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

by James L. Swanson

  On April 9, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton visited Seward three times. The diplomat liked Lincoln’s fierce, iron-willed war leader.

  “God bless you Stanton—I can never tell you half …”

  Stanton hushed him: “Don’t try to speak.”

  Early that evening Abraham Lincoln rushed to Seward’s big brick mansion, known as the “Clubhouse” among Washington insiders. The accident worried Lincoln. Carriage accidents were not trifling affairs in wartime Washington and could prove deadly. Mary Lincoln had nearly been killed when her carriage broke down and flung her headlong into the street. She hit her head hard on the ground and was lucky to survive. The sight of Seward, alive if not well, relieved Lincoln tremendously. They were great rivals once, when in 1860 the emerging rail-splitter from the west challenged Seward, the odds-on favorite for the Republican nomination, and later, when Seward tried to usurp him early in his presidency. But they made peace, and Seward evolved into a trusted adviser and confidant. Just back from Grant’s headquarters at City Point, Virginia, the president reclined on the foot of Seward’s bed and regaled him with the news—his remarkable visit to Richmond, and how he had gone to a military hospital and shook the hands of thousands of wounded soldiers. Then the president confided the best news of all. According to Grant, Lee’s surrender was imminent. After chatting quietly with Seward for nearly an hour, Abraham Lincoln departed. They never saw each other again. Lincoln’s prophecy proved true when a little later, Secretary Stanton visited the Clubhouse so he could tell Seward the news in person. Lee had surrendered. The war was over.

  Now, on the fourteenth, Fanny watched over her father and listened to the sights and sounds of the never-ending celebrations in the streets. A torchlight procession marched to the White House. A band played “Rally Round the Flag.” Fanny was a tall, slender, brown-haired girl precociously conversant in literature and politics, and, at twenty, her father’s prize. With her mother Frances often away at their Auburn, New York, homestead, Fanny grew up in a world of political receptions, dinners, and historical personages and events. An avid and talented writer with an eye for detail, her secret diary that she began at age fourteen brimmed with subtle observations and trenchant character sketches of her encounters with the political, military, and diplomatic elites.

  Around 10:00 P.M. she put down her book, Legends of Charlemagne, turned down the gaslights, and, along with Sergeant George Robinson, a wounded veteran now serving as an army nurse, kept watch over her recovering father.

  Outside in the shadows, Lewis Powell and David Herold were keeping the Clubhouse under surveillance. The street was quiet. They saw no guards at the front door, or anywhere on Madison Place. Two hours ago, when they’d met with Booth at the Herndon House, their leader assured them that they would find their target at home. The newspapers reported the carriage accident days ago, and the extent of Seward’s serious injuries, and noted that he was recuperating at home, bedridden. That made Seward, of all of Lincoln’s cabinet officers, Booth’s most attractive target tonight. The others might prove difficult to track, and could be anywhere—dinner parties, entertainments, or traveling. Seward, alone, helplessly anchored to his bed, was sure to be home at 10:00 this evening. The actor issued simple instructions: invade the house, locate the secretary of state’s bedroom, and kill the defenseless victim with pistol fire and, if required, the knife. This was a difficult mission even for a man like Powell, a battle-hardened and extremely strong ex-Confederate soldier. Powell had three problems. First, how could he get inside Seward’s house? He couldn’t just walk in unannounced. By 10:00 P.M. the front door would certainly be locked. He would have to ring the bell. When—if—someone answered, he could not just shoot or slash his way through the threshold. That might attract the attention of passersby or rouse the occupants from their beds to defend themselves.

  Cunning deception, not brute force, was the key. Booth concocted, probably with David Herold’s help, a brilliant plan. He told Powell to impersonate a messenger delivering important medicine from Seward’s physician, Dr. Verdi. To add the final touch of verisimilitude to the ruse, Powell would actually carry a small package wrapped in butcher’s paper and tied with string. Herold, the former pharmacist’s assistant experienced in making similar deliveries, probably tutored Booth and Powell in the appearance of such packages and then wrapped an empty box to mimic an authentic delivery from Dr. Verdi.

  But then what? Once inside it was Powell’s job to track down Secretary Seward in the sprawling, three-story mansion. Booth did not provide him with a floor plan. He could rule out the first floor. But Seward might lie in one of a number of upper rooms. Powell faced a third challenge: he did not know how many occupants—family members, State Department messengers, nurses, doctors, servants, maids, and guards—were on the premises. Certainly several, but perhaps up to a dozen. A more cautious man might have told Booth he was mad. But Powell, a slavishly loyal one who called his hero “captain,” agreed. Anything for his master. David Herold also complied, as long as he did not have to bloody his hands by killing somebody and could wait for Powell outside, holding their horses.

  From the shadows, Powell and Herold had watched Dr. Verdi leave around 9:30 P.M. After him had come Dr. Norris, who visited briefly and departed around 10:00 P.M.—just in time, according to Booth’s preset timetable. The house was quiet now. They watched the gaslights go dim in several rooms, a signal that the occupants were settling in for the night. A short while later Powell handed his horse to Herold and strode across the street to the secretary of state’s front door. He rang the bell. Herold’s dull, hooded eyes warily scanned up and down the block as he stood watch, safeguarding their mounts.

  Upstairs, on the third floor, Fanny Seward was watching over her sleeping father, and did not hear the bell. She did not know that outside a man waited to, like Macbeth, murder sleep.

  Down on the first floor, William Bell, a nineteen-year-old black servant, hurried to answer the door. Late-night callers were not unusual at the Seward home. At moments of crisis State Department messengers bearing telegraph dispatches might arrive at any hour of the day or night. And ever since the carriage accident, members of the cabinet, military officers, and three different doctors called frequently. There was no reason at all why William Bell should not open that door.

  Before him stood a tall, attractive, solidly built man, well dressed in fine leather boots, black pants, a straw-colored duster, and a felt-brimmed hat; he was holding a small package in his hands. The masquerade worked. Nothing about Powell’s conventional appearance raised Bell’s suspicions. Bell greeted Powell and asked politely, as Seward had trained him, how he could help the visitor. Powell explained his mission: he was a messenger with medicine from Dr. Verdi. That sounded satisfactory to Bell. Dr. Verdi had left his patient within the hour and lived only two blocks from the Sewards. Obviously, Bell reasoned, the doctor must have prescribed some medicine but did not have it with him in his well-worn doctor’s bag. When Verdi got home he probably summoned a messenger to deliver the healing product. Up to this moment Powell did nothing to call undue attention to himself. He even pronounced Dr. Verdi’s name correctly, with the proper Italian accent. Powell stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. Bell reached out to accept the delivery. No, Powell said, he could not give it to a servant. The doctor said he had to deliver it personally to the secretary of state and instruct him how to take the medicine. Bell countered that he was qualified to receive deliveries on Seward’s behalf. Powell was adamant. “I must go up.” He must see the secretary personally—those were his instructions. For five minutes, the assassin and the servant bickered about whether Powell would leave the medicine with Bell. “I must go up,” he repeated like a mantra. “I must go up.”

  Powell, growing impatient, inched relentlessly toward the staircase, backing Bell up to the landing. Bell was in grave danger now. Powell’s patience was almost out, and he knew how to deal with a recalcitrant, disobedient Negro like this, just
as he had in Baltimore a few months back, when, as a houseguest of the mysterious and attractive rebel Branson sisters, he struck and nearly stomped to death a black female servant who sassed him. He didn’t have a knife or pistol then. Now Powell turned away from Bell and lifted a foot to the first stair, then another to the second. Bell chattered on, but Powell kept pounding up the staircase slowly, his boots striking the stairs with dull, methodical thuds that echoed like a ticking case clock to the floors above. If Bell interfered now, he would face Powell’s knife. Luckily for him, he did not attempt to block Powell’s path. Instead, he ascended the stairs with him. The assassin warned Bell that if he didn’t allow him to deliver this medicine, he would report him to his master and get him in big trouble. Cowed, Bell, like a schoolmarm, warned Powell not to tread so heavily on the stairs. He might wake Mr. Seward.

  At the top of the staircase Frederick Seward, who served his father as assistant secretary of state, confronted Bell and the stranger. Powell did not know it, but Frederick stood only a few feet from the closed door to his father’s sickroom. The stranger explained his mission again. Frederick told him that his father was asleep and that he would take delivery of the medicine for him. Again Powell refused, arguing that he must see the secretary. Incredibly, Powell, thanks to that little package he prominently displayed as a prop, had still not aroused suspicion about his true intentions. To Frederick he seemed merely like a stupid messenger, a man so dull-witted that he took instructions literally, believing that Dr. Verdi meant for him to actually place the package into the secretary of state’s hands. Soon Powell would make Frederick regret his assuming condescension.

  Inside the bedroom, Fanny sensed a presence in the hall. Perhaps President Lincoln had come for another visit, she thought. Such a late-night call would not be unusual. Lincoln was famous for his nighttime walks. Perhaps he had strolled to the telegraph office at the nearby War Department for the latest news and then decided to call on the secretary. Fanny hurried to the door and opened it only a little to shield her father from the bright gaslight that would otherwise flood the bedchamber. She saw her brother and, to his right, the tall stranger in the light hat and long overcoat. She whispered, “Fred, Father is awake now.” She knew in an instant that she had done wrong. “Something in Fred’s manner led me at once to think that he did not wish me to say so, and that I had better not have opened the door.” Powell leaned forward and tried to peer into the dark room, but Fanny held the door tight to her body, and the assassin was not able to see his target. He stared at Fanny and, in a harsh and impatient tone, demanded, “Is the Secretary asleep?” Then Fanny made a terrible mistake. She glanced back into the room in the direction of her father, and replied, “Almost.” Fred Seward grabbed the door and shut it quickly.

  It was too late. Innocently, Fanny had given Powell the priceless information he needed. Secretary of State William H. Seward was in that room, lying helpless in a bed against the wall, to the right of the door, defended by no one, Powell probably assumed, but a frail-looking girl. Powell did not know that Sergeant Robinson was in the bedroom too. Powell resisted the impulse to draw his knife that instant and burst through the door. With William Bell and Frederick Seward hovering close, his wit restrained his body and he calculated his next move. The pair was no match for him, but together, they could delay by precious seconds his entry to the bedroom. Trickery had taken him this far—time for one more charade.

  Powell continued to argue with Frederick outside the door. Finally Fred, exasperated, gave Powell an ultimatum: surrender that medicine now, or take it back to Dr. Verdi. Powell glared at the young Seward, still refusing to yield the medicine. Finally, the persistent messenger feigned surrender in this battle of wills. He stuffed the package into his pocket, turned around, and began his descent. He did not remove his hand from the pocket. Bell, walking down ahead of Powell, turned over his shoulder and chided him again about walking so loudly. Bell continued down the stairs, his eyes looking ahead now to the front door through which, in a few moments, he would, with pleasure, conduct the illmannered stranger into the street. At the top of the stairs Frederick Seward, satisfied at turning away an annoying pest, took his eyes off Powell’s back and headed for his room. In a flash, Powell reversed course and bounded up the stairs. Before Seward could turn around, Powell already stood behind him. Seward whirled but too late: Powell was pointing a Whitney revolver at him, the muzzle inches from his face. In another moment a .36-caliber conical lead round would explode his face, and the hot black powder would, at this range, not only kill him instantly but also burn and disfigure his flesh a hideous black.

  “I’m mad, I’m mad!” Lewis Powell,

  Secretary of State Seward’s assassin.

  Powell, staring into Seward’s eyes, squeezed the trigger. The hammer fell and struck the percussion cap. Seward had no time to move—he knew he was dead. Then he heard a metallic click. Misfire! Either the copper percussion cap malfunctioned or the faulty powder charge in the chamber did not ignite. The reason did not matter: Seward was still alive. But Powell, unlike his master Booth, had five more rounds in his revolver. He could draw the hammer back with his thumb, cock the pistol, rotate the revolver’s cylinder to bring a fresh round into firing position, and shoot again. It would take just a moment. Then Powell made the first of two miscalculations that jeopardized his mission.

  Instead of trying to fire again, Powell raised the pistol high in the air and brought down a crushing blow to Seward’s head. He hit him so hard that he broke the pistol’s steel ramrod, jamming the cylinder and making it impossible to fire the weapon again. In a fury, Powell, using all his might, clubbed Seward repeatedly with the barrel of the broken Whitney. William Bell ran down the stairs and into the street, shouting, “Murder!” Watching from across the street, a skittish David Herold knew this was not part of the plan.

  Fanny, ignorant of the mayhem on the other side of the door, sat down in her chair beside her father. A few minutes after her encounter with the determined stranger, she heard “the sound of blows—it seemed to me as many as half a dozen—sharp and heavy, with lighter ones between.” She thought the servants were chasing a rat. When the sounds continued, Fanny turned to Sergeant Robinson: “What can be the matter? Do go and see.” Suddenly afraid, she rose and accompanied him. While Fanny was puzzling about the sound, Lewis Powell stood on the other side of the door, beating in her brother’s brains. As soon as Robinson opened the door, Fanny saw a horrible sight—her brother’s face, wild-eyed, covered with blood. Powell moved lightning fast. He shoved Fred aside and struck Robinson in the forehead hard with the knife, stunning him with the blow. The assassin pushed past the reeling sergeant and the waiflike girl blocking his path and sprinted to the bed with his arms outstretched, clutching the knife in his right hand and the pistol in his left, brushing Fanny with it as he passed.

  In near darkness, Fanny raced Powell to the bed, trying to throw her slender body between the huge assassin and her helpless father. Unable to get ahead of him, she could do no better than run beside him. The assassin reached the bed and pounced upon Seward. Fanny shouted, “Don’t kill him!” Seward awoke, tried feebly to raise himself, turned to the left, and saw Fanny. Then he looked up. He glimpsed Powell’s unforgettable rugged face, lantern jaw, and searing eyes. The assassin’s left hand pushed down hard on the secretary’s chest, pinning him to the bed. Powell’s right hand clutching the knife rose high until he exerted every ounce of strength he possessed to swing down a tremendous blow. The knife flashed past Seward’s face, cutting into the sheets and plunging into the mattress. Powell had missed. Inflamed, Powell thrust the knife above his head again and delivered another powerful blow. He missed again. In the dim light, and with Seward positioned by his doctors on the far side of the bed so that his broken arm could hang free over the side, Powell’s aim was off. His style of attack was wrong. The theatrical arcing swing of the knife that Booth employed against Major Rathbone had no place in an almost pitch-black room. The
darkness made it too hard to aim the pivoting strike. Moreover, Powell, unlike Booth—renowned for his expertise with swords and daggers—was not a knife fighter. As a Confederate soldier, his primary tools were firearms—the musket and the pistol—not edged weapons. Powell needed to get in close and slice across Seward’s throat, or stab through an eye socket into the brain, or sink the blade into the soft stomach tissue.

  Determined not to miss again, Powell adjusted himself and delivered a third mighty blow aimed at Seward’s throat. The agonized groan that rose from the bed told Powell he had finally baptized his knife. The blade slashed open Seward’s cheek so viciously that the skin hung from a flap, exposing his teeth and fractured jawbone. His cheek resembled a fish gill. Seward choked on the warm, metallic tasting syrup that spurted from his mouth and poured down his throat. The bedsheets, stained with blood and scarred by the blade, and preserved to this day as holy relics at Seward’s home in Auburn, New York, survive as mute testimony to the power of Powell’s striking arm.

  Across the room Sergeant Robinson regained his senses and made a split-second decision: he would fight to the death before he allowed the assassin to murder the secretary of state and Miss Fanny. He rushed Powell. In an instant the two battle-hardened Civil War veterans grappled in a death struggle. Powell’s strength surprised Robinson—he could barely hold on to him as Powell went for the bed again. Fanny, temporarily dazed, thought for a moment that it was all a “fearful dream.” Then she knew. She screamed, not once, but in a ceaseless, howling, and terrifying wail that woke her brother Augustus, or “Gus,” who was asleep in a room nearby. Fanny then opened a window and screamed to the street below. That was enough for David Herold. He kicked his horse and fled, abandoning Powell to fate. Undeterred by Fanny’s screaming, Powell kept fighting. His adventures at Gettysburg and with Mosby’s Rangers made him cool under fire. His resolve stiffened. He would not permit one man and a screaming girl to scare him off.