road, outnumbered two to one by the heavily armed Boyd cousins, they would steal the horses—maybe even kill him—and he would be powerless to stop them. “Never mind,” Garrett reassured his guests, before morning’s light he would decide what to do with them.

  Booth and Herold excused themselves from the table and adjourned to their favorite spot, the bench on the front porch, where they sat side by side for a long time. John Garrett joined them. Then Davey started behaving oddly. Always chatty, he started to babble a fantastic tale to Garrett: “Herold [was] running on and on and talking a great deal of nonsense so that I thought he was the worse for liquor.” Davey boasted that he, too, like his cousin James Boyd and the Garrett boys, had served in the Confederate army. Recklessly, Davey claimed affiliation with the Thirtieth Virginia Infantry regiment. He even specified his small unit, Company “C,” and named his commander, Captain Robinson. All lies. Garrett confronted Davey and revealed his personal knowledge of that regiment; he said he knew that “Captain Robinson” did not exist. Booth’s voluble companion backed down and qualified his tale: “To tell you the truth I was there only one week. I was then on picket and the first night I was wounded.” Eagerly, Herold rolled up a sleeve again to show off not one of his juvenile tattoos, but a scar that he claimed had resulted from a battle wound. Davey’s foolish monologue convinced John Garrett even more that he shouldn’t trust them.

  It was dark now. Booth and Herold remained on the bench, watching the evening sky’s last clouds and colors fade to black. The fragrant scent of the spring night filled their nostrils until the sweetly burning smoke rising from Booth’s pipe flavored the air. It was more pleasurable to experience nature’s beauty from the comfort of a front porch than from the cold ground of their pine thicket, Indiantown, and Gambo Creek encampments. Those painful days were behind them now. They could tell that the Garrett family had turned against them, just like Dr. Stuart, but that did not matter now. The Locust Hill oasis had sustained and revived Booth. Tomorrow morning, Wednesday, April 26, he would continue his journey south toward his final destination, yet unknown. It would be the twelfth day.

  In the meantime, Booth and Herold needed to rest for the morning’s work. Booth signaled his man that it was time to retire, and they proposed to John Garrett that they turn in. Davey helped his master stand up, the actor tucked his crutches under his arms, and they walked to the front door. They planned to share Booth’s bed, just as John and William Garrett shared a bed to accommodate Booth. Two in a soft bed in close quarters was better than two on the unyielding ground in a pine forest with room enough to spare. John Garrett stood between them and the door and barked a stunning question:

  “I asked them where they thought of sleeping.”

  Why, “in the house,” of course, Booth replied.

  “No, gentleman, you can’t sleep in my house.”

  Booth was incredulous. Was John Garrett denying him the bed that, only a night before, was his? Booth sensed the weight hanging from his hips. He was still wearing the pistol belt. He had never unbuckled it since the cavalry rode past that afternoon. And Davey’s carbine was close by. With his revolvers and knife within easy reach, Booth considered Garrett’s poor manners. Doctor Stuart’s crime was bad enough— he refused shelter to a wounded, desperate man. But John Garrett’s offense was worse—his father had kindly offered Booth shelter one day, and John cruelly robbed it from him the next. The prospect of another night sleeping on the ground was hateful to Booth. He could always threaten the Garretts, just like when he had menaced the cowering William Lucas. His weapons would certainly get him back upstairs, onto that restful mattress and soft pillow.

  John Garrett still did not know the true identity of the man he was throwing out of his house. He was pretty sure that the Boyd cousins were in some kind of trouble, but he failed to imagine its magnitude, and that Lincoln’s killer was a guest at his family’s dinner table. This was the man who put a bullet in the brain of the president of the United States, who ordered the murders of the vice president and secretary of state, and who threatened to cut the throat of a harmless, black freeman who dared refuse Booth the accommodations of his humble cabin. John Wilkes Booth fancied himself a paternalistic, courtly man, and in truth he often was. But when pressed he could also become a ruthless, vicious one. What, then, was Booth to do with the young, rude Mr. John Garrett?

  David Herold intervened: “We’ll sleep under the house then.” Davey hoped to defuse the situation, but the obstinate Garrett would not budge an inch.

  Impossible, he retorted. The dogs sleep under there and would bite them, perhaps even attacking them in their sleep.

  Gamely, Herold tried again: “Well, what’s in the barn then?”

  Hay and fodder, John Garrett replied.

  “We’ll sleep in the barn then,” Herold announced in a voice indicating that the matter was closed. Garrett relented. He could not eject them from Locust Hill by force. There were children in the house. The Boyds were better armed, and any violence might endanger not just him, but the whole family.

  Booth and Herold headed toward their new quarters, a modest-sized tobacco barn, forty-eight by fifty feet, with a pitched roof that stood one hundred fifty to two hundred feet from the main house. In addition to the hay and fodder that Garrett mentioned, the fugitives discovered several pieces of furniture. Neighbors from colonial Port Royal who wanted to protect their Early American furniture from vandalism or theft by Yankee raiders had stored some valuable pieces in the barn. The Garretts did not offer Booth and Herold mattresses, blankets, lanterns, candles, or other comforts. Booth wrapped himself in his shawl and plain wool blanket, while Herold unrolled his big, fancy blanket, “smooth on one side and with a heavy shag on the other, about the color of a buffalo robe.” It was an impressive piece of craftsmanship that had attracted not only William Rollins at Port Conway but also John Garrett. By 9:00 p.m. Booth and Herold had lain down on the plank floor and settled in for the night. Unbeknownst to them, the Garretts, already guilty of inhospitality, were at that moment conspiring to commit a worse crime, treachery. Lincoln’s assassin had just walked into a trap.

  John and William Garrett swung the barn door shut behind the fugitives. Neither Booth nor Herold paid heed to the black, iron lock. Perhaps, blinded by the dark, they failed to see the sturdy piece of hardware as they passed through the doorway. As soon as the door closed, John Garrett whispered to his brother, “We had better lock those men up.” John was sure that the Boyds were scheming to steal their horses in the middle of the night. What better way to foil the theft than by imprisoning the strangers in the tobacco shed until tomorrow morning? John crept around the perimeter of the building until he found a crevice between the boards, close to the ground. Dropping to his belly, he pressed his ear to the crevice and eavesdropped on Booth and Herold. John wanted to “see if I could find out anything about them. I thought that maybe they would be talking together and I might learn what their intentions were.” But the strangers frustrated Garrett’s primitive effort at intelligence gathering: “They were talking to each other
in a low tone [and] I could not distinguish a word they said.”

  While his brother John eavesdropped, William Garrett tiptoed to the front door and, as quietly as he could, inserted the key into the lock. To avoid alerting the barn’s occupants he turned the key slowly, so the locking mechanism would softly grind, and not loudly snap, into place. It worked. Booth and Herold did not hear the sliding bolt; they did not know that they were prisoners. The brothers returned to the house in time for nightly family worship conducted by their father. After evening prayers they retired to their room, each with a bed to himself again, now that they had thrown Booth out of the house. Still, John Garrett remained uneasy. What if the Boyds broke out of the barn? Then they would, in their anger, steal the horses for sure. John suggested to William that they spend the night outside and keep the barn under surveillance. Both Garretts grabbed the blankets from their beds, William seized his pistol, and they hustled outside. They chose one of the two corn houses as their guard post: “We unlocked the corn house between the barn, or tobacco house, and the stables and spread out the blankets and lay down there.” There they watched and waited, observing the barn and listening keenly for suspicious sounds in the night.

  The cavalry patrol approached Bowling Green at around 11:00 p.m., April 25. About half a mile out, Doherty ordered ten of his men to dismount, and, by stealth, to follow Detective Baker into the town. Doherty, Conger, and Rollins rode quietly with the main body into the town and, by midnight, found the Star Hotel. They immediately commanded their men to surround the hotel and allow no one to leave. But their mission was thwarted, albeit temporarily, by an embarrassing incident. Lincoln’s assassin might be sleeping inside, but, comically, they could not get in. “We knocked about fifteen minutes at each door without receiving any reply,” according to Doherty. When no one answered the front door, they tried the side door, but no one answered there, either. Eventually they saw a black man walking down the street, and they dragooned him for assistance. He took Conger and Doherty around to the back and showed them the entrance to the “Negro house” at the rear of the Star. Baker was already lurking at the front door. They crept into the building and almost immediately encountered another black man. Where is Willie Jett? Doherty asked. In bed, the servant replied. Conger demanded to know where the room was.

  Mrs. Julia Gouldman, now awake, opened the door between the hotel and the Negro house. Doherty and Conger pushed through without an introduction and asked her a single question: where was her son, Jesse? She led them upstairs to a second-floor bedroom. Prepared for anything, the officer and detectives rushed in and discovered Jesse Gouldman and Willie Jett sharing a mattress. Already awakened by the commotion, Jett tried to get out of bed. “Is your name Jett?” Conger demanded. “Yes, sir,” came the meek reply. “Get up: I want you!” the detective thundered. Jett stood up and yanked on his pants. Then they seized him, hustled him downstairs roughly, and confined him in the parlor. The trio did everything possible to frighten Jett: “We . . . informed him of our business,” said Doherty, “telling him if he did not forthwith inform us where the men were, he should suffer.”

  Conger reclined in a chair and studied their captive: “Where are the two men who came with you across the river at Port Royal?”

  Jett, eyeing Baker and Doherty nervously, approached Conger and whispered a plea: “Can I see you alone?” “Yes, sir: you can,” Conger replied magnanimously. Conger asked his counterparts to leave the parlor. The moment they departed, Jett extended his hand to the detective in supplication and betrayed John Wilkes Booth: “I know who you want; and I will tell you where they can be found.”

  “That’s what I want to know,” Conger encouraged him.

  All that this Confederate Judas begged in return was privacy: Willie wanted no audience to witness his shame.

  “They are on the road to Port Royal,” Jett confided, “about three miles this side of that.”

  But where, exactly, queried Conger: “At whose house are they?”

  “Mr. Garrett’s,” Jett said, adding, “I will go there with you, and show where they are now; and you can get them.” Willie Jett proved not only a Judas, but an enthusiastic one: “I told them everything from beginning to end. I said I would pilot them to the house where Booth was.”

  Conger realized that Jett would be an invaluable guide. Without him it might be difficult, if not impossible, to locate the Garrett farmhouse in the middle of the night.

  “Have you a horse?” Conger asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get it, and get ready to go!”

  Conger sped Jett upstairs under guard to finish dressing. Quickly he put on his shirt and coat and pulled on his boots. By the time he returned to the parlor, the detectives had already sent a black servant to get his horse.

  “You say they are on the road to Port Royal?” Conger asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Jett verified.

  Conger could not believe it: “I have just come from there.”

  That news surprised the young Confederate: “I thought you came from Richmond: If you have come that way, you have come right past them. I cannot tell you whether they are there now or not.”

  Perhaps, when the cavalry thundered past Garrett’s farm several hours ago on its way to Bowling Green, it had spooked Booth and Herold and prompted them to flee elsewhere. That was beyond Jett’s control, he made clear to Detective Baker. It was not his fault if the cavalry had scared off the assassins. The news stunned Baker. A few hours ago, he and the Sixteenth New York had ridden through Port Royal, and then past the farm. The fugitives, Baker guessed, must have heard the pounding hooves of their horses. Booth and Herold had been within his grasp and he had ridden right past them! At around midnight, Conger, Baker, and Doherty, hoping they were not too late, turned the troops around and galloped back to the farm.

  Conger, Baker, Doherty, and Jett hurried out of the Star Hotel and mounted their horses. At about 12:30 a.m., Wednesday, April 26, the Sixteenth New York Cavalry headed for Garrett’s farm and, they hoped, a rendezvous with Lincoln’s assassin. Baker warned Jett not to try any tricks: “He shook hands with the Colonel, and promised on his honor as an officer and a gentleman that he would be true to us. We told him that if he deceived us, it would be death to him—we thinking that perhaps it might be his design to lead us into an ambuscade.”

  After two hours in the saddle, Jett told Conger that he should slow the column: “We are very near there now to where we go through: let us stop here, and look around.” In the dark, Jett had trouble finding the gate to the road that led to Garrett’s house. Conger ordered the patrol to halt. He and Jett rode on alone. It is just a little way up, Willie reassured him. Conger trotted ahead of Jett. His eyes scanned the dark roadside but detected no opening. All Conger could see was a bushy, unbroken fence line skirting the road. He turned his horse around and retreated. There is no gate, he complained to Jett.

  Then it is just a little farther up the road, Booth’s Judas promised. It is hard to judge these distances in the dark. They rode on three hundred yards more, and Baker spurred ahead from the main body to help Conger search for the gate. This time they found it. After unlatching it, Conger sent Baker ahead to find and open the second gate; Jett had told them that it would block their way. Baker vanished into the black night while Conger backtracked to fetch the cavalry. The detective asked Jett a final question: when the cavalry charges down that road, where should they look for the house?

  As before, Jett obliged: “I took them to Garrett’s gate and directed them how to go into the house and they went in, leaving me at the gate.”

  Conger ordered Jett and Rollins to remain at the gate, guarded by only one trooper. Soon Baker located the last roadside obstacle that separated them from Booth: “We found a gate, fastened by a latch, dismounted, opened the gate, and the command came through, and a charge was ordered.” The Sixteenth New York Cavalry raced up the dirt road and toward the farmhouse.

  As the Sixteenth New York closed
in on Booth and Herold, the nation did not hold its collective breath, awaiting the exciting climax of the manhunt. Nobody—not Stanton, his officers, the other pursuers, or the press—knew that Conger, Baker, and Doherty had tracked Lincoln’s assassin to Port Royal, and to the Garrett farm. Elsewhere, all over Virginia and Maryland, other manhunters, ignorant of what was happening at Garrett’s farm, continued the chase. In Maryland, S. H. Beckwith, the man whose tip had set in motion the sequence of events that led the Sixteenth New York to Booth’s hiding place, sent, at 1:30 a.m., April 26, another telegram to Major Eckert. The major did not receive it until 8:00 a.m. And Booth had escaped Maryland days ago.

  Immediately after reporting to you to-day I proceeded with Major O’Beirne to Bryantown, thence to Turner’s house, where Booth and Herold were seen by two servants to inquire about food, then enter pine thicket about twenty rods distant from house and two miles north from Bryantown. Parties on the ground had been through, losing the track and accomplishing nothing. We at once penetrated the thicket and deployed. After following probable routes I struck the crutch track, and we followed it in a direction circling around toward the piece of timber from which they first issued far enough to justify the belief they are still in same vicinity from which they started, and that while the troops were searching the thicket where they were last seen, they, by taking course above described, gained time to temporarily conceal themselves again. It appears to us from all we can learn that troops have not been pushed through with much system. The colored troops, while deployed and advancing, upon hearing shout on one part line, made rush in that direction, leaving considerable space uncovered. Cavalry has been operating, and tonight has strong line of pickets around timber. I made map to-day for immediate use, but it would have assisted much if we had a county survey map and a compass. I left Major O’Beirne at Bryantown, where he was preparing to co-operate with others and make an early and systematic scouring.