American Brutus

by Michael W. Kauffman

  All of this made “cotton speculations” an excellent cover for John Surratt. An exchange of commodities would, in theory, have to be set up just like any other river crossing. Thus, Surratt’s work for Booth would look perfectly legitimate. If anyone should ask, Surratt could just explain that his speculation was the legal kind, though, of course, he could not produce any proof. That is exactly what Eddy Martin said when detectives caught up with him that spring. And for him, it almost worked.21

  ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, John Surratt told Lou Weichmann that he had some business in Baltimore, and he invited him to come along. Weichmann knew of Surratt’s ties to the underground, and he had always been intrigued by his friend’s cloak-and-dagger world. Perhaps he saw this as a chance to see Surratt in action. So that evening, Surratt and Weichmann went to the Maltby House, on West Pratt Street. They both signed the register and headed up to Room 127 for the night. When Weichmann woke up the next morning, he was surprised to see that Surratt had risen early and was about to leave without him. Surratt claimed to have three hundred dollars in his possession and said that he needed to see some gentlemen alone.

  Confused and annoyed, Weichmann went to see some friends in town, then took the evening train home. He did not realize that Surratt had tricked him into signing the Maltby House register. If necessary, that signature could be used as evidence that Weichmann himself was tied up in Confederate intrigues. This was an important point, because a suspect could not testify against his cohorts.

  John Surratt had gone to a china store at 210 West Baltimore Street. The shop’s owner, David Preston Parr, had summoned him over to meet a young man who had stopped in to look for work. He was Lewis Thornton Powell, the twenty-year-old son of a Baptist minister and an ardent Southerner. Powell was a large man with a strong, silent manner that inspired curiosity and even awe. He also had an impressive history. He had served in the 2nd Florida Infantry at Antietam, the Peninsula, and Chancellorsville. Wounded in the wrist at Gettysburg, he was captured and sent to a makeshift hospital, where he met Maggie Branson, a young Baltimore woman who was working there as a nurse. Transferred to another hospital in Baltimore, Powell saw Miss Branson again, and she probably helped him escape from there. After serving briefly with Harry Gilmor’s raiders, he joined the famed 43rd Virginia Cavalry—Mosby’s Rangers—as a private. He served with Mosby for more than a year, and took part in some of the “Gray Ghost’s” most notable exploits.

  Life under Mosby was a little like life in the underground. The Rangers didn’t fight the way ordinary soldiers did. They lived as ordinary citizens among the families of Northern Virginia, and would come together only for a raid. They had little in the way of military training; beyond a few basic commands, their most useful maneuver was the “skedaddle.” As one Ranger explained:

  “You see when the Yankees broke they would always run in a bunch, and all we had to do was to follow and pick them up. . . . But when we found it necessary to leave the scene of action, each man worked out his own salvation and ‘struck for home and fireside’ by his own particular path. We dissolved like the mist ‘before their wery eyes wisibly’ and left them nothing to follow.”

  For more than a year, Powell lived near Warrenton, Virginia, with relatives of General William H. Payne. He was a fierce warrior, but one with a softer side; years later, the general remembered him as “a chivalrous, generous, gallant fellow, particularly fond of children.”

  Daring raids and crippling attacks had made the Rangers’ defeat a leading priority in Washington, and eventually the Federals called in Dick Blazer, a noted Indian fighter, to take Mosby out of the picture. It didn’t work out that way. In mid-November 1864, Blazer led his Ohio troops against a group of Rangers near Kabletown, Virginia. His men were turned around in short order, and in the rout, Powell and three of his comrades captured the old scout. They were given the privilege of escorting him to Libby Prison.

  While in Richmond, Powell happened to see an acquaintance from Baltimore. His thoughts turned back to the kindness he had received there, and perhaps to his brief flirtation with Mary Branson, Maggie’s twenty-eight-year-old sister. He returned to his command sullen and reflective. As a young friend remembered, he was a changed man. “He often spoke of his visit to Richmond and his intention soon to go to Baltimore to meet friends he had met in Richmond. . . . After his return . . . he never went on any raid, but was continually talking about a visit or a raid into Maryland....”22

  Powell finally followed his heart. In the second week of January, he left the Rangers and went to Fairfax Court House, where he changed into civilian clothes. He sold his horse in Alexandria, then took an oath of allegiance, calling himself a civilian refugee. Being an escaped prisoner and one of Mosby’s Rangers, he dared not give his real name. So he borrowed the name of his Virginia hosts, and from that time forward he was known by the alias given on his oath of allegiance: Lewis Paine.

  Powell headed straight for Baltimore and the Eutaw Street boardinghouse of the Branson family. They had a lot of catching up to do. The war occupied much of their attention, and they undoubtedly talked about all the suffering it had wrought. Practically everyone had lost friends or relatives in the war, and Powell was no exception; two of his brothers had been killed at Murfreesboro—or so he thought. He talked about them, and about life in Mosby’s area of operations. He seemed to idolize his former commander, and was proud to have taken part in the famous Greenback raid. 23

  For the past few years, the Bransons had belonged to a prisoner relief operation. It was an informal group, composed of women who either had relatives in prison or just considered it a good cause. Among them were Ada Egerton, who once lived in the Branson house, and Annie Parr, whose husband, Preston, was a china dealer. Mrs. Parr had a son at Point Lookout, and Mrs. Egerton ran supplies to the same camp. Their common interest may have linked them to each other, and indirectly to the Lincoln conspiracy. Indeed, prisoner relief was the issue that underlay the whole story of the plot. When Booth revealed his plan to Arnold and O’Laughlen, he had given the prisoner exchange as its goal. His feigned connection in Canada used men who planned prison raids. When Surratt set up the river crossing, he implied that prisoners were involved. In fact and rumor, the same laudable goal had always given Booth’s scheme a certain humanitarian appeal. Of the thirty or more people who eventually learned that Booth was planning something, nearly all had a vague sense that prisoners of war were at its heart. 24

  The Baltimore relief network was about to give John Wilkes Booth his most trusted lieutenant. Lewis Powell had no job and no apparent means of support. He was staying at Miller’s Hotel in Baltimore, but visited the Bransons several times. Then he met Preston Parr, the china dealer, who knew John Surratt. Parr contacted Surratt on the twenty-first of January and set up an introduction. Surratt had found a new recruit for Booth, and the arrangement worked out for all concerned: Powell resumed his fight for the South; Surratt found a new asset for Booth’s plot; and Parr satisfied his debt to Surratt, who had once obtained information about his “exceedingly frail” son at Point Lookout. Soon Booth came over to assess Powell. He was powerful and silent, with nerves of steel. He was a good soldier— the kind of man who does what he is told. In a word, perfect. He moved into the Branson house to await Booth’s orders.25

  THE BOARDINGHOUSE at 541 H Street was a busy place. Friends, family, and boarders came and went under the watchful eye of Mary Surratt, a forty-three-year-old widow and the matriarch of the house. As Mary Elizabeth Jenkins, she had been the belle of Prince George’s County, but hard times and a difficult marriage had left their mark. Her late husband, John Harrison Surratt, Sr., was once wealthy and respectable. He had owned a mill and several tracts of land in the District of Columbia, and in the early 1850s, he had added a large farm in Prince George’s County to his holdings. For a while, the Surratts seemed to have everything. Their house in Maryland was just off an important crossroad, and it quickly became a post office, a polling place, and a
benchmark on the Port Tobacco stage route. But their prosperity was an illusion. Alcoholism and abusive behavior strained the marriage, and debts compelled John Surratt to open his home as a public house. His wife, a Catholic convert, grew more alienated from her husband and deeply involved in the church. In these circumstances she raised her three children: Isaac, Anna, and John Jr.26

  When John Surratt, Sr., died in August 1862, his widow found herself in debt with little prospect of finding her way out. Her tavern was still the center of life in Surrattsville, but the income from it did not pay the bills, and in the fall of 1864, Mrs. Surratt decided to move into the city. On November 1, she took her family to a house that her husband had left her on H Street. She placed ads for several rooms “suitable for four gentlemen,” and the following month found someone to move into the tavern. John M. Lloyd, a former police officer, began renting the place for five hundred dollars a year.

  Mary Surratt’s boarders were decent, ordinary people. Honora Fitzpatrick, eighteen, had been placed there by an elderly father who wanted to see that she stayed in good company. Lou Weichmann, the War Department clerk, was a former divinity student and friend of John Surratt. Ten-year-old Mary Apollonia Dean was attending school just around the corner, at St. Patrick’s Institute, and John T. Holohan, who brokered draft exemption deals, took two rooms for his wife and children.

  Though Mary Surratt had a great many friends, not everyone who stopped at her house was an acquaintance. Some came and went in secrecy: people with disguises; nameless associates of her son; agents of the Confederacy on their way south. Like the tavern at Surrattsville, the house on H Street became a safe haven for Southern spies and couriers. They passed through at all hours of the day and night.27

  Among these nocturnal guests was Augustus Spencer Howell, a Marylander who had been spying and running Confederate dispatches for several years. Howell often traveled with a mysterious young woman named Sarah A. Slater. A North Carolinian by birth, Mrs. Slater was described as “spruce and neat,” with black eyes and a fair complexion. She had been to Surratt’s house several times, but none of the boarders ever got a good look at her, as she always wore a veil over her face. She was said to be a clever woman, and her fluency in French made her a natural for the Montreal route. The Confederacy trusted her with some of its most important missions.28

  Mary Surratt went away for a few days in early February. In her absence, George Atzerodt appeared at her house for the first time. Atzerodt did not explain the nature of his business. He asked for John Surratt, who was not at home just then. Surratt arrived a few minutes later, and they greeted each other like old friends. Surratt offered Atzerodt a place for the night, suggesting he share a room with Spencer Howell, who was upstairs showing Weichmann how to use a Confederate decoding machine. Weichmann liked Atzerodt, whom he found to be a friendly, ingratiating man. Anna Surratt couldn’t pronounce his name, and started calling him “Port Tobacco.” The nickname stuck.

  The following evening, a carriage appeared in front of the house. Lou Weichmann, looking out a front window, thought he saw Mrs. Slater in the carriage, but she did not come in. While she waited by the curb, Spencer Howell went out and joined her. They left together, and no one in the house said a word about it.29

  Mary Surratt returned in a few days and met George Atzerodt for the first time. She was horrified to find such a pathetic specimen actually living in her house. Atzerodt, she said, would have to go. She did not care to have “such sticks” about the house. Though she did not want Atzerodt living there, she did not seem to mind that he visited. He came back often.30

  Arnold and O’Laughlen had been staying at Rullman’s Hotel, but when Booth unveiled his theater abduction plan, he told them to take a room at Mitchell’s Hotel, near Grover’s Theatre. They had not met any other conspirators, and had no idea there were any. But one morning in February they went to Booth’s hotel room and found him in conversation with John Surratt. Booth introduced Surratt as “Mr. Cole,” but later told them who he really was. After that, the name of Surratt often came up, and Arnold got the impression that he was an important figure in the plot. Booth always seemed to have business with him.31

  In early February, Booth told Arnold that his mother, Mary Ann, had had some kind of premonition and had asked June to come down and have a talk with him. The family had always taken such things seriously, or at least they pretended to for Mary Ann’s sake. Junius wanted his brother to leave town for a while, and though John Wilkes was working on his theater abduction plan, he really couldn’t offer that as an excuse. So on February 9, he left for New York, and the following evening, Abraham Lincoln and his wife went to see John Sleeper Clarke in Everybody’s Friend at Ford’s Theatre. Their guest was General Ulysses S. Grant.32

  Booth traveled a great deal, and he usually made a point of stopping in Philadelphia on the way back to Washington. He was at Asia’s house on Valentine’s Day, and sat up all night to work on an acrostic poem for his fiancée.

  Lucy Lambert Hale had been secretly dating Booth for some time. She was a daughter of John Parker Hale, an abolitionist senator from New Hampshire, and was one of the most intriguing young ladies of Washington society. She had a magnetic charm that was rumored to have piqued the interest of some highly placed young men, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Robert Todd Lincoln. She also had a free-thinking outlook that placed no shackles on the lifestyle of her husband-to-be. Booth still kept mistresses, and when Lucy traveled with him, they unabashedly checked into hotels as “J. W. Booth & Lady.” They sometimes met for trysts in Baltimore, accompanied by Lucy’s sister Elizabeth and John McCullough. Such things had to be kept secret; after all, Booth was an actor, and McCullough had a wife and two sons living in Philadelphia.33

  ON FEBRUARY 20, Sam Arnold and Mike O’Laughlen began renting a room in the home of Mary Van Tyne, a widow and dressmaker who lived on D Street near Eighth. Mrs. Van Tyne was a gracious woman who tried not to be too nosy about her tenants. As far as she could tell, Arnold and O’Laughlen were decent fellows who lived quietly and kept to themselves. They went home to Baltimore every Saturday and usually stayed for a few days. Their only visitor, for the most part, was John Wilkes Booth, and Mrs. Van Tyne was pleased to see him. Booth was a gentleman, and he seemed to like her—maybe because she had come from London, like his mother. He stopped by four or five times a week, and he always asked for O’Laughlen. When Mike wasn’t there, Booth would leave a message to meet him at a nearby stable.

  BOOTH HAD ONCE BEEN a chronic optimist with a passion for life, but lately he seemed distracted and short-tempered. The transformation was so pronounced, Joe Simonds noticed it from three hundred miles away. At his office in Franklin, Pennsylvania, Simonds voiced his concerns in a letter. “I hardly know what to make of you this winter—so different from your usual self,” he wrote. “Have you lost all your ambition or what is the matter[?]” He hated to see Booth growing idle and spending money he didn’t have. “If you are not going to act this season come out here John where at least you can live prudently and where I really believe you can make money.” Simonds was especially bothered by Booth’s extravagant claims of success. Booth, he learned, had told Sam Chester that he had already made eighty to a hundred thousand dollars in oil profits, and would have made more but for Simonds’s timidity. In reality, Booth hadn’t made a penny, but he could hardly admit that. After all, it was the promise of money that had lured Atzerodt into the plot. But the deception did not sit well with Simonds. “We have not got rich yet John,” he chided, “and when I do you will be the first one to know of it.”34

  Friends and family were puzzled by Booth’s idleness, though he always had some excuse for doing nothing. He had left a string of broken engagements, and theater manager James H. McVicker was one of those trying to reschedule him for the spring. “There are plenty of little fish,” said McVicker, “but I don’t want them if I can help it.” He knew that Booth was still a good draw, if he could only coax him back t
o the stage. Booth, however, showed no interest.35

  That month he went back to New York a few times and to Southern Maryland more often. The trips were fast and frequent. He called on Sam Chester again, and the two went for their customary walk down Broadway. Booth said that he had approached John Mathews, of Ford’s stock company, about joining the plot. Mathews had refused, and Booth hated him for it. In fact, he would have sacrificed him without a second thought. This callous attitude surprised Chester, and he told Booth that he shouldn’t talk that way. “No,” Booth replied. “He is a coward, and not fit to live.” Then, in spite of his promise not to bring it up again, he repeated his cash offer to Chester and asked him to reconsider. There really wasn’t much work in it; Booth and others would perform the actual abduction.

  True to form, Chester refused to hear anything more about it. He returned the fifty dollars Booth had sent him, and Booth accepted it, saying that he was short of funds at the moment. The plot had already cost him four thousand dollars, he said, “for horses and such like.” He would have to go to Richmond for more.36

  THOUGH JOHN SURRATT HAD TIES to Booth and to the Confederacy, there was nothing in his movements to suggest he had linked the two. In February, though, both interests converged in New York City. Booth and Surratt happened to be in town at the same time, and on Booth’s invitation, Surratt stopped at Edwin’s house and was introduced to Mary Ann, Edwin, and Rosalie. It was a memorable experience for him, and he talked endlessly of how elegant the place was. Clearly, he enjoyed Booth’s trust and confidence.

  Not so with everyone in the plot. George Atzerodt was Surratt’s hireling, and if Booth had had anything to say about it, he would never have been let into the loop. Atzerodt’s problem was that he drank too much, and when he drank, he talked. He bragged of getting rich, and of doing something that everyone would read about in the papers. His worst mistake, though, was asking a local man, George Bateman, to help him hide John Surratt’s boat. Bateman knew Surratt, and when he reported (or inquired about) what was going on, Surratt was shaken. He told Bateman to move the boat from Goose Creek, where Atzerodt wanted it, to King’s Creek, ten miles out of town. Presumably, he also told him to keep quiet.37