American Brutus

by Michael W. Kauffman

  The man seemed incredulous. “How long have these rules been out?”

  “Some time; ever since I have been here. Why weren’t you out of the city before?”

  “I couldn’t very well. I stopped to see a woman on Capitol Hill, and couldn’t get off before.” His frank response seemed reasonable enough, given the number of parties taking place in the city. Besides, the war was almost over, and any danger to the government had surely passed. So Cobb let “Smith” cross out of the city.

  This Good Friday was turning out to be a busy night at the Navy Yard Bridge. A short while after that small man crossed the bridge, a third rider approached. John Fletcher asked Cobb if he had seen anyone on a light roan horse. Cobb said yes, someone had just crossed over on such a horse. From the description Cobb gave, Fletcher felt certain he was on the track of David Herold. “God! I am after him,” he said. The stableman then asked if he might pursue the man. Cobb said it would be all right with him, but the rules prohibited him from letting anyone back into the city until morning. Fletcher had no intention of waiting out in the country all night, so he turned back, and headed to police headquarters to report a stolen horse.2

  AS THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL slowly wore off, George Atzerodt began to feel a sense of dread. He went to the Pennsylvania House, where he took a drink at the bar. The more he thought about it, though, the more he realized the authorities might come looking for him there. So he left the hotel and went for a ride. At Eighth Street, he dropped off his horse at Keleher’s Stable, where he had rented it. He walked over to the Herndon House, on Ninth Street. This was only a block away from Ford’s Theatre, and Atzerodt found the whole neighborhood on the alert for conspirators. In a panic, he took a streetcar to the navy yard, at the far eastern end of the city.

  An old acquaintance happened to be on the car. Washington Briscoe had met Atzerodt seven or eight years before, and was surprised that he did not recognize him. Briscoe asked if he had heard the news, and Atzerodt said yes, but left it at that. Then he asked if Briscoe would let him spend the night at his place. Though Briscoe turned him down, Atzerodt did not seem to regard that as the final word. He repeated his request a couple more times. When it was obvious that the answer would not improve, he gave up and decided to return to the Pennsylvania House.3

  AT SURRATTSVILLE, tavern keeper John M. Lloyd was awakened by a sharp knock at his door. Lloyd had been drinking all afternoon and had been sprawled on a sofa, sound asleep, since about eight o’clock. Now it was midnight, and David Herold was standing on the porch, anxious and fidgety. “Make haste and get those things,” Herold urged.

  Lloyd knew exactly what Herold meant. After talking with Mrs. Surratt that afternoon, he had brought those guns down from their hiding place. He shuffled over to get them, while Herold came inside and helped himself to a bottle of whiskey. Another man waited on a horse outside, and while Herold handed him the bottle, Lloyd appeared in the door with a carbine, field glasses, and a box of cartridges. He said that he had to go back for the other carbine, but the second man told him not to bother; he had broken his leg, he said, and it was all he could do to keep himself in the saddle, even without carrying a rifle. He asked if there was a surgeon in the neighborhood, and Lloyd said he didn’t know of one who still practiced.

  The man on the horse seemed eager to let Lloyd in on something. “I will tell you some news if you want to hear it,” he said.

  Lloyd wasn’t sure how to answer. “I am not particular,” he replied. “You can tell me if you think proper.”

  The man straightened up in the saddle and announced, “We have assassinated the president and Secretary Seward.” Lloyd was dumbfounded. He stood there in a drunken stupor as Herold handed him a dollar for the whiskey and said something about keeping the change.

  “We must find a doctor somewhere,” Herold said. Lloyd said that he couldn’t think of one who still practiced, but as he was saying this, the two men turned to leave. Without waiting for him to finish talking, they galloped away.4

  MIKE O’LAUGHLEN WAS IN A BAR with his friends when someone burst in and announced that Lincoln had been shot. The news hit O’Laughlen like a kick in the stomach. He couldn’t believe that Booth had actually gone through with it. The thought sickened him, and he returned, pale and nervous, to the Metropolitan Hotel for the night.

  John Mathews was also feeling sick. Soon after the shooting, Mathews remembered that Booth had given him a letter for the National Intelligencer the day before. With a growing sense of anxiety, he rushed back to his boardinghouse for a private look at Booth’s letter. It was chilling. After beginning with a political statement, it closed with a veiled reference to this last, desperate act. It even named his fellow conspirators, thus sealing their fates—or, as Booth chose to see it, their place in history.

  For a long time I have devoted my energies, my time and money to the accomplishment of a certain end. I have been disappointed. The moment has now arrived when I must change my plans. Many will blame me for what I am about to do, but posterity, I am sure, will justify me.

  Men who love their country better than gold or life.

  John W. Booth, Paine, Herold, Atzerodt.

  Mathews read the letter several times and committed it to memory. Then he burned it and resolved—for now—not to say a word about it.5

  IT WAS FOUR O’CLOCK in the morning when Dr. Samuel Mudd was awakened by a knock on his door. Peering through a front window, Mudd saw two men waiting in the rain. One stood on the front porch, while the other sat on a horse some distance from the house. The man at the door said that they needed a surgeon for his friend, who had been hurt when his horse tripped. He and the doctor helped the injured man out of the saddle and into the house. While the patient waited on the parlor sofa, Mudd went to find a lamp. His farmhands got up to take care of the visitors’ horses.

  In the predawn darkness, Dr. Mudd did not recognize the injured man. He noticed that the patient seemed to suffer a great deal, and not just from the leg injury. His back was hurt, and he later said that he had been thrown against a rock when his horse tripped. He really needed to lie down for a proper examination, so Mudd and the other man helped him up the stairs and onto a bed in the front room. His left leg was swollen, and Mudd had to slit the boot up along the shin to remove it. The other man hovered over him the whole time, watching closely and urging him to hurry. They had gotten an early start, he said, and they still hoped to get back on the road before sunup. The patient himself said little.

  After inspecting the injury, Mudd did not think it was all that serious. The fibula, or the smaller bone in the lower leg, had snapped straight across, about two inches above the ankle. It was not a weight-bearing bone, and since it did not break through the skin, Mudd did not foresee any major complications. He fashioned a splint from pieces of a bandbox, then had his English gardener, John Best, make a pair of crutches.

  The patient was exhausted, and chose to remain in bed for a while. His companion, however, joined the doctor for breakfast. To Mudd, he seemed immature. He talked incessantly, and seemed eager to show off how much he knew of Charles County. Because of his friend’s injury, he thought it best to look for a shortcut to the Potomac, where they might find a boat to take them to Washington. That would certainly be easier than riding a horse the whole way.

  Mudd would later claim he had no idea who his visitors were. He had never met Herold and had not seen Booth since the previous November or December, four or five months before. And this time, Booth stayed in bed with his face to the wall, so Mudd never got a good look at him. Even Mrs. Mudd, who brought him food during the day, did not realize she had met him before. She said that this man was pale and haggard, and there was nothing in his appearance to remind her of the handsome, robust man she had spoken with on a previous visit. Both she and her husband claimed that the smaller man did all the talking, and that he gave his friend’s name as Tyson. Only later did they suspect they had been duped.6

  “EVIDENTLY CONSPIRATOR
S ARE AMONG US!” shrieked the National Intelligencer. The air was thick with rumors, and it was hard to know what to believe. Newspapers mixed fact and fiction, and even official reports were subject to error. Correspondence of the Signal Corps announced that Major Clarence Seward had died, and the New York Herald also named him among the casualties. But in fact none of the Sewards had been killed, and the secretary’s son Clarence had not even been in Washington that night. To add to the confusion, the Herald reported that the president’s assassin was rumored to be in custody.

  Many people thought that Booth had been captured right away, and those who knew otherwise were busy chasing down false rumors of his whereabouts. General James A. Hardie, for example, wired the commander of the military railroad in Northern Virginia: “It is expected Booth has gone to Fairfax by way of Alexandria.” Other troops were dispatched to Baltimore, and still more were sent on a house to house search in the city of Washington. All went about the job equally confident they were on the right track. 7

  Some serious obstacles slowed the initial pursuit. Rain, cold winds, and heavy fog impeded travel, and a lack of efficient communications handicapped the government’s work from the beginning. Nevertheless, military authorities took all reasonable measures to seal off the capital. Trains were stopped in all directions. Bridges were blocked, and Baltimore police were notified that Booth might be heading their way, if he managed to get out of Washington.

  Police Superintendent A. C. Richards was also moving forward. Just after midnight, Richards wired Provost Marshal McPhail in Baltimore about the assassination, and McPhail began looking for Booth’s hometown associates. By mid-morning, his men had tracked down a local theater patron named Edwin Tuttle, who gave them photographs of Booth and told them that two Baltimore men, Sam Arnold and Mike O’Laughlen, had been working with him in the oil business. Tuttle had not seen either of them since they went to Washington. Both, ironically, were friends of McPhail’s.8

  Few could top General Henry W. Halleck for clear-headed, methodical thinking. As General Grant’s chief of staff, Halleck had been privy to a wealth of information, and just after the assassination, he recalled seeing a diplomatic dispatch warning of rumors that a man in France was planning an attack on William T. Sherman. At the time, General Sherman paid no attention to the message. Like the president, he refused to be side-tracked by such threats. But the information from Europe was very specific, and Halleck urged Secretary Stanton to give it another look. He ferreted out the original dispatch and, showing it to Stanton, got the secretary to reiterate the danger. “I find evidence that an assassin is also on your track,” wired Stanton to General Sherman, “and I beseech you to be more heedful than Mr. Lincoln was of such knowledge.” In a separate message, Halleck added that the assassin’s name was Clark and that he was a slender man, five feet nine inches tall, with dark brown hair and mustache, a long goatee, and high cheekbones. While in Paris the previous March, Clark wore dark gray clothes and a slouch hat, and had “a very determined look.” General Sherman and staff were put on alert, but nothing ever came of it. 9

  There was a general belief that Booth had headed northeast toward Baltimore, and much of the search was directed accordingly. Only days later would authorities learn that he had gone south, into Southern Maryland, and a search of that area had been slow to develop. First Lieutenant David Dana was one of the first to go there. By sunrise on April 15, Dana had already embarked on a trek that, coincidentally, followed much of Booth’s actual route. He intended to search at Port Tobacco, which the stableman John Fletcher had identified as the hometown of Booth’s friend Atzerodt. Taking eighty-five men from the 13th New York Cavalry, Dana methodically searched all the roads and villages leading south. Though slowed by heavy fog, he was able to reach Piscataway, twelve miles below Washington, by seven o’clock.

  A local hotel keeper named Nodley Anderson told Dana that the assailant of Secretary Seward must have been a man named John H. Boyle, a notorious guerrilla who had murdered an army captain on March 25. Anderson suggested that instead of going to Port Tobacco, Dana should make a detour to Surrattsville, a rebel hotbed just a few miles to the east, to question John Lloyd, the tavern keeper there. So Dana sent a messenger ahead to instruct Lt. William K. Lafferty at Port Tobacco to search for Atzerodt. He sent another courier back to Washington with a progress report. Then he and his men rode over to Surrattsville for a talk with John M. Lloyd.

  Lloyd had sobered up since the previous night, but his judgment was still clouded. Asked whether anyone had ridden through there, he said no. Asked if he knew anything about Booth, he again said no. He promised that if anything came to his attention, he would report it. He said the same thing to John Fletcher when he brought the police through a short time later. For the next couple of days, Lloyd would continue to deny he knew anything at all about the assassination.10

  AS THE INVESTIGATION DEVELOPED, the name of George Atzerodt was turning up a lot. Atzerodt’s case was especially urgent because investigators believed it was he who had attacked the secretary of state. It was his saddle and bridle that had been found on the one-eyed horse; the stableman Fletcher had identified them at General Augur’s office. Booth’s bankbook, found at the Kirkwood House, connected him to the assassin. He had shared horses with Booth and Herold, and he had hinted about important events and access to great wealth. By the morning of April 15, authorities were already referring to him as “G. A. Atzerodt, the assassin of Mr. Seward.” Typical was a telegram by Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana, who said: “The assailant of Mr. Seward has been known here by the name of G. A. Atzerodt. He is twenty-six or twenty-eight years old, five feet eight inches tall; light complexion, brown from exposure . . . rather round-shouldered and stooping. . . .”

  Atzerodt’s name was already familiar to authorities in Baltimore. He had reportedly been on the steamer Harriet DeFord just days before she was hijacked by Confederate agents on the Chesapeake. He had apparently boarded the ship at Fair Haven, and was seen showing off a roll of greenbacks to Walter Barnes and Henry M. Bailey, two friends from Charles County. All of this had been reported to Maryland’s Provost Marshal McPhail in late March. Though McPhail thought little of it at the time, he now considered it worth a second look. Barnes and Bailey had been in Baltimore since the end of March, and Atzerodt had stopped in to see them a couple of times. They were staying in Booth’s old neighborhood.11

  Despite the attention, Atzerodt managed to avoid capture. But a search of his usual haunts turned up an interesting lead. John Greenawalt, of the Pennsylvania House, said that Atzerodt had checked in to the hotel at about two A.M. on the night of the assassination and left about three hours later. He came and went with a man who signed the register as “S. Thomas.” This man Thomas looked every bit as filthy and disheveled as Atzerodt. He had a weather-beaten face and dark, matted hair. His suit was expensive but stained and threadbare, with frayed cuffs. Though nobody knew where he and Atzerodt had gone, they had left behind one incriminating item: a Bowie knife, found under the steps of a grocery store near the Herndon House. It was said to be Atzerodt’s.12

  AFTER HIS EARLY MORNING VISIT to Howard’s Stable, Louis Weichmann returned to the Surratt boardinghouse for breakfast, then went out for a walk. He must have known that investigators would look closely at his connections to Booth and Surratt. The conspirators had never seemed to mind having him around, and indeed, they had treated him like one of them. Now he had to convince authorities that appearances were deceptive, and that he had never known the truth about Booth’s intentions. Just as important, he had to show his willingness to help in the investigation. So when he learned, on the morning of the fifteenth, that Seward’s attacker was wearing a long gray coat, he resolved to tell authorities immediately that George Atzerodt must have been that man.

  Weichmann took his suspicions to police headquarters, and while there he also mentioned the large dark-haired man who had visited the Surratt boardinghouse. The man had used several names,
but Weichmann remembered him as “Paine” and recalled that lately he had been staying at the Herndon House. Weichmann had once overheard Mrs. Surratt inquiring at the hotel desk about a “delicate gentleman” who needed to have his meals sent up to him. He assumed this was a cover story for “Paine,” who was reluctant to leave his room for fear of being discovered south of Philadelphia, in violation of his oath of allegiance.

  As he told this to police, someone nearby overheard the conversation and identified himself as a hotel waiter who had frequently taken meals up to Paine’s room.

  “Was he a delicate eater?” Weichmann asked the man.

  “I should think not,” he replied. “Why, if I had served a small pig to him, he would have eaten it, bones and all!” 13

  IN A POSH WASHINGTON TOWN HOUSE, a twenty-year-old prostitute named Ellen Starr pressed her face into a towel soaked in chloroform. She was in love with Booth, and for some months past had been his mistress. She was discovered and revived. Elsewhere, reactions varied. All across the country, public meetings were called and churches were opened for prayer services in memory of the late president. At Tiffany’s in New York, stunned employees stopped the clock in front of their store at the time of Lincoln’s death. The wave of indignation that followed the shooting threatened some Democrats with the possibility of retaliation. W. B. Lyndall sensed the danger. “I was a marked man from my well-known bitter opposition to the administration . . . ,” he wrote, “and had I not had some friends who stood by me, my house would have been sacked. . . .”

  Lyndall had had the good sense to avoid inflammatory remarks, but not everyone was as wise as he. In Fort Barrancas, Florida, Union Private S. A. St. John said that the assassination ought to have happened four years before. He was immediately court-martialed. In Cleveland, J. J. Husband gloated over the president’s death, saying, “You have had your day of rejoicing, now I have mine.” A mob chased him up to the roof of his office, threw him through the skylight, then kicked him down the stairs. In Springfield, Massachusetts, a crowd of two hundred bowled over a sheriff’s escort to get at a man who had rejoiced over the killing. They forced the man to kneel bareheaded and say, “I am sorry Abraham Lincoln was shot. So help me God.”