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

by James L. Swanson

  NO ONE IN WASHINGTON WAS CONFIDENT THAT THE SIXteenth New York Cavalry was on Booth’s trail. And Stanton’s dramatic—and lucrative—four-day-old proclamation of April 20 had still not resulted in Booth’s capture. The War Department issued a new proclamation on April 24. This one offered no additional rewards and appealed not to greed but to the patriotism of the black population of Washington, Maryland, and Virginia.

  THE MURDER OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

  APPEAL TO THE COLORED PEOPLE!

  HEADQUARTERS MIDDLE MILITARY DIVISION,

  Washington, D.C., April 24, 1865.

  To the colored people of the District of Columbia and of Maryland, of Alexandria and the border counties of Virginia:

  Your President has been murdered! He has fallen by the assassin and without a moment’s warning, simply and solely because he was your friend and the friend of our country. Had he been unfaithful to you and to the great cause of human freedom he might have lived. The pistol from which he met his death, though held by Booth, was fired by the hands of treason and slavery. Think of this and remember how long and how anxiously this good man labored to break your chains and to make you happy. I now appeal to you, by every consideration which can move loyal and grateful hearts, to aid in discovering and arresting his murderer. Concealed by traitors, he is believed to be lurking somewhere within the limits of the District of Columbia, of the State of Maryland, or Virginia. Go forth, then, and watch, and listen, and inquire, and search, and pray, by day and night, until you shall have succeeded in dragging this monstrous and bloody criminal from his hiding place. You can do much; even the humblest and feeblest among you, by patience and unwearied vigilance, may render the most important assistance.

  Large rewards have been offered by the Government, and by municipal authorities, and they will be paid for the apprehension of this murderer, or for any information which will aid in his arrest. But I feel that you need no such stimulus as this. You will hunt down this cowardly assassin of your best friend, as you would the murderer of your own father. Do this, and God, whose servant has been slain, and the country which has given you freedom, will bless you for this noble act of duty.

  All information which may lead to the arrest of Booth, or Surratt, or Harold, should be communicated to these headquarters, or to General Holt, Judge Advocate General, at Washington, or, if immediate action is required, then to the nearest military authorities.

  All officers and soldiers in this command, and all loyal people, are enjoined to increased vigilance.

  W. S. HANCOCK

  Major General U.S. Volunteers

  Commanding Middle Military Division

  Hancock had the text set in type, the crude layout evidence of the haste with which it was produced. Then he had his proclamation printed as one-page, letter-size handbills or broadsides, which were distributed by his men to the black people of Washington, D.C.; Maryland; and Virginia. Hancock’s instinct that Booth could not escape without encountering blacks was correct—the assassin had been seen by a number of them—and perhaps, Hancock reasoned, his call to action might inspire someone to hunt down Booth, or at least to inform on him.

  ON THE EVENING OF APRIL 24, BEFORE IT GOT DARK, RICHARD Garrett invited his guest inside for supper. Booth took pleasure in the old man’s genuine hospitality, so different from Dr. Stuart’s cold hand. No one at the Garrett table hurried him to wolf down his meal and get out of the house. Instead, Booth savored his leisurely supper and the friendly company and engaged the family in harmless small talk. John Garrett returned home after dark and found that Boyd was still at the table with his entire family—his father, Richard; and stepmother, Fannie; his younger brothers, William and Richard; three sisters; and Miss Lucinda K. B. Holloway, Fannie’s unmarried sister and the children’s live-in tutor. After supper Booth hobbled outside, sat on the wood front steps, and removed a pipe from one of his coat pockets. Could John Garrett spare some tobacco and a match? Booth wondered. In no time the assassin ignited a bowl of Virginia tobacco, cured in a local barn—perhaps the Garretts’ own, before they stopped drying the leaves there—and enjoyed his first smoke in days. Booth luxuriated in a blissful respite from the manhunt and found a temporary peace on the front porch of this quiet, remote Caroline County farmhouse, a satisfying meal settling in his belly, the sweet aroma of pipe tobacco pleasuring his senses.

  John Garrett suggested that they retire and invited Booth to share his room. Booth would sleep in a real bed tonight. Relying on his good, weight-bearing leg, he walked and half jumped up the stairs to the second floor. Booth stripped off his frock coat and unbuttoned his vest, exposing to Garrett a leather belt supporting two revolvers and a Bowie knife. Booth draped his clothes over a chair and unbuckled his pistol belt, which he hung over the headboard of one of the two beds in the room. The Garrett farmhouse might be a peaceful sanctuary, but the assassin wanted his weapons close by and within a quick arm’s reach while he slept. Who knew what trouble the night might bring?

  BOOTH SAT IN A CHAIR AND ASKED GARRETT TO HELP HIM pull off his tall, knee-high, leather riding boot. Garrett took a good hold and yanked hard until the snugly fitting boot popped off. On his other foot Booth wore a government-issue leather army shoe, slit open at the top to make taking it on and off easier. When Booth slipped out of his trousers, Garrett got a close look at the bad leg and asked how it had happened. Given John Garrett’s four years of service, Booth knew he had to talk convincingly to fool a man who had seen real war wounds before. His story worked again: “He told me that he was wounded at the evacuation of Petersburg. He … kept up the impression all along that he had been a Confederate soldier, and he now said that he had belonged to A. P. Hill’s corps, and that he had been wounded by a shell fragment at the evacuation of Petersburg. He said his wound was not very painful except when he touched it.”

  Garrett offered Booth one of the beds, and he and his brother William shared the other. Their guest was exhausted. Booth got into bed, turned over, and spoke just two words: “Good night.” John Garrett assumed, correctly, that Mr. Boyd wanted to speak no more that night. The soft mattress and pillow lulled Booth to a quick slumber. It was his first night in a proper bed—not counting one night in the rude Lucas cabin—since April 15, nine days ago. It felt good to rise from the cold earth and sleep like a civilized man again. It was also the first night of the manhunt that Booth and Herold spent apart.

  At Belle Plaine the manhunters had divided their forces, too. Two columns, one of five men commanded by Everton Conger, and the other with the rest of the men, led by Edward Doherty, both probed south. The cavalrymen searched farmhouses and barns, questioned inhabitants, and sometimes adopted various ruses to trick the locals. As the Sixteenth New York worked all night toward Port Conway, Booth’s hard-won head start from the manhunters began to shrink. It had taken Booth ten days to travel from downtown Washington to the Port Conway ferry. It would take the Sixteenth New York, alerted by telegraph and transported by steamboat, just one day to close the gap between Washington and Port Conway. The same superior technology that the Union had used to defeat the Confederacy was now employed against Booth.

  Booth’s mind surrendered to fatigue and roamed freely through the landscape of his dreams, where no man could follow him. He did not need his pistols during the night. He slept deeply and undisturbed and did not awaken until late in the morning on Tuesday, April 25. It was the eleventh sunrise since the assassination. John Garrett awoke early. Observing their guest still fast asleep, he dressed quietly and went downstairs. When William Garrett followed his brother down a few minutes later, Booth was still asleep. The actor was unaccustomed to farmers’ hours. His body followed the nighttime rhythms of the city and theatre life, not the crack-of-dawn rigors of country living. William told his eleven-year-old brother Richard to watch over Booth until he awoke, then bring their guest his crutches and gun belt and wait on him while he dressed. William left the house to graze the cattle before returning for breakfast.

&nb
sp; When Booth failed to answer the breakfast call, John Garrett went upstairs to check on him. Booth, awakened by the summons echoing through the house, had just gotten up. Garrett told him that breakfast was ready, but Booth, still weary, begged off. Please tell the family not to hold the meal for him, he requested. That was fine, replied Garrett: “[I]t was entirely unnecessary as we were not in the habit of waiting meals for soldiers as they were privileged characters and might eat when they got ready.” John Garrett walked downstairs, ate, and rode over to Mr. Acres, a neighborhood shoemaker, to have a pair of boots repaired.

  Eventually Booth roused himself. Little Richard Garrett fetched his clothes and crutches and helped him dress. Booth sat in the chair, inserted his leg into the tall boot and, unable to use his bad leg for leverage, pulled extra hard with his arm and back muscles. Delicately, he slipped the foot of his broken leg into the low-cut shoe. He eyed his pistol belt, still hanging on the headboard. He decided that he would not need his revolvers or Bowie knife this morning. He left the belt on the bed. He stood up, took the crutches, and, unarmed, proceeded downstairs, careful not to misstep and tumble down the stairs. Booth headed to the front porch, reached into a pocket for his pipe and a pinch of tobacco, and enjoyed a late-morning smoke. After he finished off the bowl, Booth stepped down to the front yard and inspected the property a little, venturing to the barn and back. On the front porch he reclined on a bench and promptly dozed off. His spent body and overtaxed brain craved the rejuvenating sleep.

  When Booth woke up, William Garrett joined him on the porch. William asked the same question that his brother posed last night: where had he been wounded? On cue, the actor trotted out the stock story about Petersburg, the exploding artillery shell, the leg wound. Why did William ask? Hadn’t his brother already told him this morning what Booth had said the night before? Booth, perhaps suspicious that William was testing him for any discrepancies in his story, spun a convoluted tale to explain how he ended up at Locust Hill.

  It all started at Petersburg, began Booth, showing William his injured leg for effect. After the evacuation of that city, he wanted to go to Annapolis, Maryland. He crossed the Potomac but then discovered that the federals were forcing all Confederate soldiers to swear a loyalty oath to the Union, and of course he would never agree to that. Booth claimed that until a few days ago, he had taken refuge in a small, unnamed Maryland town. Then he and his cousin, also named Boyd, went on a “spree,” hired two horses, and encountered some Union cavalry troops. Unwisely, they boasted to their former enemies how easily they had crossed the Potomac. This riled the cavalrymen, who informed on them and triggered a subsequent pursuit. Booth laid it on thick for Garrett now. When the cavalry caught up with them, they got into a “fracas” that led to “a little shooting touch” before they escaped by fleeing into a swamp, where they spent the night. The next evening, Booth explained, he and his cousin tied their horses in a pine thicket and walked down to the Potomac River, where they had to spend almost all of their money to buy a boat, to cross back over to Virginia. But it was a stormy eve, and they spent all night on the river without crossing, instead finding themselves opposite Mathias Point. Then, finally, reaching the point, they made their way to Port Royal, and the Garrett farm.

  It was a wild, deceitful tale, sprinkled cleverly with sufficient truthful details—Booth was chased by cavalry, he did travel with another man, he did cross a swamp, he did hide in the pines, he did buy a boat, and he did cross the Potomac—that it seemed believable, or at least coherent. Booth told this complex tale to establish in Garrett’s mind two vital ideas, one true, the other false: the truth that the Union cavalry was after him, and the lie about why. Booth wanted William Garrett to know, by his own admission, before William discovered it later on his own, that the cavalry might be coming. And he wanted him to believe that it was for a trivial reason. That way, if horse soldiers did arrive in the neighborhood, asking questions about two men, William Garrett would not be surprised, and he would never suspect that his house-guests were Lincoln’s assassins. William Garrett did not challenge the saga’s authenticity. Booth, satisfied that he had accomplished his purpose, got up from the porch and, with the help of his crutches, went for another solitary walk, again in the direction of the barn. Then Booth returned to the house and sat down on the lawn with the young Garrett children.

  IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY, REMEMBERED ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD Richard Baynham Garrett: “That day was bright and warm. It was an unusually early spring that year, and the grass in the yard was like velvet, while the great orchard in front of the house was white with apple blossoms.” Booth relaxed by entertaining his little audience. “All the forenoon,” recalled Richard Garrett, “our visitor lounged upon the grass under the apple trees and talked or played with the children … he had a pocket compass, which he took pains to explain to the children, and laughed at their puzzled faces when he made the needle move by holding the point of his pocket knife above it.” Booth took special delight in three-year-old Cora Lee Garrett. “He called her his little blue-eyed pet,” recalled her nine-year-old sister Lillian Florence Garrett, or Lillie. “At the last meal he took with us, she sat by his side in her high chair.” At the dinner table, Cora’s mother spoke sharply to the girl and, Lillie reported, the child “burst into tears. Booth at once began to soothe her, and said, “‘What, is that my little blue eyes crying?’”

  Early in the afternoon the Garretts and their guest took their seats at the dinner table. John, back from Acres the shoemaker, sat down next to his brother William, and opposite Booth. He had heard some exciting news while on his errand, John announced. A man told him that a recent issue of a Richmond newspaper reported that the U.S. government was offering a $140,000 reward for Abraham Lincoln’s assassin. The Garretts had heard rumors about the murder as early as April 22 or 23, but without confirmation until John heard the story about the reward a couple of hours ago. William boasted that if the reward was that big, the assassin “had better not come this way or he would be gobbled up.” Booth smiled wryly. How much was that reward, again? he asked. John restated the figure. “I would sooner suppose more like $500,000,” suggested Booth, suppressing mild hurt at what he felt was too modest an amount. Surely the president’s assassin, the most wanted man in America, was worth more than $140,000? Had Booth known the true, much lower figure—a mere $50,000—he would have been truly insulted.

  The family began a lively discussion of the assassination. “While at dinner the tragic event was commented upon, as to the motive which prompted the deed and its effect upon the public welfare,” Lucinda Holloway observed. Booth listened attentively, not speaking a word. Then one of Garrett’s daughters suggested that Lincoln’s assassin must have been a paid killer.

  Booth gazed at the girl, smiled, and broke his silence: “Do you think so, Miss? By whom do you suppose he was paid?”

  “Oh,” she replied witlessly, “I suppose by both the North and the South.”

  “It is my opinion,” Booth replied knowingly, “he wasn’t paid a cent.” Instead, he speculated, the assassin “did it for notoriety’s sake.”

  Booth improvised this little bit of theatre flawlessly. The Garretts did not know it, but the actor-assassin had just staged a spontaneous, unscripted performance at their dinner table. “I did not notice any uneasiness about him,” admitted John Garrett.

  Ingeniously, while masquerading as another man, the assassin commented on his own crime, and analyzed, for the pleasure of his private audience, and also for his personal amusement, the motives of Lincoln’s killer.

  After dinner Booth went outside and relaxed on the porch bench, by now his favorite place at the house. He was in no hurry to leave Locust Hill. He needed rest. Considering his ordeal over the last eleven days, he would happily spend a month with the Garretts recuperating from his injury and regaining his strength. Plenty of sleep, good cooking, some pipe tobacco, clean clothes, and leisurely rests in the fields would revive his body and spirit. And perhaps an occasion
al shot of whiskey or brandy, his favorites. Reluctant to break the spell of this idyll, Booth said nothing to the Garretts all morning or at the afternoon dinner table about leaving Locust Hill.

  But it was time. Booth asked John Garrett if he had a map of Virginia. Booth owned one, but his copy of “Perrine’s New Topographical War Map of the Southern States,” a handy field guide that folded into a pocket-size booklet protected by yellow, paper board covers, was back in Washington, in the hands of U.S. detectives who had discovered it in George Atzerodt’s room at the Kirkwood House. Garrett told Booth that he owned no map of the state. Then what about that big map of several Southern states hanging on a wall in the house, suggested Booth. Would John be kind enough to take it down so that Booth could study it? Garrett went inside, unpinned the school map, and spread it on a table.

  Booth’s eyes ranged over the map and he asked Garrett for a piece of paper. John obliged, asking why Booth wanted the map. He explained that he was plotting the route from Locust Hill to Orange Court House. There he hoped to obtain a horse from one of the many Marylanders who he heard frequented the area. Then Booth told John, just as he had told William Garrett that morning, that he refused to return to Maryland because he would never sign an oath of allegiance to the Union. From Orange Court House, Booth planned to ride for Confederate General Joe Johnston’s army, still in the field and, unlike Lee’s surrendered Army of Northern Virginia, still a viable fighting force. And from there he would cross the border into his ultimate destination, Mexico. Booth declared that it was better to leave the country than swear loyalty to the Union. Garrett left the room and Booth remained hunched over the table, staring at the map, writing notes on the routes to distant places he hoped to reach. Alone, Booth tore a piece out of the map and stuffed Virginia in his pocket.