The Day Lincoln Was Shot

by Jim Bishop

  The story was not picked up again, and Lincoln channeled the talk toward reconstruction. Stanton, busy removing sheafs of papers from his portfolio, said that, unless there was disagreement, he would like to announce the cessation of the draft to the country. He felt that it would lift morale in all quarters, and help the country to realize that we all had to get back to work. Everyone was in agreement on this matter, and Stanton added that General Grant had spent a busy two days saving the country enormous sums of money by cutting the size of the army and by canceling army contracts.

  The President said that it was pretty well agreed that the war was done, and that he needed suggestions regarding the best procedure to follow in the South. He was going to be saying those words, in different form, several times in the next three hours because he had no intention of adjourning this meeting for lunch or for any other reason until the skeleton outline of reconstruction had been erected.

  Frederick Seward said that he had discussed this matter with his father before he left home this morning and, while it was extremely painful for his father to talk at all, the old gentleman had asked that the Cabinet consider ordering the Treasury Department to take charge of all Southern customs houses at once and to begin to collect revenues; he also felt that the War Department should garrison or destroy all Southern forts now; that the Navy Department, as a matter of precaution and a show of determination, should order armed vessels to drop anchor in all Southern ports and, at the same time, take possession of all navy yards, ships and ordnance; that the Department of the Interior should, without delay, send out Indian agents, pension agents, land agents and surveyors and set them to work reassessing Southern land; that the Post Office Department should reopen all post offices and reestablish all mail routes; that the Attorney General should busy himself with the appointing of proper judges and the reopening of the courts; in sum, that the Government of the United States should resume business in the South and that, at the same time, it should take care that constituted authority and private citizens were not molested or impeded in their tasks.

  The President smiled. The man from the sickbed had said an enormous amount in one breath, and the dissection and digestion of each of these suggestions would require considerable agreement among the men around the table. Seward was aware of this, just as he was aware that the Secretary of War would be at this meeting with his own suggestions for picking up the broken states and reassembling them.

  The meeting droned on. Mr. Lincoln listened, made suggestions, brought departments together in their thinking, and, when energies appeared to flag, he brought up another point in the Seward doctrine.

  “We must reanimate the states,” he said. He admitted to the gentlemen that he was relieved that the Congress was not in session and, by indirection, signified that he had no intention of calling it into special session.

  Ideas caromed smartly around the green table, some clicking with all hands, some finding no proponents except the original sponsor. Communications would have to be reestablished between the South and the North at once. Once the arteries were functioning, the next step would be to see that nourishment flowed through them and Mr. Stanton suggested that the Treasury Department be empowered to issue permits to all who wished to trade, and that he, at the War Department, order the Southern ports to receive all trading vessels.

  Old Gideon Welles stroked his beard and thought that he saw Stanton reaching for postwar navy power.

  “It would be better,” he said, “if the President issued a proclamation stating the course to be pursued by each of the several departments.”

  This was an oblique warning to Stanton to leave naval matters to the Department of the Navy. Some of the men concentrated on wartime measures which could now be dropped. Stanton lifted his sheaf of papers and, raising his head slightly so that he could see through the lower part of his glasses, asked the Cabinet to listen to a plan which he had drafted “after a great deal of reflection” regarding reconstruction in the South.

  He read the first part, pausing rarely to interpret, about the assertion of Federal authority in Virginia. Some of the members made penciled notes on pads set before them. When the reading of this section was finished, Mr. Welles reminded everyone present that the state of Virginia, which was used as a model in Mr. Stanton’s document, already had a skeleton government and a governor.

  The President, watching his flexing foot, said that the point was well taken. Stanton looked at the President to see whether the first section would be debated before he was allowed to proceed. Lincoln apparently was waiting to hear the rest of it. He had asked the Secretary of War to draw this thing up, and it was felt that the result would be a dilution of Lincoln’s soft approach and Stanton’s harsh one.

  “I will see,” said Stanton, “that each of you gets a copy of this.”

  The second section was then read and this part dealt with the reestablishment of the several state governments. Some of the members felt that there was more Stanton vengeance than Lincoln mercy in its proposals and Welles, as unofficial spokesman for the Stanton opposition, denounced it as “in conflict with the principles of self-government which I deem essential.”

  Mr. Stanton replied that he realized that the matter needed more work and more study, but that he had been asked to draw this up in time for the meeting and had done his best. Young Frederick Seward asked if it wouldn’t be possible for all hands to be given a copy of the paper, so that it could be studied thoroughly and, at a subsequent Cabinet meeting, the President could have the best thinking of all members.

  Mr. Lincoln nodded solemnly and said that he expected each man to “deliberate on this matter carefully.”

  Welles said that, as he saw the problem—taking Virginia as a hypothetical case—it was important, on the one hand, that the state government be representative of what the people of the Old Dominion wanted in a government, and yet equally impotant that the people be persuaded not to elect the very men who had instigated the rebellion in the first place.

  Postmaster General Dennison said that Welles had stated the thing that he was worried about, and Mr. Stanton agreed. The sense of the members was that the best way to act would be to disenfranchise by name the leaders of the rebellion, political and military, and to leave the people of each state to choose from the men who were left.

  Mr. Lincoln said little at this stage of the long meeting. He looked sadly and longingly at each man, and then looked back at his foot.

  “We still acknowledge Pierpont as the legitimate governor of Virginia,” said Mr. Welles.

  “There will be little difficulty with Pierpont,” said Dennison.

  “None whatever,” Mr. Stanton said.

  Pierpont had assented to the breaking off of West Virginia as a separate state and the de facto recognition of Pierpont as governor of Virginia was involved.

  Stanton blandly proposed that the states of North Carolina and Virginia be united under one state government, but the majority of the Cabinet members opposed the thought, claiming that the war had been fought to reunite the states, not to remake them.

  Each messenger who tiptoed into the room was greeted with lighted expressions, but these dimmed quickly when it turned out that the news was not of General Johnston. There was no way that the men in that room could know that men in another room to the South were, at this moment, coming to a surrender decision. The messengers kept coming into Lincoln’s big office, and each saw the same expectancy.

  At one stage, in a lull, the President remembered his unfinished story about the recurring dream and he told the Cabinet that everything would turn out all right because of it.

  “What kind of a dream was it?” said Mr. Welles.

  “It relates to your element, the water,” the President said. “I seemed to be in some indescribable vessel and I was moving with great rapidity toward an indefinite shore.” Lincoln seemed to fear that the men might ridicule his dream, so he added: “I had this dream preceding Sumter, and Bull Run, Antietam, G
ettysburg, Stone River, Vicksburg and Wilmington.”

  “Stone River was certainly no victory,” said General Grant. “Nor can I think of any great results following it.”

  Lincoln agreed, but maintained that the dream usually presaged good news and great victories. “I had this strange dream again last night,” he said, “and we shall, judging from the past, have great news very soon. I think it must be from Sherman. My thoughts are in that direction. . . .”

  The talk turned to the leaders of the Confederacy and what to do with them. Mr. Stanton felt that, as Americans, they were traitors to their country and he could not see how anyone could put another interpretation on the matter.

  Postmaster General Dennison, a roguish glint in his eyes, said: “I suppose, Mr. President, that you would not be sorry to have them escape out of the country?”

  “Well,” said Lincoln, leaning backward and trying to look serious, “I should not be sorry to have them out of the country, but I should be for following them up pretty close, to make sure of their going.”

  This led to an informal discussion of the many shades of opinion from the Senate and House on the subject of what to do with the leaders of the rebellion.

  “I think it is providential,” the President said, “that this great rebellion is crushed just as Congress has adjourned, and there are none of the disturbing elements of that body to hinder and embarrass us. If we are wise and discreet we shall reanimate the states and get their governments in successful operation, with order prevailing and the Union reestablished before Congress comes together in December. . . .”

  That came from his head. This, from his heart:

  “I hope that there will be no persecution, no bloody work after the war is over. No one need expect me to take any part in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of them. Frighten them out of the country, open the gates”—throwing up both arms and fluttering his fingers—“let down the bars, scare them off, enough lives have been sacrificed.”

  Wilkes Booth left his hotel. He stopped at the National Hotel desk and asked the clerk to have one of the boys post a letter for him. It was addressed to his mother, who was living with Edwin in New York. The clerk said that he would take care of it, and the young dandy walked out, turned up Pennsylvania Avenue, nodding pleasantly to the hero worshippers who nudged each other and gaped, and at Tenth he turned right and went up to Ford’s Theatre. Here, he would pick up his mail. The letter he hoped to get would be from Sam Arnold, at Fort Monroe, agreeing to come to Washington at once.

  The Ford Opera House (its formal name) was on the east side of Tenth Street between E and F. It was a three-story red brick building, now eighteen months old. It had five arched doorways, although only the one in the center led to the ticket office and the lobby. To the north of the theater—toward F Street—was Ferguson’s Restaurant. To the south, the E Street side—was Taltavul’s saloon. Up and down the block, on both sides, were narrow-front brick homes, each hardly more than twenty-five feet in width, standing shoulder to shoulder with the flanking houses. The street was unpaved and muddy, and a wooden ramp squatted in front of the center door of the theater so that ladies alighting from carriages would not get wet feet and soiled hems.

  The actor stepped into the manager’s office with the familiarity of an old friend. He picked up his mail, said hello to Harry Clay Ford. They were talking theatrical gossip when James J. Gifford, the stage carpenter, walked in and asked Mr. Ford what it was that he wanted. Ford said that President Lincoln and General Grant were coming to the theater tonight and to please have the stagehands remove the partition between Boxes 7 and 8. Booth masked his surprise. He was still smiling at the handwriting on the envelopes of his morning mail as he asked when the news was received.

  A few minutes ago, Ford said. The President’s messenger came in and said that, if the State Box was available, the President and General Grant and their ladies would use it tonight.

  Had the President been invited?

  No, as a matter of fact, he had not. In fact, nothing special except a new patriotic song would be on the bill tonight. After all, it was Good Friday and the last night of the Laura Keene company.

  Mr. Booth nodded. He went out in front of the theater and sat down on the big gray granite step, his knees spread, his hands between them, reading his mail. At one point a passerby noticed him only because the actor was laughing heartily at something he was reading.

  A few minutes later, Booth was no longer seen outside of Ford’s Theatre. He was inside and upstairs.

  The theater seated seventeen hundred persons and was gas lit. The patrons sat in straight-backed cane chairs which spread in curving rows and were split by two aisles, not counting the wall aisles. Tickets cost fifty cents and the management announced that there would be no extra charge for securing seats in advance.

  Off the lobby was a double stairway which led up to the dress circle. This stairway was also used by patrons who had tickets for the upper boxes. The boxes were actually onstage; no part of them hung off into the orchestra section. There were two lowers on each side of the theater, and two uppers. These were designated by the management in the manner of theatrical directions, that is, from a position onstage looking toward the audience. Thus the State Box, or President’s Box, was said to be at stage left, although, from the orchestra, it would be at the right-hand side.

  This box was really two, numbered 7 and 8, both upper. These were separated by a partition of one-inch pine, held to the floor and ceiling by little L’s of angle iron. When the President of the United States was going to use the box, the partition was always removed and the numbers 7 and 8 became one. As a matter of respect for the President, no other boxes in the house were sold on those occasions.

  The doors to Boxes 7 and 8 were of three-eighth-inch pine, milled so that each had a large upper panel and a small lower one. Each had its own lock and its own key, although, when the Lincolns were present, only the door to the rear box, number 7, was used. Outside the boxes was a small unlighted hallway. Behind it was a small white door which faced the patrons in the dress circle. Outside this door, the President’s guard sat on a chair, with his back toward the door, and facing the side aisle of the dress circle. Anyone approaching Boxes 7 and 8 would have to come down this aisle.

  The stage itself was neither deep nor imposing and, in a scene of shallow proportions, a patron sitting forward in Box 8 often looked down toward the back of the head of the actor. The distance between the ledge of the upper boxes and the floor of the stage was eleven feet.

  Under the stage was a passageway in the form of a T. This was necessary to connect both sides of the stage and to leave a subterranean passage for the musicians who, although they had no orchestra pit, played their music in the space between the footlights and the front row of the orchestra. Also under the stage was the main gas valve, for dimming all the lights of the theater when the curtain was about to rise, and to brighten them between acts and at the end of the play. Gas jets in light-colored bowls were bracketed around the walls of the theater, and over the stage.

  At stage right (left from the orchestra) was a small enclosure called the Green Room. Actors who were imminently due onstage came downstairs from their dressing rooms and sat here before cue time. To the rear of the Green Room was a door, leading to the back alley. On the far side of the alley were the backyards of houses which faced Ninth Street, and also up toward F Street a few Negro shanties with earthen floors and heavy curtains instead of front doors. At night, these were candle lit.

  Booth walked around the back of the dress circle, toward the right, and down the steps of the side aisle to the little white door leading to the State Box corridor. He went inside and turned left through the door of Box 7—the rear box—and sat watching the rehearsal onstage.

  He was acquainted with almost every line of Our American Cousin. In the box, with no gas lights on, he was cloaked in daytime gloom and he sat watching, thinking—who knows? One thing seems certain. He
timed his plans for tonight now. He looked from the ledge of the box to the stage, and he knew that he had made bigger leaps in Macbeth. He could not plan to run back through the dress circle because, the moment the act was accomplished, it could be expected that the people in the theater would be in bedlam. Besides, he would have to stab the guard outside the little white door in case of challenge. It was better to stick to the original idea, to jump to the stage, run across toward the Green Room, and out the back door. If he had a horse there, waiting, escape should be fairly easy. That too, had been planned for a long time.

  For a while, he sat watching the actors run through their lines lightly and with little feeling. They were in the second scene of the third act, the part where the English mother, Mrs. Mountchessington, in trying to marry her daughter off to Asa Trenchard, the rich American, first learns that he is not rich.

  “I am aware, Mr. Trenchard,” she says, outraged, “that you are not used to the manners of good society, and that alone will excuse the impertinence of which you have been guilty.” She flounces offstage, leaving Asa Trenchard (Mr. Harry Hawk) alone on the boards. He watches her go, then grunts. “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh?” he says. “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man trap!”

  This bit always drew one of the biggest laughs of the play. Booth watched and did not laugh. He was fascinated. At this point, the stage would not be cluttered with actors. Harry Hawk would be alone. Mrs. Muzzy, who played the haughty English mother, would be on her way to her dressing room. Laura Keene would be in the wings, waiting for a cue. Mr. Gifford and his two stagehands would be backstage storing the flats from the previous scene.