Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer

by James L. Swanson

  Booth turned to face the two paneled wood doors—one to his left and the other directly in front of him—that opened into boxes seven and eight, now combined into one box for the Lincolns.

  The actor’s black pupils flared wide, adjusting to the darkness, while also fixing on the only available light in the dim, claustrophobic chamber—a faint pinpoint emanating from the peephole that somebody, probably Booth, had bored through a right-hand panel of the door to box number seven. A cylindrical beam shone through from the illuminated box on the other side of the door, but it was so weak that it failed to span the narrow vestibule and put a small spot of light on the opposite wall. Instead the ray faltered in midair, diffused into the absorbing darkness.

  Booth peeked through the dot of light on the door, giving himself a partial view of the interior of the box. He saw what he was looking for—a high-backed, upholstered rocking chair, just a few feet away on the other side of the door.

  The seating arrangement in the box was perfect for an assassin. Lincoln sat at the far left, his rocker wedged nearly against the wall of the box. At this angle the president’s left side faced the audience, his right the interior of the box, and, to his front, the stage below. Lincoln was close to the door through which Booth would spring. Mary Lincoln sat to the president’s right, perched on a wood, caned-bottom chair. Next to her right was Clara Harris on another chair, and at the far right was Major Rathbone on a sofa. Booth could enter the box and move on Lincoln without having to get past the major.

  Onstage, it was the beginning of act 3, scene 2. There were four scenes left before the end of the play. Mrs. Mountchessington and her daughter Augusta, a pair of English gold diggers, were conniving about how to marry off the girl to Asa Trenchard, a rich American bumpkin played by the celebrated comic actor Harry Hawk.

  ” Yes, my child, while Mr. De Boots and Mr. Trenchard are both here, you must ask yourself seriously, as to the state of your affections. Remember, your happiness for life will depend on the choice you make.”

  “What would you advise, Mamma? You know I am always advised by you.”

  “Dear, obedient child. De Boots has excellent expectations, but they are only expectations after all. This American is rich, and on the whole I think a well regulated affection ought to incline to Asa Trenchard”

  It was approximately 10:11 P.M. Booth plunged both hands into the deep, copious pockets of his black frock coat and withdrew his weapons. In his right hand was the .44-caliber single-shot Deringer pistol, in his left the shiny and sharp Rio Grande Camp Knife. He steadied himself. Harry Hawk entered the scene from stage left. No, not yet. Too many characters—Mrs. Mountchessington, Augusta, and Asa Trenchard—were still onstage. Booth listened keenly to the dialogue of the play for his cue, the actors’ voices rising to the president’s box and echoing through the doors and into the vestibule where he remained hidden. Booth heard Asa Trenchard confess to Mrs. Mountchessington that he is not rich.

  “Not heir to the fortune, Mr. Trenchard.”

  “Oh, no.”

  After a few more lines, Harry Hawk would hold the stage alone and would speak a line guaranteed to produce such uproarious laughter that it would smother the sound of just about anything including, Booth hoped, the report of a pistol.

  Booth’s thumb pulled back the hammer of the Deringer until he heard it cock into firing position. His hand dropped to the porcelain doorknob.

  “Mr. Trenchard, you will please recollect you are addressing my daughter, and in my presence!”

  “Yes, I’m offering her my heart and hand just as she wants them, with nothing in ‘em.”

  “Augusta, dear, to your room.”

  “Yes, Ma, the nasty beast.”

  Now, Booth knew, only two actors remained onstage.

  The tension was unbearable. The syllables being spoken onstage sounded no longer like words but like the last ticks of a dying clock winding down. It was 10:13 P.M.

  “I am aware, Mr. Trenchard, you are not used to the manners of good society, and that, alone, will excuse the impertinence of which you have been guilty.” Mrs. Mountchessington exited in a huff.

  Harry Hawk was alone onstage now.

  Booth opened the door and stepped into the president’s box. Hawk began reciting the last sentence Lincoln would ever hear, a corny broadside of comic insults that delighted the audience.

  “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Wal, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal…”

  Lincoln was so near. If Booth desired, he could reach out and tap him on the shoulder with the Deringer’s muzzle. No one in the box had seen or heard him enter. The Lincolns, Harris, and Rathbone all continued watching the action onstage. Booth began the performance he had rehearsed in his mind again and again since that afternoon. He stepped toward Lincoln who was stationary—not rolling back and forth on the rockers of his chair. Booth focused his eyes on the back of the president’s head. He raised his right arm to shoulder height and extended it forward, aiming the pistol at Lincoln’s head. He didn’t even really have to aim—aiming suggests a marksman’s skill—he was so close to the president now that all he had to do was point the Deringer.

  The factory had not set the pistol with a hair trigger, so until Booth increased his finger pressure to a few pounds the Deringer would not fire. He squeezed harder.

  “…you sockdologizing old mantrap…”

  As the audience exploded in laughter, at that instant, at the last possible moment before the pistol discharged, Abraham Lincoln jerked his head away from Booth, low and to the left, as though trying to evade the shot. The black powder charge exploded and spit the bullet toward Lincoln’s head. James Ferguson saw Lincoln move just before he saw the muzzle flash illuminate the box momentarily like a miniature lightning bolt. The president’s movement and the shot were simultaneous. Had Booth missed?

  If he had, the assassin was suddenly at great risk because he didn’t have the twenty to forty seconds needed to reload—and, anyway, he hadn’t even bothered to carry more gunpowder and bullets in his coat. Now he was trapped between Lincoln and Rathbone, armed with nothing but the knife. If Lincoln’s peripheral vision had alerted him to the presence of an intruder creeping stealthily toward him, or if he had caught the blur of Booth’s arm moving into firing position, the president might have ducked the shot, or at worst suffered a nonfatal grazing head, neck, or shoulder wound. If only that had happened, then Lincoln, even at fifty-six years old, would have been a formidable opponent. The idea of venerable Father Abraham fighting back against the gymnastic, leaping, and sword-fighting stage star is not as farfetched as it sounds.

  It was widely held in 1865, and certainly today, that the toil of the Civil War had transformed Lincoln into a ruined old man. Lincoln’s beard, his slow, ambling gait, and his careworn face, captured so movingly in the last photographs by Alexander Gardner in February 1865 and by Henry Warren in March 1865, gave credence to the myth of Father Abraham, the ancient, Moses-like figure leading his people. But there was another Abraham Lincoln that no one in Washington had ever seen: the vigorous, muscular Rail-splitter of the West. That image was more than a brilliant slogan from the presidential campaign of 1860. Lincoln had really been a rail-splitter, and a man hardened by years of brutal physical toil. With his creased apple doll-like head sitting atop a thin, six-foot-four-inch frame, President Lincoln might have looked old and weak. The wartime demands of the presidency had taken their toll, and Lincoln had lost twenty or thirty pounds during four years in office. But beneath that ever-present baggy frock coat and ill-fitting trousers, there remained a lean and formidable physique. Too soon doctors would discover and marvel at the age difference between his face and his body.

  Had Booth missed, Lincoln could have risen from his chair to confront his assassin. At that moment the president, cornered, with not only his own life in danger but also Mary’s, would almost certainly have fought back. If he did, Booth would have found himself outmatched facing not kindly F
ather Abraham, but the aroused fury of the Mississippi River flatboatman who fought off a gang of murderous river pirates in the dead of night, the champion wrestler who, years before, humbled the Clary’s Grove boys in New Salem in a still legendary match, or even the fifty-six-year-old president who could still pick up a long, splitting-axe by his fingertips, raise it, extend his arm out parallel with the ground, and suspend the axe in midair. Lincoln could have choked the life out of the five-foot-eight-inch, 150-pound thespian, or wrestled him over the side of the box, launching Booth on a crippling dive to the stage almost twelve feet below.

  But Lincoln had not seen Booth coming. He had not moved to avoid being shot. Instead, just as Booth was about to fire, Lincoln leaned forward and to the left to look down into the audience on the main floor. James Ferguson saw it all: “The President, at the time he was shot, was sitting in this position: he was leaning his hand on the rail, and was looking down at a person in the [theatre],—not looking on the stage. He had the flag that decorated the box pulled around, and he was looking between the post and the flag.”

  The pistol, a fine, expensive weapon, had functioned perfectly. The trigger freed the cocked hammer from its tension spring. The hammer snapped forward, striking the copper percussion cap resting over the hollow steel nipple mounted on the barrel. The resulting spark flashed into the chamber, igniting the load of black powder. The explosion propelled the .44-caliber ball at a muzzle velocity slow by modern standards, but fast enough. Still, Booth had almost missed. If the president had leaned forward a little more, the bullet might have whistled just over his head.

  Instead it struck him in the head, on the lower left side, a little below the ear. The ball ripped through his chestnut-colored hair, cut the skin, perforated the skull, and, because of the angle of Lincoln’s head at the moment of impact, drove a diagonal tunnel through Lincoln’s brain from left to right. The wet brain matter slowed the ball’s velocity, absorbing enough of its energy to prevent it from penetrating the other side of the skull and exiting through the president’s face. The ball came to rest in Lincoln’s brain, lodged behind his right eye.

  Lincoln never knew what happened to him. His head dropped forward until his chin hit his chest, and his body lost all muscular control and sagged against the richly upholstered rocking chair. He did not fall to the floor. He looked as though he was bored with the play and had fallen asleep. It happened so fast that Lincoln lost consciousness before he heard the report of the pistol, smelled the burnt gunpowder, or was enveloped by the voluminous cloud of blue-gray smoke, the signature of all black-powder weapons. The sound of the pistol, more like the hollow “poof” of fireworks than the hard cracking of a modern firearm—another characteristic of nineteenth-century black-powder weapons with low muzzle velocities—echoed and hung in the box for several seconds. Then it traveled to the ceiling and the stage below and reverberated throughout the theatre.

  Nobody moved. The president, Mary Lincoln, Clara Harris, Major Rathbone, and Booth remained perfectly still, as though posed in the studio for one of Alexander Gardner’s wet-plate albumen photographs that required a motionless exposure of several seconds. Time stopped.

  The pistol’s report did startle a number of people in the audience. Some thought it was part of the play; others, an unscripted surprise in honor of the president’s visit. Some people didn’t hear it at all.

  Rathbone, an experienced army officer who had heard gunfire before, was the first to realize that something was amiss. He turned to his left. The smoke, now tinted red from the gaslights, and the crimson upholstery and wallpaper that combined to give the box a fiery, devilish glow, partly obscured his vision. Rathbone rose from his seat, stepping in the direction of the president. At that instant he saw a wild-eyed man, his face ghostly against his black clothes, hair, and moustache. Like a demon, Booth emerged from the black-powder haze and sprang at him. Simultaneously Rathbone lunged for Booth, grabbing him by the coat. The assassin broke free, shouting but one word, “Freedom!” and thrust his right arm up, as high as he could reach. Rathbone’s eyes were drawn up by the gesture, and he saw what Booth clenched in his fist: a big, shiny knife, its menacing blade pointed directly down at him. Booth moved too quickly for Rathbone to read the patriotic slogans acid-etched into the blade: “Land of the Free/Home of the Brave”; “Liberty/Independence.” Booth was not going to try to fend off Rathbone with a few, puny forward jabs of the knife. Instead, he sought the death blow. He was going to deliver an arcing, theatrical swing pivoting from his shoulder that would drive the blade through Rathbone’s ribs and into his heart. Booth’s arm was already in motion, and at the last moment Rathbone raised his arm to parry Booth’s strike. The major grunted in pain. His reflexive, lightning-fast defensive maneuver saved his life, but the assassin’s blade sliced through his coat sleeve and into his upper arm. Blood gushed from the long, deep wound.

  Booth had no more time to waste on finishing off Rathbone. The clock in his head was still ticking down. If he was going to escape the theatre, he had to get out of the box at once. He turned to the balustrade and swung one leg over the side. By now some members of the audience had looked up. Was that a man climbing out of the president’s box, preparing to leap to the stage? As Booth positioned for his leap, Rathbone came at him again, grabbing at his coattail. Distracted, Booth got tangled in the framed portrait of George Washington hanging from the front of the box, and one of his riding spurs snagged one of the flags that just a few hours before Harry Clay Ford had cradled in his arms when he ran into Booth on the street. It was the revenge of “Old Glory,” soon went the popular myth. Still he managed to free himself and imperfectly leapt forward to the stage. Booth hit the stage unevenly but still on his feet. He knew something was wrong. He could feel it in his left leg, near the ankle, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

  Booth clambered to center stage, turned to the audience, and rose erect to his full height. His splendid chest had always made him appear taller than he was. Every second was precious to his escape, but he had rehearsed this part too well to forsake it now. He knew that this was his last performance on the American stage, and for this he would be remembered for eternity. He must not blow his lines. All eyes were upon him. He stood motionless, paused momentarily for dramatic effect, and thrust his bloody dagger triumphantly into the air. The gas footlights danced on the shiny blade now speckled with red and exaggerated his wild countenance. “Sic semper tyrannis,” he thundered. It was the state motto of Virginia—“Thus always to tyrants.” Then Booth shouted, “The South is avenged.”

  The great crime. A fanciful print published shortly after the assassination.

  DR. CHARLES LEALE HAD WITNESSED THE LEAP: “I SAW A MAN with dark hair and bright black eyes, leap from the box to the stage below … and [he] raised his shining dagger in the air, which reflected the light as though it had been a diamond.”

  Harry Hawk, the only actor onstage when Booth made the leap, could not understand what was happening. Hawk, more than anyone else in the theatre, was in the best position to hear the shot, see the smoky cloud, and observe a familiar-looking figure climb onto the balustrade. Why, if he didn’t know better, he would swear that the man who landed hard on the stage, gathered himself, and was now approaching him rapidly with an unsheathed dagger looked an awful lot like John Wilkes Booth. Hawk had known Booth for a year and wasn’t likely to make a false identification. Hawk lingered indecisively, standing directly in Booth’s escape path. When Booth was nearly upon him, Hawk fled: “[H]e was rushing towards me with a dagger and I turned and run.” As Booth moved across the stage heading for the wings, James Ferguson, sitting just a few feet away, heard him exult to himself—“I have done it!”

  Booth fled into the wings off stage right, slashing his dagger wildly at anyone—actor, orchestra conductor, or employee—who got in his way. William Withers said he felt Booth’s hot breath as the assassin pushed past him and struck at him with the knife. The conductor did not try to stop
him. No one in the cast did. Booth had taken all the actors backstage by surprise and rushed past them.

  Then a voice cried out from the president’s box. “Stop that man!” From the time Booth shot Lincoln, wounded Rathbone, fought his way out of the box, leapt to the stage, claimed center stage, uttered his cry of vengeance, and vanished into the wings, no one in the audience had done a thing. It was just as Booth had planned. Some in the audience gasped with fright and delight—they still thought it was part of the play. Others, including the actors near the stage and in the wings, were too shocked to obstruct or pursue Booth.

  “Will no one stop that man?” an anguished Rathbone again pleaded to the crowd below. Clara Harris echoed his cry.

  “He has shot the President!”

  LESS THAN A MILE AWAY, ON MADISON PLACE, NEAR THE WHITE House on the east side of Lafayette Park, all was quiet at the home of Secretary of State William H. Seward. Bedridden since a terrible carriage accident on April 5, Seward drifted in and out of consciousness. Nine days before, when out riding with his daughter, Frances “Fanny” Adeline Seward; his son Frederick; and a family friend, the coachman, Henry Key, dismounted to fix a stubborn door that wouldn’t stay shut. The horses bolted, running madly through the city with the unmanned reins swinging wildly in the air. The secretary of state sprang from the moving carriage to try for the reins or horses, but he caught his shoe on the way out, tore off the heel, and was spun facedown into the street. The fall almost killed him, but he survived with a concussion, his jaw broken in two places, right arm broken between the shoulder and elbow, and deep bruises too numerous to count. Fanny rushed to his crumpled body, fearing he was dead.

  That night Seward’s disfigured face swelled so badly that his own children could barely recognize him, and the blood pouring through his nose almost suffocated him. Seward’s personal physician, Dr. T. S. Verdi; Dr. Basil Norris, an army medical officer; and Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes attended him and cautioned the family to keep their patient under constant watch.