Before the year was out, artists had memorialized Lincoln’s assassin in wax and in heroically sized oil paintings. A poster for “Terry’s Panorama of the War!” advertised “a stupendous work of art” that depicted “startling, terrible and bloody scenes” fresh from the “carnival of treason” by the celebrated artist H. L. Tyng of Boston. The ad promised the viewer a series of paintings, each one seven feet wide and fifteen to twenty feet tall. “Assassination of Lincoln! And Secretary Seward! Life-Size Portrait of Booth, The Assassin!”—all for the modest admission fee of 25 cents for adults and 15 cents for children.
Another art exhibition, “Col. Orr’s Grand Museum,” outdid even Terry’s Panorama. “The Assassination!” screamed the headline of a poster advertising a traveling wax museum of murder. The sculptor, “Sig. Vanodi the greatest living worker in wax,” boasted the broadside, had created life-size figures of “President Lincoln, Mrs. Lincoln, Secretary Seward and Booth and Payne, the Assassins!” The exhibitor gave potential customers fair warning: “The figures have now been completed—under the magic touch of the Artist, they spring into an existence almost real . . . so natural, perfect and life like, that as we gaze upon the assassins we shudder, lest again some fiendish deed be enacted.” Orr constructed a replica of the president’s box, seated the wax Lincolns in it, and positioned the assassin behind them: “Booth,” the poster promised, “is made to preserve the precise attitude in which he leveled his weapon at the head of the president and fired the murderous shot.” Additional wax tableaux depicted the capture of Herold and the shooting of Booth.
The mythologizing of Lincoln’s assassin continued in the years ahead. In 1868, Dunbar Hylton published a 108-page poem about him, “The Præsidicide.” The same year, in New Orleans, a publisher released a sympathetic piece of sheet music—“Our Brutus”—emblazoned with a handsome, full-page lithograph of the assassin. Soon a myth arose that the man killed at Garrett’s farm was not John Wilkes Booth, and that the actor had escaped and fled to the American West, where he lived under a false name. The truth that Booth had died near Port Royal, Virginia, on April 26, 1865, could not suppress the bizarre stories. By the close of the nineteenth century, several men had claimed to be Booth. A lawyer named Finis Bates claimed that the assassin was his client, and in 1903 he published a wildly popular book titled The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth. When this false Booth died, allegedly by his own hand, his mummy was exhibited for years at traveling carnivals. It survives to this day, hidden in a private collection. In 1937, a woman wrote a preposterous book claiming that Booth had survived the night at Garrett’s farm, lived a secret life, and fathered a child. The proof? Why, the author was the assassin’s granddaughter, of course.
The survival myth of John Wilkes Booth, roaming across the land, evokes the traditional fate of the damned, of a cursed spirit who can find no rest. There is no doubt that Booth was the man who died at Garrett’s farm. But America’s first assassin, who took Father Abraham in his prime, who left a nation bereft, and who robbed us of the rest of the story, haunts us still.
John Wilkes Booth did not get what he wanted. Yes, he did enjoy a singular success: he killed Abraham Lincoln. But in every other way, Booth was a failure. He did not prolong the Civil War, inspire the South to fight on, or overturn the verdict of the battlefield, or of free elections. Nor did he confound emancipation, resuscitate slavery, or save the dying antebellum civilization of the Old South. Booth failed to overthrow the federal government by assassinating its highest officials. Indeed, he failed to murder two of the three men he had marked for death on that “moody, tearful night.” He did not become an American hero, but he elevated Lincoln to the American pantheon. And, in his greatest failure, Booth did not survive the manhunt. His was not a suicide mission. He wanted desperately to live, to escape, to bask in the fame and glory he was sure would be his. He got his fame, but at the price of his life. But he lived long enough to recognize his failures, and endure the public condemnation of his act. When he leaped to the stage and shouted “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” he must have thought that his immortality as a Southern patriot was sealed. But his last words survive as his true epitaph: “Useless, useless.”
Booth may have died at Garrett’s farm, but from that burning barn the assassin’s malevolent spirit arose to linger over the land for more than a century. When marauding night riders wearing masks and white robes rose up against Reconstruction, Booth rode with them, murmuring “this country was formed for the white, not the black man.” When men with burning crosses and rope nooses terrorized generations, the spirit of Booth stood by, scorning “nigger suffrage.” And when an eloquent man stepped onto the balcony of the Lorraine Motel the day after he gave one of the greatest speeches of his life, a vengeful Booth was there, muttering, “that is the last speech he will ever give.”
If Booth could return today to the scene of his crime and visit, as almost one million Americans do every year, the basement museum at Ford’s Theatre, he might conclude, from what he found there, that it was, once again, April 14, 1865. Here he would find, preserved in a condition as immaculate as the day he last touched them, protected in climate-controlled, shatterproof glass display cases, the prized relics of the assassination: The original door to the president’s box, its peephole still luring curious eyes; the wood music stand he used to bar the door; his revolvers and knives; the Spencer carbine that he and David Herold picked up during their midnight run to Surratt’s tavern; his whistle and keys; the photos of his sweethearts; and his notorious pocket calendar diary, its pages still open, as if awaiting a final entry.
When the tourists who come here marvel at Booth’s implements of violence and death—none more popular than the Deringer pistol that killed President Lincoln—they usually neglect a less thrilling relic. Few visitors bend down, peer through the glass case at a little shelf set near the ground, and scrutinize a small, everyday object resting in its velvet-lined box. It is Booth’s pocket compass, more evocative of his desperate, twelve-day flight from the manhunt than any relic that survived him.
This is the compass that guided him during his dangerous days on the run; that he and Thomas Jones cradled by candlelight as they plotted Booth’s course across the wide and black waters of the Potomac; that each day gave him hope as it pointed the way South to his final destination; that he played with on the Garrett lawn to the children’s delight; and that the detectives plundered from his pocket as he lay dying at Garrett’s farm. Today, almost a century and a half since the great chase for Lincoln’s killer began, its blued steel needle still dances on its spindle, still pointing the way South.
Zekiah Swamp and Nanjemoy Creek, Charles County, Maryland, 17 and 22 April 1865
April 13th 14 Friday the Ides
Until to day nothing was ever thought of sacrificing to our country’s wrongs. For six months we had worked to capture. But our cause being almost lost, something decisive & great must be done. But its failure is owing to others, who did not strike for their country with a heart. 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. A Col- was at his side. I shouted Sic semper before I fired. In jumping broke my leg. I passed all his pickets, rode sixty miles that night, with the bones of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump. I can never repent it, though we hated to kill: Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment. The country is not what it was. This forced union is not what I have loved. I care not what becomes of me. I have no desire to out-live my country. This night (before the deed), I wrote a long article and left it for one of the Editors of the National Inteligencer, in which I fully set forth our reasons for our proceedings. He or the Govmt
Friday 21—
After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased by gun boats till I was forced to return wet cold and starving, with every mans hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Br
utus was honored for, what made Tell a Hero. And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat. My action was purer than either of theirs. One, hoped to be great himself. The other had not only his countrys but his own wrongs to avenge. I hope for no gain. I knew no private wrong. I struck for my country and that alone. A country groaned beneath this tyranny and prayed for this end. Yet now behold the cold hand they extend to me. God cannot pardon me if I have done wrong. Yet I cannot see any wrong except in serving a degenerate people. The little, very little I left behind to clear my name, the Govmt will not allow to be printed. So ends all. For my country I have given up all that makes life sweet and Holy, brought misery on my family, and am sure there is no pardon in Heaven for me since man condemns me so. I have only heard what has been done (except what I did myself) and it fills me with horror. God try and forgive me and bless my mother. To night I will once more try the river with the intent to cross, though I have a greater desire to return to Washington and in a measure clear my name which I feel I can do. I do not repent the blow I struck. I may before God but not to man.
I think I have done well, though I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me. When if the world knew my heart, that one blow would have made me great, though I did desire no greatness.
To night I try to escape these blood hounds once more. Who who can read his fate. God’s will be done.
I have too great a soul to die like a criminal. Oh may he, may he spare me that and let me die bravely.
I bless the entire world. Have never hated or wronged anyone. This last was not a wrong, unless God deems it so. And its with him, to damn or bless me. And for this brave boy with me who often prays (yes before and since) with a true and sincere heart, was it a crime in him, if so why can he pray the same I do not wish to shed a drop of blood, but “I must fight the course” Tis all that’s left me.
thank the pioneers, George Alfred Townsend (1841 to 1914), Osborn H. Oldroyd (1842 to 1930), and James O. Hall, who, in his nineties, remains an inspiration. All other scholars of the Lincoln assassination must stand on their shoulders. Townsend, Oldroyd, and Hall followed Booth’s path, asked the questions, collected the documents, and pursued the unknown. The rest of us walk in their footsteps, and those tracks span several generations leading in an unbroken line back to the night when Abraham Lincoln was shot. I owe special thanks to Mr. Hall for a memorable day at his home, when he shared some of the knowledge that he has devoted a lifetime to acquiring.
With fond memories, I thank the late Michael Maione, National Park Service historian at Ford’s Theatre, who, as far as I know, never appeared anywhere out of uniform, for memorable conversations and good counsel. Mike was the model of a public historian, and those who saw him in action at Ford’s, pacing in front of the stage, delivering his famous lecture on the assassination in a bellowing voice, saw him at his best. Once, I cautioned Mike that his enthusiasm was frightening the schoolchildren who flocked in droves to Ford’s every summer. “Yes,” he said, beaming, “and they will remember me!” They certainly did. And Michael, so shall we. It was “altogether fitting and proper,” to borrow Lincoln’s phrase from his remarks honoring the dead at Gettysburg, that Mike’s memorial service was held at the place he loved—Ford’s Theatre.
I thank Library of Congress specialist Clark Evans for quiet days in the rare-book room at the Jefferson Building, when he brought out one delightful Lincoln treasure after another. I also thank John R. Sellers, Historical Specialist at the Library of Congress manuscripts division, for assassination tips, helpful publishing advice, and making available some of the Lincoln treasures from his domain. At the National Archives, Michael Musick was an indispensable guide to the complicated records of the Lincoln assassination.
Two good friends in the Lincoln community, Edward Steers Jr., the premiere contemporary historian of the assassination, and Michael F. Bishop, executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, graciously read and improved the manuscript. Michael Burlingame, Lincoln scholar, editor, and author nonpareil, is unfailingly eager to share his research with colleagues, and he generously answered my questions. At the University of Chicago, David Bevington offered insights into Booth’s use of Shakespeare.
Andrea E. Mays, an astute critic of historical nonfiction, read and commented on the manuscript from her unique perspective. She reviewed several incarnations of the book and saved me from making a number of embarrassing errors and omissions.
I also thank Lisa Bertagnoli, journalist, linguist, and student of Southern culture, for reading the manuscript, offering many valuable comments, and for her other contributions.
Mara Mills suggested that I do something useful with the Lincoln library that’s been curing on my shelves for years—like write a book.
James Nash, a careful reader of the literature of the war of the rebellion, brought important issues to my attention. Thanks also to James for a macabre summer night in downtown Washington, D.C., when we went to Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse to watch, on the 140th anniversary of her hanging, a play about her trial and execution.
I am indebted to Joan Chaconas and Laurie Verge for encouragement, generosity, and friendship. Their research and writing, and their role in preserving Mary Surratt’s country house, have materially advanced the scholarship of the Lincoln assassination. Sandra Walia at the Surratt Society’s James O. Hall Research Library unlocked the treasure trove of files held there. I was aghast when, years ago, I learned of a group called the Surratt Society. I had assumed, incorrectly, that it was a club of amateur assassination apologists. On the contrary, its staff and members are passionate scholars in pursuit of objective history.
At William H. Seward’s magnificent home in Auburn, New York, executive director Peter Wisbey provided haunting photographs and valuable information about Fanny and her father.
David Lovett, an extraordinary historian and bibliographer of the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations, provided virtually unobtainable books and pamphlets that were essential to my research.
Karen Needles of Documents on Wheels uncovered the hitherto unpublished reward check issued to Booth’s killer, Boston Corbett. Karen is an indefatigable researcher who has made numerous contributions to the Lincoln field by ferreting out many exciting and little-known documents at the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and elsewhere.
I thank my friends at the Heritage Foundation, Edwin Meese III, Todd Gaziano, and Paul Rosenzweig, for giving me a home during much of the time I wrote the book. And thanks also to Molly Stark for helping with the manuscript and for solving never-ending computer mysteries.
Thanks to Carol Cohen and Elizabeth Kreul-Starr for typing drafts of the manuscript.
Theodore L. Jones and George A. Didden III handed me the keys to a beautiful but haunted nineteenth-century townhouse big enough to hold a few thousand books, documents, and Civil War newspapers.
I must thank Harold Holzer, vice president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and co-chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, for expert insights and his hospitality in New York City, and Frank Williams, Chief Justice of Rhode Island and also a member of the Bicentennial Commission, for sharing his great knowledge and wonderful Lincoln library.
Valuable advice on how to think about and tell this story came from Douglas H. Ginsburg, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and from Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Thanks also to the friends who have indulged me by joining my annual nighttime tours of downtown Washington on the anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination.
Special thanks to a Southern friend who, after insisting on anonymity, disclosed her family’s secret custom: ever since April 15, 1866—the first anniversary of the murder—they have held their annual cotillion on that day to celebrate the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and to honor their Brutus. Their ritual provided a rema
rkable immediacy about how some Southerners reacted to the events of April 1865—and how some still remember them.
Henry Ferris is a patient and discerning editor who improved the manuscript in countless ways with a fine dramatic sensibility and an unerring instinct for suggesting key scenes that advanced the narrative. I am convinced that the fact he is a Booth descendant influenced the course of this book.
I also thank Michael Morrison at HarperCollins and Lisa Gallagher at William Morrow for their strong support of the book and the personal interest they took in me.
Richard Abate, my literary agent at International Creative Management, gave me his enthusiasm, insights, and friendship. Richard read several drafts of the manuscript, made himself an expert on the subject, and even came down to Washington to explore the assassination sites with me. He made this a better book. Thanks also to my other representatives at ICM, Ron Bernstein and Kate Lee.
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