American Brutus

by Michael W. Kauffman

  Back on Tenth Street, two young clerks had been walking past Ford’s Theatre when they heard the commotion inside. Joseph A. Sterling and J. G. Johnson learned from some bystanders that a fight had broken out in the theater, and they rushed in to see for themselves. The place was in pandemonium, with everyone talking about the assassination and the man who had run across the stage. Sterling and Johnson got the impression that the secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, had not been notified, and they made up their minds to run to his house on foot. Stanton lived about a mile away.34

  Meanwhile, two blocks to the south, attorney Seaton Munroe and a friend were walking along Pennsylvania Avenue when a man came running down Tenth Street yelling, “My God, the President is killed at Ford’s Theatre!” Munroe sprinted up to Ford’s, where a dense and agitated crowd surrounded the front entrances. He somehow managed to work his way into the auditorium. “I had never witnessed such a scene as was now presented,” he later recalled. “The seats, aisles, galleries, and stage were filled with shouting, frenzied men and women, many running aimlessly over one another; a chaos of disorder beyond control. . . .” Some soldiers were about to take the president out of the building.35

  Jacob Soles, Bill Sample, John Corry, and Jabes Griffiths hadn’t come to Ford’s Theatre that evening to make history. But they happened to be near the box when Dr. Leale asked for help carrying the president away. Lincoln had to be taken out of there. The theater was too crowded, and no doctor could do anything in such cramped quarters. It appeared the president could not survive, but at least they could let him die in more dignified surroundings. After all, how would it look if the great martyr should die in a playhouse—and on Good Friday, at that? Theaters still carried the stigma of immorality, and nobody wanted Abraham Lincoln to take his last breath in such a place.

  The four had served together in Thompson’s Independent Battery C of the Pennsylvania Light Artillery. Their unit had been assigned to the Defenses of Washington for more than a year now, and Soles, nineteen, had spent his entire military career on garrison duty. He had come into town for a little amusement, never imagining that he and his companions would play a role in a real-life historical drama. Now, joined by two strangers from another regiment, they carried the dying president out of the box, determined to make his final journey a solemn one.36

  Laura Keene led the way. At the bottom of the stairs, she found Seaton Munroe standing in the lobby. Munroe thought Keene looked dreadful. Her hair and dress were in disorder, “and not only was her gown soaked in Lincoln’s blood, but her hands, and even her cheeks where her fingers had strayed, were bedaubed with the sorry stains!” Asked if the president would survive, Keene didn’t have an answer. “God only knows,” she said, with a shrug. Munroe looked up. At the head of the staircase above, the soldiers were turning the president around to carry him feetfirst. They were having a hard time of it, having to make frequent stops to adjust their hold or to wait for a clearing in the crowd. Bystanders kept closing in on them, and soldiers even had to break up chairs to widen a path. Lieutenant Bolton did what he could to clear the way for them. He cursed and threatened and slapped at the crowd with the flat of his sword. 37

  Following the procession was Major John Potter, who led Mrs. Lincoln by the arm. Clara Harris and Henry Rathbone moved with them. Rathbone was bleeding profusely, but so far nobody had paid him any attention. The three doctors present were all focused on Mr. Lincoln. While at first Dr. Taft had thought he was the only surgeon on the scene, when he made a remark to that effect, Dr. Leale set him straight. From that point on, Leale’s authority was never questioned. It was he who briefed the others, and he who decided where the soldiers should take the patient.38

  Police had not yet arrived at the theater, but in a manner of speaking, the crime scene came to them. Witnesses flocked to their office, many with evidence in hand. One man brought a spur found on the stage. Another turned in the assassin’s hat. Made of dark gray felt, it was a fashionable “slouch” hat, with a pleated band, low crown, and turned-up brim. E. D. Wray, of the Surgeon General’s office, picked it up only seconds after the shooting, and others identified it as the one that fell from Booth’s head when he hit the stage. As evidence and statements accumulated, Sergeant Drill carefully noted the name and address of each witness: “Capt. G. S. Shaw on Genl Augur’s Staff . . . Jacob G. Larner, 441 F St . . . Anthony Lully. . . .” They talked to sixteen people in the first forty minutes. Some would take part in the “trial of the century,” while others were never heard from again.39

  The crime scene had not been sealed off to protect evidence, nor would detectives have seen any point in doing so. The forensic value of bloodstains, fingerprints, and fibers had yet to be imagined. In any event, witnesses had already begun stripping the president’s box of mementoes. They carried off some of the best evidence, which seems not to have bothered police at all. When Detective John A. W. Clarvoe, the first officer at the scene, arrived, he may well have been looking for a souvenir of his own.

  A few doors away, Clarvoe’s colleagues held further interviews with Peanuts Borrows and Ford’s property man James Maddox. Both talked about Booth’s stable in Baptist Alley, but neither seemed to know what had happened to the horse he had been keeping there. They knew that Booth had a buggy, but just a few days ago, Peanuts had cleaned it up for him, and Ned Spangler had taken it to an auction house. There was a good chance that evidence might remain in the stable, so Police Sergeant James O. Johnson went to see what had been left behind.40

  While police searched behind the theater, a slow procession inched along in front of it. The soldiers who carried the president had left the building, but were not sure where to go. As they made their way through a sea of people, some of the spectators jockeyed for a better look, and some even helped by taking hold of an arm or leg. They moved aimlessly into the street, heading toward a row of houses that in recent years had become jammed with boarders. Some of those people stood there now looking out their windows and wondering how they might be of help. An artist named Carl R. Bersch sketched the event from his balcony, while one of his neighbors took a more active part. Henry Safford, a young War Department clerk, stepped out the front door with a candle and called down from the landing: “Bring him in here!” Safford was living in a respectable middle-class house at 453 Tenth Street. It was owned by William Petersen, a German-born tailor, who lived there with his wife, Anna, and three of their children. They had always taken in boarders, and the place had been a favorite among actors, who liked the convenience of living across from Ford’s.41

  A FEW BLOCKS AWAY, Col. George A. Woodward and some friends were drawn by the sound of music to the corner of Fourteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. An impromptu serenade was taking place near Willard’s Hotel for a group of Treasury clerks who had missed the illumination the night before. Standing in front of the hotel, Woodward heard a voice from across the crowd. “Have you heard what has happened?” a man called. “The President has just been shot in Ford’s Theatre.”

  The colonel was shaken.“Good heavens! Can that be possible?”

  “Yes,” said the man, “I saw him carried out; he wasn’t dead, but the doctors say he can’t live.” Two officers stood with Woodward. Their instincts told them to run down to the theater, but they couldn’t possibly navigate through the crowds already forming there. As they talked over their options, the colonel remembered something he had seen earlier in the day. Confederate prisoners had marched right past here en route to the Old Capitol Prison. There were more than four hundred of them, marching along in their torn and tarnished uniforms “with no semblance of bravado, and yet with no apparent sense of humiliation.” At the time, Woodward had felt sorry for those men. Now they came back to mind in a different light.

  Could those same prisoners have been set loose to avenge their lost cause? The question preyed on Woodward’s mind, and he decided at once to alert the city garrison. He and his friends commandeered a battered old hack, drawn by an anc
ient and pitiful-looking horse. They piled into the carriage, shouting out directions for the headquarters of General Christopher Columbus Augur, commander of the 22nd Army Corps.42

  THE NEWS WAS CIRCULATING HAPHAZARDLY. On Newspaper Row, across from Willard’s, reporter Lawrence A. Gobright of the Associated Press was wrapping up a quiet evening at his office. He had just picked up a newspaper for a last-minute check of the news when a friend came running up the sidewalk and excitedly told him that the president had been shot. Gobright could hardly believe it, but the man assured him that he had just come from Ford’s Theatre, having left there right after it happened.

  They ran to the telegraph office together, and Gobright dictated a quick “special” to alert the press: “Washington, April 14: President Lincoln was shot to-night, and is mortally wounded.” He promised more details would follow, and then hurried over to the scene of the crime. At Ford’s Theatre, everyone was still in a state of intense excitement. The president had just been carried out of the building, and Gobright wanted to see the box before they closed the place down. Holding on to his friend, a valuable eyewitness, he inspected the actual site of the shooting. They walked right in and surveyed the box to fix the scene of the crime in their minds.43

  Major Thomas T. Eckert, chief of the War Department’s Military Telegraph Bureau, was getting ready for bed when he got the news. Some of Eckert’s operators had been at Ford’s Theatre that night, and after the shooting, they ran back to the office to get its eight cipher machines up and running. While George Colton Maynard went straight there, Thomas A. Laird, who lived in Eckert’s house, went home to give his boss the news. Fortunately, the house was right along the way. The major was shaving when Laird burst through the front door and shouted up the stairs. In a matter of minutes, the major was dressed and in the saddle, looking for Secretary Stanton.44

  TWO

  “IT ALL SEEMS A DREAM—A WILD DREAM”

  THE NEWS FROM FORD’S THEATRE WOULD NOT BE THE ONLY shock in store. At the same moment that Booth entered the president’s box in Ford’s, another attack was about to begin six blocks away, at the home of Secretary of State William H. Seward. A tall man in a light overcoat knocked at Seward’s door, insisting he be allowed to give some medicine to the secretary, who was recovering from injuries suffered in a recent carriage accident. A servant resisted, but the man pushed past him, trudging up the steps toward Mr. Seward’s third-floor bedroom. Upstairs, Seward’s son, Assistant Secretary Frederick Seward, heard the commotion. He confronted the man at the top of the stairs, and after a brief exchange of words, young Seward cracked open the door to his father’s bedroom and pretended to look in. “He’s asleep,” he assured the stranger, and the man turned as if to leave.1

  But unexpectedly, the door opened again, and Fanny Seward, age sixteen, looked out at her brother. Softly, she said, “Fred, Father is awake now.” Fred glared at her in annoyance. He started to say something, but the intruder cut him off.

  “Is the secretary asleep?” The man seemed rude and impatient.

  Fanny sheepishly answered, “Almost.”

  Frederick Seward had sensed the danger, and he hurriedly shut the door, while Fanny went back to sit by her father’s bedside. Fred assured the stranger that he would make sure the secretary got his medicine. The man again turned away, but as he did, he drew a revolver from his coat. Quick as a flash, he spun around, pressed it against Frederick Seward’s temple, and pulled the trigger. It clicked. In a panic, the man then raised the gun and brought it crashing down on Frederick’s head.

  In the secretary’s room was an army nurse, Private George Foster Robinson. Wounded in the war, he had been assigned to light duty, helping Seward recover from his accident. From his seat in the bedroom, Robinson heard a dull thud, and thought it sounded like a man being struck with a walking stick. Fanny heard it too, but she thought that someone was chasing another rat around the hall. Turning to Robinson, she asked, “What can be the matter? Do go and see.” But as she spoke, they remembered the man in the hallway. They raced to the door, and the nurse opened it. Frederick stood in the hall, his expression blank. His face was ghostly pale, and blood streamed down his head. Next to him, glaring directly at Fanny, was the intruder.

  He came straight at Robinson, slashing at him with a large knife. The nurse parried the blow upward, and the blade struck his forehead. A tremendous blow hit him full in the face, and he fell backward to the floor. To Fanny, everything was a blur. She screamed for help, and wondered if this were just an awful dream. The attacker rushed past her, heading in the dark toward her father’s bed.

  Immobilized by his injuries, Secretary Seward lay weak and helpless on his bed. He had been trying not to fall asleep for fear of waking up with lockjaw. Though the lights were down, Secretary Seward had no trouble figuring out what was happening; he just couldn’t do anything about it. The assailant leaped upon him, and Seward saw only the flash of a knife and the pink-and-gray fabric of an overcoat sleeve. In his shock and horror, the only thought that came to him was “That is a handsome fabric.”

  The first blow missed him, striking the headboard with a violent thud. The man grunted and tried again. The next strike found its mark, slicing deep into Seward’s cheek. The assailant slashed again and again, turning his victim’s head to uncover the jugular vein. As he did so, Private Robinson struggled to pull him away. Jumping on the man’s back, Robinson pulled the attacker to the floor, giving Seward a chance to roll off the bed and out of the way.2

  Awakened by Fanny’s screams, Augustus Seward, another of the secretary’s sons, was jolted from sleep in a nearby bedroom and joined the scuffle. He and Robinson forced the madman toward the door. While the nurse pinned him down, Augustus ran to get his revolver. That was the assailant’s chance to escape. He leaped to his feet, throwing Robinson to the side, and stumbled out of the room. He was barreling down the stairs when a State Department messenger unexpectedly blocked his way. Emrick Hansell was about to run for help, but the assassin was moving quickly, and he knocked Hansell to the floor, stabbing him in the back for good measure. Fleeing outside, bellowing “I’m mad! I’m mad!” the man ran to a waiting horse.

  The news of this second attack was explosive. Coordinated assaults could mean only one thing: a conspiracy, and a well-developed one. Was this an insurrection, as Colonel Woodward feared—the last dying gasp of the Confederacy? Had other officials been slaughtered too? Would rebel cavalry descend on the city out of the darkness? In an instant, the shooting in Ford’s Theatre took on a new, more frightening perspective. Grief and indignation turned to terror in the blink of an eye.

  Near Fourteeth and K streets, J. G. Johnson and Joseph Sterling had run as fast as they could to the home of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. They rang the bell, and Edwin L. Stanton, a son of the secretary, answered. Johnson, out of breath, broke the news. “We have come to tell your father that President Lincoln has been shot.” The younger Stanton had known Joe Sterling back in Ohio, and knew that this was no joke. He invited both men to wait in the library. His father, who had already retired for the evening, would be down soon.

  There was hardly a man alive in the United States who didn’t have strong feelings about Edwin McMasters Stanton. Stanton had acquired a fierce reputation since taking charge of the War Department in 1862. Gruff and self-assured, he was an intimidating figure with his long, flowing beard and his gold-rimmed spectacles. He seemed to fear nothing. After only weeks in office, he had taken over the nation’s telegraph lines and railroads, censored news reports, and summarily fired anyone he considered corrupt or inefficient. He had been especially hard on dissidents, whom he regarded as traitors. Thousands fell under his ambit when Congress took the control of political prisoners away from the State Department. Pleas for clemency were ignored. Stanton appeared ruthless and uncompromising, and a face-to-face encounter with him was something most people tried to avoid.

  Entering the room, the secretary spoke with an unaccustomed softness.
“Mr. Sterling, what news is this you bring?”

  “The President was shot while at the theater, and, I was told, is dead.”

  Stanton’s response was surprisingly calm. “Do you know who shot him?” he asked.

  “Yes,” came the reply. “They say it was a man named Booth, who sprang to the stage from the President’s box with a large knife in his hand and escaped.”

  The questioning was cool and methodical. Threats and rumors were a part of everyday life in wartime Washington, and Stanton had probably heard more than his share of wild tales. Few proved to be true. So, no matter how sincere these breathless young messengers were, he had reason to suspect that the situation was not as dire as they presented it. After all, they hadn’t actually witnessed the shooting, nor had they seen Mr. Lincoln. Perhaps this was just another overblown story. Certainly that was what Stanton wanted to believe.

  Almost as an afterthought, Joseph Sterling imparted another bit of news. “As we were coming to your house,” he said, “a man informed us that Secretary Seward also had been assassinated.” Hesitantly, he added, “But that may be street rumor and untrue.”

  This time, Stanton reacted. “Oh, that can’t be so. That can’t be so!” Clearly agitated, he insisted on going to Seward’s immediately. His wife had just come down the stairs, and he told her to order the carriage at once. Ellen Stanton had rarely seen her husband look so alarmed, and she pleaded with him not to leave the house. If these rumors were true, then anyone in the Cabinet was in danger—especially the secretary of war.

  The bell rang again, and Stanton hurried toward the door. Johnson and Sterling feared another attack, and they tried to intercede, but the visitor was just a clerk from the Provost Marshal General’s office. He had been sent with the news about the attack on Seward. “Go quickly to Colonel Ingraham’s headquarters,” the secretary told him, “and ask him to send a cavalry guard to my house at once.”