American Brutus

by Michael W. Kauffman

  FROM HIS HOTEL ROOM IN CINCINNATI, Junius Booth wrote to his brother Edwin. “Words of consolation are idle—we must use philosophy. ’Tis a mere matter of time the grief & shame of this blow will pass away. . . . But poor Mother who can console her, for a mother is a mother ever, and I am afraid she can never be brought to look calmly on this dreadful calamity.” For decades, Mary Ann had been plagued by scandals, but at the present, rumormongers and blackmailers were the least of her worries. Now what she feared was violence, not exposure. Given the temper of the times, the worst of the threats might well be carried out.27

  In New York, friends of Edwin Booth requested police protection at his house. At Asia’s home in Philadelphia, police didn’t have to be called. They searched her house, opened her mail, and followed her from room to room. If not for her difficult pregnancy, they would have carried her off in irons. But as it was, authorities allowed her to remain at home as long as she stayed in the company of a male guard. Friends shied away, and even her doctor refused to call on her. The sole visitor to the house was an actor named Claud Burroughs, who said that Edwin had sent him down to retrieve some papers. In fact, Burroughs was actually a detective. But no matter how difficult others made her life, the worst treatment came from her own husband. Within months, John Sleeper Clarke would decide that a Booth connection was no longer useful, and he asked his wife for a divorce. He said it would be his only salvation.28

  AT SEVEN O’CLOCK MONDAY MORNING, detectives Randall and Horner of Provost Marshal McPhail’s office entered John Wharton’s store at Fortress Monroe and told Sam Arnold that he was under arrest. Arnold seemed more relieved than surprised. He gave the investigators everything he had brought with him. In return, Randall handed Arnold a note from his father urging him to tell authorities whatever he might know about the plot. This was more than just fatherly advice; it was damage control. George Arnold—born Benedict Arnold—was well aware of the stigma that crime could attach to a family name. On his father’s advice, Sam began to talk, and soon the detectives had the information they sought. Randall wired back to McPhail: “You will arrest J. W. Booth, a Michael O’Laughlin [sic] of Baltimore; a G. W. Atzerodt, alias Port Tobacco, of Charles Co., Maryland, and John Surratt, residence not known, as all are implicated.” Then, with the suspect in tow, the detectives boarded a steamship for Baltimore.29

  GEORGE COTTINGHAM HAD REQUESTED reinforcements from Washington after seeing the stranger flee into the woods at Surrattsville. His message reached Major O’Beirne on Sunday night, but O’Beirne saw no point in sending out a party after dark. So just after daylight on Monday, Detectives William Williams and Simon Gavacan left for Surrattsville with a detachment of ten soldiers under Lt. Alexander Lovett, 9th V.R.C. When they arrived at the tavern, Cottingham gave them a progress report and told them that they had been looking for the tavern keeper, John M. Lloyd. Lieutenant Lovett decided to take his detachment to Allen’s Fresh in search of Lloyd. Joshua Lloyd joined them, and they left at midday.30

  SECRETARY STANTON REMAINED at his desk, following up on some rumors and stamping out others. One source claimed that Booth was heading for the Mississippi River, and Stanton notified authorities along the way there. Another source reported seeing him near the Chesapeake, and more troops were dispatched in that direction. Sightings were commonplace, and one never knew where they might occur. In fact, some detectives were so sure they had seen him in London that week that the U.S. ambassador, Charles Francis Adams, requested a warrant to have him arrested there.31

  SOME OF THE FORD’S THEATRE cast and crew were assembled on Monday to reenact Our American Cousin for the War Department. Investigators wanted to see if Booth had timed his shot for a moment in the play when the stage was supposed to be unobstructed. They found that of the twenty-nine people who occupied the stage at one point or another, only one would have been in Booth’s path for that one scene in Act Two. The test confirmed once again that Booth had planned the shooting down to the smallest detail.

  After the rehearsal, Edwin Stanton came in to look at the president’s box. He examined the hole in the door, the broken locks, and the niche Booth had carved into the wall of the outer passage. His guide, James Gifford, knew all about the box—the way it was furnished and decorated, and the relative positions of everyone in the president’s party. So when Mathew Brady, the photographer, came in a short while later, he was also told to consult Gifford. Together they re-created the original setting with borrowed flags and bunting in place of the originals, which had disappeared.32

  DETECTIVE RANDALL’S TELEGRAM about the capture of Arnold specifically identified Mike O’Laughlen as a conspirator. Since Provost Marshal McPhail lacked the manpower to track O’Laughlen down, he asked the Baltimore city police to do it for him. They checked at O’Laughlen’s house, and learned that the suspect was actually waiting to be arrested; he just didn’t want his mother to see him being taken away. So, through an intermediary, he arranged to surrender at the home of his sister Kate.

  Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana sent instructions for getting O’Laughlen to Washington: “Have [him] in double irons, and use every precaution against escape, but as far as possible avoid everything which can lead to suspicion on the part of the people on the train and give rise to an attempt to lynch the prisoner. . . .”

  O’Laughlen’s escort, Officer William E. Wallis, described the prisoner as “not communicative,” but he did learn something from talking with him. O’Laughlen admitted that he had joined a plot to capture—not kill—the president, but he insisted he had quit as soon as the government resumed the prisoner exchange. His only subsequent contacts with Booth were aimed at getting back the $500 he claimed Booth owed him.33

  THE WAR DEPARTMENT WAS RECEIVING all manner of clues and offers in the mail. It was a mixed bag, with plenty of crank letters, but just as many solid leads. One man insisted that Booth was in Chicago, disguised as a woman in a house of ill repute. Another was signed by “Booth” himself, and challenged authorities to catch him. Still another announced his arrival in Canada. One crank—an especially poor researcher—addressed a note to “George Surratt, care of Mrs. Surratt” and began, “Dear Sir: You are to attempt the murder of Secretary Seward while I am to attempt the life of Mr. [Salmon] Chase. . . .” It was dated April 10, but postmarked a month later.

  Psychic help seemed to come from all directions. One woman said that a reliable medium in Buffalo thought that Booth could be found in a “large, brown, Southern style house” situated “either north or south of Washington,” and a Mrs. Van de Water said that her favorite clairvoyant sensed that a red-haired woman had Booth in her closet, but wanted him to leave.

  On the whole, most mailed-in clues seemed entirely plausible. A prisoner in Fort Delaware advised the provost marshal to check for John Surratt at the home of Walter Griffin. A man signing himself “Loyalty” recommended searching for Herold at the Charles County home of his uncle, Horatio Nelson. Thomas Quinn, who grew up with the Booths, said that the assassin was “not a mile from here,” in Baltimore. By using valid names and connections, these people commanded a top priority with War Department investigators. They were honest people who wanted to help, even if they were usually wrong.34

  Nevertheless, the War Department dared not ignore them. Sometimes their letters were a great help. Henry Clay Young, of Cincinnati, sent the department a list of scars and marks he had seen on Booth’s body, and told them to look for a “J.W.B.” tattoo on his left hand. A group of black men in Washington persisted in calling attention to an underground passage at the Van Ness mansion. When soldiers searched the house, they turned up some letters that tied John Surratt to Preston Parr. They also uncovered a tunnel-like sewer that ran very close to the White House.

  For several days, investigators were ordered to keep their attention sharply focused on conveyances arriving in Philadelphia: a specific ship from Delaware City, a specific train from Baltimore. On Stanton’s personal orders, rail and steamship passenge
rs there were scrutinized closely, and the home of a man named William Mance was raided. These efforts yielded nothing, and they placed a burden on government resources that, in hindsight, would have been put to better use elsewhere.

  It is not normally difficult to figure out what led to a given raid or other investigative action; one need only examine the telegrams and letters received at the War Department in the preceding hours. An exhaustive search of these records, however, has failed to turn up anything that might have pointed investigators toward specific targets in Philadelphia. Evidently, Stanton was acting on clues given to him orally, and not committed to writing. Only one high-ranking official had easy access to Stanton, his own network of witnesses, and familiarity with the city in question: Lafayette C. Baker. It is nothing more than a hunch, but if the flurry of activity in Philadelphia had been a ruse, Baker would have been just the sort of person to set it in motion. He had long been known as a competitive and unscrupulous man, and he had done everything in his power to neutralize his fellow investigators. He had diverted them, misled them, even arrested them to keep them out of his way. As Stanton would soon learn, Baker even sent some of Washington’s best police detectives to Canada, where they could only get lost or scare off suspects they had no authority to arrest.35

  THE CAPTURE of Arnold and O’Laughlen on April 17 was a major break in the case. But an even bigger break came later the same day. In Washington, an African American woman named Mary Ann Griffin learned from her niece, Susan Mahoney, that some suspicious men had stopped at the Surratt boardinghouse on the night of the shooting. Susan, who worked for Mrs. Surratt, had been present at the time. Mrs. Griffin thought the information was important, and she passed it on to Percival M. Clark, who worked for the War Department. Clark filed a report with Col. Henry Wells, and at 8:45 P.M., Wells ordered Major Henry W. Smith and two detectives to arrest Mrs. Surratt. Unfortunately, he sent them to the wrong address.

  The mistake was soon corrected, and the party set out again with specific orders “to arrest Mrs. Surratt and all in the house; and to guard the place and arrest every person who might come to the house, to search the house, and to bring to [Colonel Wells] all papers, pictures, and other evidences.” Apparently, the colonel still remembered how to draw up a search warrant.36

  Smith took a couple of extra men with him this time, and as they rode over to 541 H Street, Lafayette Baker’s men approached another boardinghouse only a block from Mrs. Surratt’s. At the corner of Seventh and G streets, Ned Spangler was asleep in an upstairs room when his landlady’s daughter came up and told him there were two gentlemen waiting to see him. Spangler knew what the men wanted. He had been in and out of jails since Friday night, and had come to expect visits like these. One of the men asked him to take a little walk down the street. Just as he suspected, they were taking him to the Carroll Prison.37

  Meanwhile, Major Smith’s men surrounded Mary Surratt’s house. One stood by the basement door while another covered the gate leading to the backyard. Smith himself quietly ascended the steps leading to the front door and looked through the window. The parlor was well lit, and through the blinds he could see four women sitting on the sofa talking. When Detective Ely Devoe rang the bell, a woman came to the window and peered into the darkness. “Is that you, Mr. Kirby?” she asked.

  “No,” answered the major, “but open the door at once, if this is Mrs. Surratt’s house.”

  The door opened, and Major Smith asked the woman if she was the widow of John H. Surratt and the mother of John H. Surratt, Jr. Mrs. Surratt replied, “I am.” Smith announced that he had come to arrest her. A few men filed into the house, and Captain William Wermerskirch locked the door from the inside. Smith took Mrs. Surratt into the parlor, and he ordered Ely Devoe to go and get a carriage. Devoe suggested that the women could walk instead, but Smith wouldn’t hear of it. Young Anna Surratt was crying and appeared to be sick. Besides, said the major, those ladies would be treated kindly as long as they were in his charge. He repeated his order.

  Anna Surratt was shaken, and her mother tried to calm her. “Do not behave so, baby,” she said. “You are already worn out with anxiety that you will make yourself sick. . . .”

  “Oh, Mother!” said Anna. “To be taken for such a thing!”

  Mrs. Surratt told her to hush, and get ready to go out into the chilly night. With the major’s permission, she knelt in prayer.

  Devoe had not yet returned with the carriage, and Smith was getting impatient. He was going to suggest that some of the officers go out and hurry things up, but just as he spoke, he heard footsteps coming up the outside staircase. Wermerskirch took up a position by the front door, and Colonel Olcott’s clerk, Richard Morgan, stood next to him. The bell rang, and when Wermerskirch opened the door, a tall, dark-haired man stepped up to the threshold. He hesitated to come inside.

  “I guess I have mistaken the house,” said Lewis Powell.

  “No, you have not,” replied Major Smith. Morgan asked whose house he was looking for, and the man said, “Mrs. Surratt’s.” Smith slowly reached for his pistol, saying, “This is the house. Come in at once.” The man took a step forward, and Wermerskirch slammed the door behind him.

  The new arrival looked out of place. Powell wore a drab overcoat, black pants, and filthy boots. Wermerskirch thought he looked as if he had been marching on muddy roads. He carried a pickaxe over his shoulder, and on his head was a piece of fabric that appeared to be cut from an undershirt. The major questioned him closely.

  “What do you want here?”

  “I have come to dig a gutter for Mrs. Surratt.”

  “What do you come to a private house for at this hour of the night?”

  “I came to get directions from Mrs. Surratt about digging a gutter tomorrow morning.” Powell claimed that he had met Mrs. Surratt a few days before on Pennsylvania Avenue, and she hired him to do some digging behind her house. He noticed that the lights were still on, so he came up to ask if he might spend the night in her basement, then get an early start in the morning.

  Skeptical, Major Smith stepped over to the parlor door and asked Mrs. Surratt if she knew this man. She swore she did not.

  A certificate in the man’s pocket identified him as “L. Paine.” Something had been scratched off the paper, and even holding it up to the gaslight, Smith still couldn’t make out what had been erased. He told the man, “I think you are a spy.” Pointing to a chair in the hallway, he ordered Powell to sit down. “Your story does not hang together.”

  Ely Devoe eventually arrived with the carriage, and they took the ladies to General Augur’s headquarters. There was no room in the buggy for “Paine,” so the detectives kept him at the house, and they continued to ask him questions. Though the story he told was plausible enough, something didn’t seem right. The pickaxe showed no signs of recent use, and some of the items in his pockets—newspaper clippings, for example—were not the kind of things a common laborer would have. From the mud on his pants and boots, it looked as if he had been crouching on the ground. And Mrs. Surratt did not support his story.38

  Another carriage arrived, and Powell was driven away. The servants were ordered to follow on foot. When the house was cleared of its inhabitants, the rest of Major Smith’s team gave the place a more thorough search.

  AT GENERAL AUGUR’S HEADQUARTERS, Mary Surrattwas taken before Colonel Wells for questioning. He wanted to know how her son came to know John Wilkes Booth. Mrs. Surratt had no direct answer, but said that she never saw anything suspicious in their friendship. “I never thought a great deal of his forming Mr. Booth’s acquaintance,” she said, “because he called very frequently when my son was not there; he called upon the rest of us sometimes.” In her eyes, Booth was “very clear of politics,” and neither she nor her boarders ever indulged in political discussions themselves.

  To another question, she replied that she did not know where her son was, but supposed he was going to Canada. Wells responded bluntly: “No man on the round e
arth believes he went to Canada.”

  “I believe it,” she shot back. As the questioning continued, Mrs. Surratt never became flustered, and indeed, she was amazingly cool. She answered questions about George Atzerodt (“I don’t think [John] made an associate of him”) and David Herold (“I assure you he is not a visitor to our house”). Though Weichmann had said that spies and other suspicious people had visited her home, Mrs. Surratt claimed to know nothing about them. That prompted the colonel to suggest that she knew more than she would admit.

  “I assure you on the honor of a lady that I would not tell you an untruth,” she said.

  “I assure you, on the honor of a gentleman, I shall get this information from you. . . .”

  Mrs. Surratt again denied knowing such people.

  “Indeed you do,” Wells insisted. “I pledge you my word you do, and you will admit it, and I should be very glad if you would do it at once.”

  “If I could, I would do so,” she said. The more Mary Surratt stiffened, the more angry Wells became. He seemed to be the only one under pressure.

  Wells finally asked about the man who had just been captured in her house. Did she arrange to have him do labor about the premises? Her answer was emphatic: “No, sir; the ruffian that was in my door when I came away? He was a tremendous hard fellow with a skull cap on, and my daughter commenced crying, and said these gentlemen came to save our lives. I hope they arrested him. . . . I believe he would have murdered us, every one, I assure you.”39