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

by James L. Swanson

  Matthews was not alone. On the night of April 14, others in Washington attempted to obliterate evidence of their connection to Lincoln’s assassin. And the next morning, as news of Lincoln’s death spread across the nation, many other letters written in Booth’s hand certainly perished in flames. Indeed, fewer than one hundred of Booth’s letters and manuscripts survived the tumultuous days that followed the assassination. One of his paramours even sought to destroy herself. Ella Turner, a petite, sensual, redheaded prostitute, placed Booth’s photo under her pillow, saturated a piece of cloth with chloroform, pressed the poisonous anesthetic to her delicate face, and tried to fill her lungs with a fatal dose. At 11:00 A.M. on April 15, residents of her house found her in her room, collapsed on her bed, unconscious but alive. Several doctors were summoned. The press got hold of the story, and the Washington Evening Star published the lurid details of her rescue: “Proper remedies were immediately applied, when she soon aroused and asked for Booth’s picture, which she had concealed under the pillow of her bed, at the same time remarking to the physicians that she ‘did not thank them for saving her life.’ “Soon she came to her senses and chose to survive her lover’s crime.

  Booth’s female correspondents had more to worry about than the letters he had sent to them. They could dispose of those documents easily enough. But what about the love notes that they had mailed to him, and that were in his possession? Many women—single, engaged, and married—had written incriminating letters to their idol offering to surrender whatever pleasures he chose to take from them. George Alfred Townsend penned an unforgettable vignette of a typical case:

  The beauty of this man and his easy confidentiality, not familiar, but marked by a mild and even dignity, made women impassioned of him. He was licentious as men, and particularly as actors go, but not a seducer, as far as I can learn. I have traced one case in Philadelphia where a young girl who had seen him on stage became enamored of him.

  She sent him bouquets, notes, photographs and all the accessories of an intrigue. Booth, to whom such things were common, yielded to the girl’s importunities at last and gave her an interview. He was surprised to find that so bold a correspondent was so young, so fresh, and so beautiful. He told her therefore, in pity, the consequences of pursuing him; that he entertained no affection for her, though a sufficient desire, and that he was a man of the world to whom all women grew fulsome in their turn.

  “Go home,” he said, “and beware of actors. They are to be seen, not to be known.”

  The girl, yet more infatuated, persisted. Booth, who had no real virtue except by scintillations, became what he had promised, and one more soul went to the isles of Cypress.

  On April 14, and for weeks to come, more than one woman prayed that Booth had destroyed her letters before he killed the president. Fortune spared the reputations of the assassin’s admirers—not one of their love letters was discovered and published during the manhunt. But when news of the assassination reached Boston, a singular young girl decided to cherish, and not obliterate, her intimate bond to Lincoln’s killer.

  They had met in Boston the previous year, during Booth’s successful, monthlong theatrical engagement at the Boston Museum. It was an astonishing run—between April 25 and May 28, 1864, Booth, onstage almost every night, performed the greatest roles in the Shakespearean canon—Richard III, Hamlet, Romeo, Othello, Shylock, and Macbeth. He met her sometime during that month in Boston. Her name was Isabel Sumner. The daughter of a respectable merchant family, she possessed an intelligent face, a slender frame, and ravishing beauty. She was sixteen years old, and Booth proposed that they become lovers. He was smitten immediately, and pursued Isabel with an ardor uncommon for a man who was used to having women throw themselves at him. “God bless this sweet face before me,” he cooed in a letter written as he gazed at the photograph she had given him. “It would move me to do anything.”

  The stage star courted the teenage beauty in a series of emotionally uninhibited letters that made him sound like a teenager: “I LOVE YOU … in the fountain of my heart a seal is set to keep its waters, pure and bright for thee alone.” Booth gave Isabel a signed photograph of himself, a lock of his hair, and a ring. Why did the debauched, worldly actor so crave this innocent, young girl? Booth answered the question himself in a letter: “I will … never, never cease to think of you as something pure and sacred, A bright and happy dream, from which I have been awoke to Sadness.”

  When Isabel learned that Lincoln’s assassin was her lover, she could not bring herself to destroy John’s letters and gifts. Instead, she hid them for the next sixty-two years, until her death in 1927. As best as anyone could remember, she never spoke the name John Wilkes Booth again. Fortunately for Isabel Sumner, Booth did not carry her photo in his wallet the night he left the National Hotel to murder Abraham Lincoln. Neither Stanton’s detectives nor the newspapers discovered her, and her connection to Booth stayed a secret for the next one hundred and thirty years.

  FRANCES MUDD ROSE AT 6:00 A.M. AND CALLED FOR HER SERvants to get breakfast ready. At 7:00 A.M., Mrs. Mudd woke her husband. David Herold, after only two hours of rest, shambled downstairs. John Wilkes Booth, his mind and body still spent from his great day, stayed in bed. He had ridden too far from Washington to hear the ringing bells of the city’s churches and firehouses tolling in mourning. Dr. Mudd invited Herold to join his family for breakfast. Frances prepared a plate of food for Booth and told a servant to carry it upstairs and set it on his bedside table.

  Herold questioned Mudd about his local contacts, especially those who lived close to the river. Davey’s evident knowledge of the area prompted Frances Mudd to inquire if he lived in their county.

  “No, ma’am,” he replied, “but I have been frolicking around for five or six months.”

  Amused by his boyish demeanor, Frances teased him: “All play and no work makes Jack a bad boy. Your father ought to make you go to work.”

  “My father is dead,” Herold responded, “and,” he added jauntily, “I am ahead of the old lady.”

  As he bantered at the breakfast table, the good-natured Davey Herold appeared oblivious to the grave peril he faced. He was running for his life, but Frances Mudd observed that “he seemed not to have a care in the world.” Before Mudd left the house, Herold asked him for two favors. “After breakfast, when I was about to leave for my farm-work, this young man asked me if I had a razor about the house, that his friend desired to take a shave, as perhaps he would feel better.” The doctor provided a straight razor, soap, and water. And, wondered Davey, could Mudd make a pair of crutches for Booth, nothing fancy, just something simple for him “to hobble along with”? The physician, handy with wood and tools, complied: “I got two arm pieces and whittled them out as best I could.” Then Mudd took the pieces to one of his hired men, an old Englishman named John Best, and, using a saw and an auger, “he and I made a rude pair of crutches out of a piece of plank” and sent them to Booth.

  When breakfast was finished, Herold went back to bed. Lieutenant Dana and the Thirteenth New York Cavalry patrol left Piscataway and pressed on toward Bryantown. Frances Mudd did not hear a sound from Herold or Booth for the next four hours until around noon, when Davey came down to devour his second meal of the day. While Herold dined, the Thirteenth New York reached Bryantown around noon. David Dana’s men were just a few miles from Dr. Mudd’s. This was the closest the manhunters had gotten to Booth since the assassination. As before, Booth stayed in bed. The servant who brought him dinner found Saturday morning’s breakfast tray, its food untouched, still sitting on the bedside table. Improvidently, Booth skipped the midday meal, too. He must have been famished, and who knew when his next meal might come?

  BY 8:00 A.M. GEORGE ATZERODT HAD MADE IT TO GEORGEtown. He showed up at Matthews & Co.’s store at 49 High Street and paid a call on an acquaintance, John Caldwell. Atzerodt said that he was going to the country and asked Caldwell if he wanted to buy his watch. “I told him that I had a watch of my own
, and did not want another.” Then Atzerodt asked for a loan of $10. Caldwell refused. “I told him that I did not have any money to spare.” Atzerodt unbelted his revolver and offered it to Caldwell. “Lend me $10.00, and take this as security, and I will bring the money or send it to you next week.” The storekeeper looked the weapon over. “I thought the revolver was good security for the money, and I let him have the money, expecting him to pay it back…. I did not inquire of him why it was loaded and capped.” Atzerodt left the store and continued on his journey. He had decided to leave Washington. He knew a place where he thought he would be safe.

  aT THE EXECUTIVE MANSION THE SOLDIERS CARRIED THE president’s temporary coffin to the second-floor guest bedroom for the autopsy. Cutting open Abraham Lincoln’s brain and body served little purpose. The surgeons knew what killed him—a single bullet through the brain. They were hiding their voyeurism behind the camouflage of scientific inquiry. Their chosen surgeon reached for his saws and knives while his brother physicians watched. And they wanted the bullet. The nation could hardly bury its martyred Father Abraham with a lead ball lodged in his brain. They cut it out, marked it as evidence, and preserved it for history. When they were finished Mary Lincoln sent a request: Please cut a lock of his hair for her. His blood, according to a newspaper report, was drained from his corpse by the embalmer—the same mortuary artist who preserved the little body of Willie Lincoln in 1862—transferred to glass jars, and “sacredly preserved.”

  Gideon Welles, at the White House to check on his wife, Mary Jane, while she cared for Mrs. Lincoln, descended the staircase, accompanied by Attorney General James Speed. At the foot of the stairs, they found Tad Lincoln staring out of a window. Welles never forgot the sight of the grieving boy: “‘Tad’ … seeing us, cried aloud his tears, ‘O, Mr. Welles, who killed my father?’ “It was more than the navy secretary could bear. All through the previous night, and while he had watched the president die that morning, Welles had suppressed his emotions. Now, standing beside little Tad, he lost all composure and poured forth his tears.

  aT DR. MUDD’S KITCHEN TABLE, DAVEY ASKED HIM WHERE he could get his hands on a buggy or carriage to transport Booth. Mudd suggested that Davey ride with him to his father’s place and try there first. Thomas Davis, the hired hand in charge of Mudd’s horses, saddled their mounts.

  Frances Mudd was concerned that Booth had not eaten all day, and just as her husband and David Herold were leaving, she asked if she could visit him. “Yes, certainly you can,” Dr. Mudd replied. She arrayed a tray with savory fare—“some cake, a couple of oranges, and some wine”—and carried it upstairs. Placing the tray on the table, she asked Booth how he was feeling.

  “My back hurts me dreadfully,” he complained. “I must have hurt it when the horse fell and broke my leg.”

  Booth declined the cake and wine and pleaded for brandy instead. Frances regretted that they had none but offered as a substitute “some good whiskey”—his spirit of choice at the Star Saloon and Surratt’s tavern. Strangely, he declined the whiskey, too.

  Mrs. Mudd apologized: “I guess you think I have very little hospitality; you have been sick all day and I have not been up to see you.” Once more she asked Booth if she could do anything for him. He spoke no more, and she left the room.

  When Samuel Mudd and David Herold arrived at Oak Hill, his father’s farm a few miles to the east, Dr. George Mudd was not at home. Sam’s younger brother, Henry Lowe Mudd Jr., advised them that all the carriages but one were broken down and in need of repair. He could not let them have the good carriage without their father’s permission because tomorrow was Easter Sunday, and the elder Mudd might need it. Herold suggested that they ride on to Bryantown and try their luck there. Samuel Mudd agreed, and they spurred their horses on at an unhurried pace. When they got within sight of the edge of town, Davey yanked back hard on the reins and brought his horse to a dead stop. He could not believe what he saw, several hundred yards ahead. Mounted men, wearing dark blue shell jackets trimmed with yellow piping. Yankee cavalry. Manhunters.

  Herold had just spotted the vanguard of the Thirteenth New York Cavalry. Ordered to pursue John Wilkes Booth from Washington, Dana had led his troops into Bryantown, a well-known locale of Confederate intrigue, commandeered the tavern, and occupied the town. Dana intended to establish a command center there, and from Bryantown launch cavalry patrols through the surrounding countryside, in pursuit of the Lincoln and Seward assassins.

  Herold made a quick decision. He didn’t need that carriage after all, he told Mudd. Booth can still ride a horse. Before the troops could spot them, Davey turned his horse around and galloped immediately back to Mudd’s farm to warn Booth. Puzzled by Davey’s skedaddling (Booth hadn’t told the doctor yet that he was Lincoln’s assassin), Mudd continued into Bryantown at a leisurely pace, just as he had done countless times on a quiet Saturday afternoon.

  Mudd went about his business, purchasing supplies—calico and pepper from Mr. Beans’s store—and iron nails from another establishment. He greeted friends and neighbors he passed in the street, as always. But a strange, wild atmosphere hung over Bryantown. “The town was full of soldiers and people coming and going all the while,” noted one of the manhunters, Colonel H. H. Wells. The determined cavalrymen’s faces glowered with anger and the seriousness of their purpose. Mudd wondered what had happened.

  Then somebody blurted it out. Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated in Washington last night. He died early this morning. The cavalry is here in pursuit of the assassin who escaped. Detectives and soldiers are going to turn over Charles County hunting for the murderer. Did Mudd’s mind flash back to the 4:00 A.M. knock on his door? Could it be?

  Who killed the president? the citizens demanded of the soldiers. The secret was impossible to keep. It was the actor. Booth. Edwin Booth? voices in the crowd wondered aloud. No, not Edwin, but his brother John, the soldiers told them. Lincoln’s assassin was John Wilkes Booth.

  Mudd displayed no outward signs of alarm. And no eyes fixed him with accusing stares. He remained calm and did not, by word or deed, betray the terrible secret known, at this moment, to him alone: America’s most wanted man was hiding in his house, less than five miles away. The Thirteenth New York could be there in half an hour.

  Back at Mudd’s farm, David Herold jumped off his horse and scurried to the house. Frances was in the kitchen supervising the servants as they prepared the next day’s Easter Sunday dinner. Davey, spying her through a window, tapped on the pane and she opened the front door. She asked Herold if he had found a carriage. “No, ma’am,” Davey replied. “We stopped over at the Doctor’s father’s and asked for his carriage, but tomorrow being Easter Sunday, his family had to go to church, and he could not spare it. I then rode some distance down the road with the Doctor, and then concluded to return and try the horses.” Herold was convincing enough that he aroused no suspicion in Mrs. Mudd.

  Davey excused himself and hurried upstairs. Booth was still in bed, but he wouldn’t be for long. The cavalry is here, Davey warned his master; they are at Bryantown, just down the road. Herold explained how he turned back, and how Dr. Mudd rode into town. Booth sat up immediately. Davey helped him out of bed and Booth propped himself up on the crutches. Frances was alerted by the creaky floorboards above her head—“I heard them moving around the room and in a short time they came down”—and waited for them at the foot of the stairs. As Booth hobbled on his crutches, his right leg encased in his knee-high riding boot and his left foot bare, and a brace of heavy, holstered revolvers belted around his waist, his face presented a “picture of agony” to Frances Mudd. She implored Davey to leave Booth there to rest, but the young man reassured her: “If he suffers much we won’t go far. I will take him to my lady-love’s, not far from here.”

  It was around 3:00 P.M., Saturday, April 15, and Booth was in grave danger. Only one man, Samuel Mudd, stood between him and disaster. Over in nearby Bryantown, Mudd had the power to end the manhunt that afternoon.
All Dr. Mudd needed to do was tell the soldiers. He could do it with a few well-chosen words: John Wilkes Booth and an accomplice are hiding at my farm; he’s in the front bedroom on the second floor; he has a broken leg; he cannot run away; I’ll take you there now. All he had to do was speak those words, and Dr. Samuel A. Mudd would become, overnight, a national hero.

  Booth faced the most difficult choice of his escape. Should he leave Mudd’s farm at once or wait for the doctor to return? Both options presented risks. Mudd’s farm was in the land of the great Zekiah swamp, and he and Davey did not know the ground. A wrong turn might trap them in the notorious, fearful morass. Moreover, although Booth knew that rebel operatives lived nearby, including William Burtles, he did not know the way to their homes. If he and Davey fled now, it would put them on the roads in broad daylight without knowing where to go.

  Waiting for Dr. Mudd to come home presented great risks, too. If the doctor had betrayed him to the troops in Bryantown, Booth was a dead man. If they did not kill him on the spot at Mudd’s farm, then the manhunters would escort their captured prey back to Washington for a hanging. Booth had seen that once before. He had to decide now. Yes, perhaps he should have taken Mudd into his confidence. It would have been better for the doctor to have heard the truth from him rather than from the soldiers in town. Still, Booth concluded, Mudd would not betray him. Instead of fleeing the farm immediately, he waited for the doctor’s return.

  Booth’s assessment of Mudd’s character proved true. When the doctor finished his business in Bryantown, he got on his horse and, ignoring the troopers he passed on the way, rode calmly out of town. He decided to protect Booth and said nothing to anyone. But he had some choice words to say to Booth face-to-face.