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

by James L. Swanson

  When Booth wasn’t writing in his little notebook or reading the newspapers, what did he do while in the pine thicket? There was nothing left but talk. Booth and Herold didn’t say much in front of Thomas Jones, confining their conversations to practical matters like food and newspapers, Booth’s need for medical assistance, and their prospects for a timely river crossing. That suited Jones fine. He was not a big talker or the inquisitive type and, prudently, he preferred to spend as little time as necessary at the fugitives’ hiding place. According to Jones, Booth did not draw him into abstract political discussions, try to impress him with exhilarating, firsthand tales of the fatal shot, his dramatic stage leap, or the unforgettable ride out of Washington—nor did he attempt to justify the assassination. He told Jones that he murdered Abraham Lincoln, that he didn’t regret it, and that was that. Booth and Herold kept their own counsel about how they intended to escape after crossing the Potomac, or what their final destination was, if they even had one.

  When alone with Herold, however, Booth could unburden himself. No doubt he reassured Herold about the very things he most needed to convince himself—they would cross the Potomac, they would find succor in Virginia, they would survive. And no doubt Booth regaled Davey with repeated tellings of the assassination drama. And if the newspapers wouldn’t let Booth tell the nation his noble motives for his crime, he could rehearse them over and over before his captive audience of one. To Herold it did not matter what Booth said. The impressionable youth had not joined the conspiracy for ideological reasons. He had been drawn into the actor’s orbit by Booth’s charisma, not his hatred of Lincoln. He was simply happy to abide in the presence of his hero, enjoying the actor’s private, undivided attention. Although they had known each other for more than a year, they had never spent this much time together. After sharing the star with the other conspirators, and with his many friends and fans, Herold felt privileged to have him to himself. Stranded in the pine thicket, Herold became, by default, the cynosure of Booth’s attention. It was like having the great actor stage a marathon performance just for him. The future was unknown. But Booth was certain that David Herold would never abandon him.

  Jones sensed Booth’s growing impatience and decided to ride over to the town of Port Tobacco on a scouting mission to find out how many Union troops were combing the area. A few weeks after Lincoln’s assassination, Civil War journalist George Alfred Townsend damned the town as a rebel cesspool of corruption: “If any place in the world is utterly given over to depravity, it is Port Tobacco…. Before the war [it] was the seat of a tobacco aristocracy and a haunt of Negro traders. It passed very naturally into a rebel post for blockade-runners and a rebel post-office general. Gambling, corner fighting, and shooting matches were its lyceum education. Violence and ignorance had every suffrage in the town … five hundred people exist in Port Tobacco; life there reminds me, in connection with the slimy river and the adjacent swamps, of the great reptile period of the world, when iguanadons and pterodactyls and pleosauri ate each other … into this abstract of Gomorrah the few detectives went like angels who visited Lot.” Indeed, the town was the stomping ground of the dissolute George Azterodt, Booth’s coconspirator and pathetic failed assassin of Vice President Andrew Johnson. He was so associated with this place that he actually went by the nickname “Port Tobacco.”

  As Jones rode into Port Tobacco, Union troops finally ventured out from Bryantown to Samuel Mudd’s farm. It was noon on Tuesday, April 18, and the manhunt was at a standstill. That morning Lieutenant Alexander Lovett accompanied by detectives William Williams, Simon Gavacan, and Joshua Lloyd, and by nine soldiers from the Provisional Cavalry, had arrived in Bryantown. As David Dana and Alexander Lovett discussed their progress, Dana mentioned Dr. George Mudd’s secondhand tale of the two strangers. Intrigued, Lovett decided to follow it up. The last verified sighting of John Wilkes Booth had occurred four days ago, around midnight on Friday, April 14, when Booth and Herold stopped at Surratt’s tavern to collect the “shooting irons” and field glasses from John Lloyd. Indeed, it was Lieutenant Lovett who rode to the tavern, questioned Lloyd, and took him into custody. Given the dearth of hot leads, George Mudd’s tip, Lovett decided, was worth pursuing. He sent for the doctor.

  As soon as George Mudd arrived, soldiers brought him into the inn for questioning. Lovett took him “up into a room in the hotel, and asked him to make a statement of what he heard.” It did not take Lovett long to ascertain that the doctor was almost useless. He knew no details, and he had never laid eyes on the two strangers himself. All he knew was what his cousin told him, and that wasn’t much: two men called at Dr. Samuel Mudd’s late on the night of the assassination, and Sam found them suspicious. He asked George to tell the soldiers.

  Lovett decided to pursue the lead to its source, and he ordered his detectives and cavalrymen to mount up. Taking George Mudd with them, they rode to Samuel Mudd’s farm. When they arrived at noon, Frances Mudd greeted George and the strangers and explained that her husband was away working in the fields. Lovett asked her to send for him. Until then, the officer suggested, perhaps she could answer a few questions.

  aROUND THE TIME THAT LOVETT AND THE DETECTIVES WERE questioning Mrs. Mudd, Thomas Jones put on his best impassive face, sauntered through the door of Port Tobacco’s Brawner Hotel, and descended the creaky stairs to the basement. There, noted George Alfred Townsend, “it has a bar in the nethermost cellar, and its patrons, carousing in that imperfect light, look like the denizens of some burglar’s crib, talking robbery between their cups.” It was market day, and a lot of men and lots of gossip were circulating in town. Jones’s simple strategy was to “mingle with the people and listen.” An army detective, Captain Williams, eyed Jones and offered him a drink. Somebody in this vice-saturated, ramshackle, rebel town must know something about the assassins, Williams persuaded himself. Jones nodded and tightened his fist around the glass. Before he could raise it and wet his lips, Williams faced him, stared him in the eye, and boasted: “I will give one hundred thousand dollars to anyone who will give me the information that will lead to Booth’s capture.”

  “That is a large sum of money and ought to get him,” conceded Jones, who then added cryptically, “if money can do it.”

  Jones needed cash desperately, and he knew what that money could buy him. In 1865, when a Union army private earned thirteen dollars a month and the president of the United States received an annual salary of twenty-five thousand dollars, one hundred thousand dollars was a stupendous fortune. Jones thought about the wife and farm he lost, the time the Union stole from him while he was in the Old Capitol prison, the money owed to him by the Confederacy, and the uncertain economy of the defeated South. And he wasn’t getting any younger—soon he would be forty-five years old. He had every reason in the world to divulge Booth’s hiding place and seize that reward money. But he didn’t say anything. Booth’s instincts about Jones’s character proved correct. Jones was a man of true Southern feeling who could not be bought. Indeed, his explanation reads like a coda of the antebellum South: “Had I, for MONEY, betrayed the man whose hand I had taken, whose confidence I had won, and to whom I promised succor, I would have been, of all traitors, the most abject and despicable. Money won by such vile means would have been accursed and the pale face of the man whose life I had sold, would have haunted me to my grave. True, the hopes of the Confederacy WERE like autumn leaves when the blast has swept by. True, the little I had accumulated through twenty years of unremitting toil WAS irrevocably lost. But, thank God, there was something I still possessed—something I could still call my own, and its name was Honor.”

  sUMMONED FROM THE FIELDS, AN ANXIOUS SAMUEL MUDD returned to his farmhouse and found the cavalry patrol waiting for him. It did not look good: nine uniformed soldiers, plus four men wearing civilian clothes. Many of the men, including Lieutenant Lovett, had shed their blue army officers’ uniforms and donned civilian clothes as a disguise to blend in with the populace and obtain leads by ste
alth and guile. Some even assumed false identities, posing as Confederates, or as friends of Booth, in an attempt to persuade assassination sympathizers to let down their guard.

  Mudd dismounted his horse, greeted the inquisitors, and quickly rehearsed his cover story one last time. He had had three days to concoct it. If he stuck to the story, behaved naturally, and did nothing to arouse suspicion, all would be well.

  Sam told them what happened: two strangers on horseback came near daybreak, one had a broken leg, and he set the bone. The injured man rested on the sofa in the first-floor parlor. He did not mention that Booth went upstairs. The strangers did not stay long, Mudd assured the officer. Pointedly, Lovett asked Mudd if he knew the men. No, the doctor replied, they were complete strangers to him. He “knew nothing of them” and they stayed only a short time, he emphasized. Lovett thought that Mudd looked worried: “He seemed very much excited, and he got as pale as a sheet of paper when he was asked about it, but admitted it,—that there had been two strangers there.” Sam’s laconic manner—he offered few details—and guilty body language aroused Lovett’s suspicion: “He did not seem to care about giving any satisfaction.” Mudd volunteered trivial tidbits, including that he had had a pair of crutches made for the injured man. And they left on horseback. Of course they did, Lovett must have thought. Didn’t they arrive on horses?

  While Lovett continued to question Mudd, Detective Joshua Lloyd began searching the barn and outbuildings for signs of John Wilkes Booth.

  Lovett asked Mudd to describe the strangers. The doctor spoke vaguely, providing little more than estimates of height, body weight, and approximate age. The descriptions were similar to those of Booth and Herold, convincing Lovett that the fugitives had been here. Dr. Mudd then said why he’d suspected the strangers—the injured one asked for a razor, soap, and water, and then he shaved off his moustache. Several troopers standing nearby grunted in agreement about the suspicious nature of the shave. Lovett asked Mudd if the man also had a beard: “Oh, yes, a long pair of whiskers!” the doctor exclaimed. Lovett knew that John Wilkes Booth did not have a long beard. No one who saw the assassin at Ford’s Theatre mentioned a beard. And Booth could not have grown one in just four short days.

  Mudd claimed that the strangers asked for directions to Parson Wilmer’s place at Piney Chapel, west of his farm. That was an odd destination for Lincoln’s assassin. Wilmer was a loyal Unionist and was considered to be above reproach by federal authorities. Lovett dismissed the tip as a clumsy ruse.

  Detective Lloyd returned to the house. The barn and outbuildings were clear, he reported.

  After questioning Samuel Mudd for about an hour, Lieutenant Lovett and his patrol left by 1:30 P.M. on Tuesday, April 18. If the doctor thought that he had cleared himself, he was wrong. As the troops and detectives rode away, Alexander Lovett reached the opposite conclusion: “I had my mind made up to arrest him when the proper time should come.” Although Lovett thought that Mudd had lied about Booth’s alleged destination, he remained duty bound to follow up the doctor’s tip: “I went to Mr. Wilmer’s and searched his house,—a thing I did not like to do. I was satisfied before I searched that there was nothing there, because I knew the man by reputation. I was satisfied it was only a blind to throw us that way.”

  In his first encounter with the manhunters, Dr. Mudd had served John Wilkes Booth well. He denied knowing the injured stranger. He lied about the beard. He failed to warn the troops that Booth and Herold were well armed. And he planted a false lead to misdirect the soldiers to search to the west, when Booth rode southeast. But what had this cost him? He had crossed the point of no return—and was on record now. He had given aid and comfort to Abraham Lincoln’s killers. At this moment, on the afternoon of April 18, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was in more peril than Booth and Herold, who were ensconced in the relative safety of the pine thicket.

  ON APRIL 18, THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE CONTINUED TO POUR into Washington, D.C., to see Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession, scheduled for the next day. As soon as the War Department announced the events planned for April 19, the Willard Hotel received four hundred telegrams begging for room reservations. Every hotel in the city sold out, compelling thousands of visitors to sleep on the streets and in the parks. By now black crepe and bunting had replaced the ephemeral, patriotic signs and banners that had adorned the city the week before. Gideon Welles noted in his diary the transformation: “Every house, almost, has some drapery, especially the homes of the poor. Profuse exhibition is displayed on the public buildings and the dwellings of the wealthy, but the little black ribbon or strip of cloth from the hovel of the poor negro or the impoverished white is more touching.”

  On the morning of April 19, the most solemn day in the history of the nation began with the president’s funeral in the East Room of the Executive Mansion. Workmen labored through the previous night to construct wood risers to accommodate the six hundred invited guests. Disabled by grief, Mary Lincoln was not among them. She remained secluded in the family quarters, sending her sons, Robert and Tad, downstairs as her representatives. The Reverend Dr. Gurley, who prayed over Lincoln’s corpse at the Petersen house, presided this day.

  On Pennsylvania Avenue tens of thousands of people jostled for position on both sides of the street to view the funeral catafalque when six magnificent white horses drawing Abraham Lincoln’s body made the turn from Fifteenth Street onto the avenue. Nimble children scooted up trees for the best view, and at the hotels, restaurants, stores, and offices lining the avenue every building wept with black crepe, and it seemed that mourners had flung open every single window, poking their heads through to watch the procession below.

  The procession rolled slowly forward, the beat of the march measured by muffled bass and tenor drums swathed in crepe. Lincoln’s funeral procession was the saddest, most profoundly moving spectacle ever staged in the history of the Republic. There was more. At the U.S. Capitol, in the rotunda beneath the Great Dome, a catafalque waited to receive Lincoln’s coffin. Thousands of citizens had already waited hours in line to view Father Abraham. The newspapers said that it would be an open casket. Lincoln had been shot through the head, but the bullet did not disfigure his face, aside from the plum-colored bruising in the vicinity of his right eye socket. The undertaker’s artistry had taken care of that. When the funeral was over, the procession done, and the viewing concluded, the president’s body would be placed aboard a special train that would carry him home to Springfield.

  Only one thing detracted from the sacredness of this day. The murderer, John Wilkes Booth, was still at large. Throughout the solemnities of April 19, no minister or government official mentioned the assassin’s name in public. To speak it would desecrate the memory of the honored dead. But the specter of Booth festered, if not on the tongue, then in the mind. It had been five days since Good Friday. Easter had come and gone. And still, Lincoln’s killer was free, mocking the manhunters. Something had to be done. Tomorrow, after the president’s body left Washington, Edwin Stanton would take an unprecedented step. He planned to issue a dramatic proclamation to the American people that combined an incredible reward with a terrifying threat. But Stanton could not take a break from the hunt. On the morning of the funeral, before the noon service in the East Room, he sent a message to General Hancock at Winchester retracting his flirtation three days ago about enlisting Confederate General Mosby in the manhunt: “There is evidence that Mosby knew of Booth’s plan, and was here in this city with him; also that some of the gang are endeavoring to escape by crossing the upper Potomac to get with Mosby or the secesh there. Atzerodt, or Port Tobacco as he is called, is known to have gone to Rockville Saturday to escape in that direction.”

  In New Orleans, the famous detective Allan Pinkerton did not hear about the assassination until the morning of Lincoln’s funeral. News had failed to reach the city until five days after the shooting. Pinkerton loathed being away from the action, and he sent a grandiose and ill-timed telegram to Stanton angling for a star
ring role in the manhunt:

  This morning’s papers contain the deplorable intelligence of the assassination of President Lincoln and Secretary Seward. Under the providence of God, in February, 1861,1 was enabled to save him from the fate he has now met. How I regret that I had not been near him previous to this fatal act. I might have been the means to arrest it. If I can be of any service please let me know. The service of my whole force, or life itself, is at your disposal, and I trust you will excuse me for impressing upon you the necessity of great personal caution on your part. At this time the nation cannot spare you.

  Pinkerton’s self-promotion and obsequious flattery fell flat. And New Orleans was a long way from Washington. Booth had already been on the run for five days, and it would take Pinkerton several days to travel to Washington. Stanton already had a few thousand manhunters in the field. He did not need Pinkerton or his vaunted, all-seeing eye. The detective whose motto was “we never sleep” had managed to sleep five nights before informing himself of the most important news of the war.

  WHILE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MOURNERS VIEWED LINCOLN’S remains in Washington on April 19, manhunters prepared to raid the Philadelphia home of the assassin’s sister, Asia Booth Clarke. It was all the fault of her husband, John Sleeper Clarke. On Sunday the sixteenth, Asia remembered that some time ago John Wilkes had entrusted her with some personal papers to safeguard in her vault. When she unlocked the vault and opened her brother’s envelopes, she discovered a number of documents, including two amazing letters. One was a tender, intimate letter to their mother that prepared her for his sacrifice to the cause:

  I have always endeavored to be a good and dutiful son, and even now would wish to die sooner than give you pain. But, dearest Mother, though I owe you all, there is another duty, a noble duty, for the sake of liberty and humanity due to my country. For four years I have lived (I may say) A slave in the North (a favored slave it’s true, but no less hateful to me on that account), not daring to express my thoughts or sentiments… but it seems that uncontrollable fate, moving me for its ends, takes me from you, dear Mother, to do what work I can for a poor, oppressed, downtrodden people…. And should the last bolt strike your son, dear Mother, bear it patiently and think at the best life is short.