American Brutus

by Michael W. Kauffman

  BOOTH WAS DEJECTED over his failure to reach Virginia. His long hours on the river had been unnerving, and he was not looking forward to the prospect of setting out again. However, he could not stay in Maryland, though the only way out might cost him his life. In despair, he sat down once more with his pocket diary.

  After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased by gun boats till I was forced to return [to Maryland] wet cold and starving, with every man’s hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for, what made Tell a Hero. And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat. My action was purer than either of theirs. One hoped to be great himself. The other had not only his country’s but his own wrongs to avenge. I hoped for no gain. I knew no private wrong. I struck for my country and that alone. A country groaned beneath this tyranny and prayed for this end. Yet now behold the cold hand they extend to me. God cannot pardon me if I have done wrong. Yet I cannot see any wrong except in serving a degenerate people. The little, the very little I left behind to clear my name, the Govmt will not allow to be printed. So ends all. For my country I have given up all that makes life sweet and Holy, brought misery upon my family, and am sure there is no pardon in the Heaven for me since man condemns me so. I have only heard of what has been done (except what I did myself) and it fills me with horror. God try and forgive me, and bless my mother. To night I will once more try the river with the intent to cross; though I have a greater desire and almost a mind to return to Washington and in a measure clear my name, which I feel I can do. I do not repent the blow I struck. I may before my God but not to man.

  I think I have done well, though I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me, when if the world knew my heart, that one blow would have made me great, though I did desire no greatness.

  To night I try to escape these blood hounds once more. Who, who can read his fate God’s will be done.

  I have too great a soul to die like a criminal. O may he, may he spare me that and let me die bravely.

  I bless the entire world. Have never hated or wronged anyone. This last was not a wrong, unless God deems it so. And its [sic] with him to damn or bless me. And for this brave boy with me who often prays (yes, before and since) with a true and sincere heart. Was it crime in him, if so, why can he pray the same I do not wish to shed a drop of blood, but “I must fight the course.” ’Tis all that’s left me.2

  In fact, Booth would have to wait another day for his chance to reach Virginia. For now, he had to be content with the reluctant hospitality of John J. Hughes.

  FOR SEVERAL DAYS, detectives and cavalrymen had focused their attention on the east side of Zekiah Swamp, near Dr. Mudd’s. They shared the impression that the Zekiah was impenetrable, and that Booth could not have crossed it en route to the Potomac. Apparently, local citizens had done all they could to discourage the soldiers from looking there. Their false hints of danger had the desired effect, and few Yankees ventured into the abyss even after being ordered to do so. They all seemed to share the impression that George Alfred Townsend, the reporter, had when he wrote of the place:

  “Even a hunted murderer would shrink from hiding there. Serpents and slimy lizards are the only denizens; sometimes the coon takes refuge in this desert from the hounds . . . but not even the hunted negro dares to fathom the treacherous clay, nor make himself a fellow of the slimy reptiles which reign absolute in this terrible solitude. . . . The Shawnee, in his strong hold of despair in the heart of Okeefenokee, would scarcely have changed homes with Wilkes Booth and David Harold, hiding in this inhuman country.” 3

  Lieutenant Lovett and Detectives Aquilla Allen and Washington Kirby were among those who believed the fugitives were holed up near Dr. Mudd’s. For several days, they kept an eye on the place in hopes of seeing whether the doctor went out to visit them. Their surveillance turned up nothing, but after Stanton issued his reward offer they decided to get more aggressive. On Friday the twenty-first, they went back to speak with Dr. Mudd, and he handed them a break in the case.

  Mudd was coming back from his father’s house when he noticed a large number of cavalrymen milling around in his front yard. Lovett and the detectives were in the house, and when Mudd greeted them, he said that something had turned up since the last time they had spoken. Just that morning, as his wife was cleaning the front bedroom, she had found a boot left behind by the injured visitor on Saturday. It had been shoved under the bed and forgotten. Mudd’s wife went upstairs and brought it down to Lieutenant Lovett. It was a tall brown leather boot, slit up the front about ten inches. Written faintly in pencil on the inside was: “H. Lux, maker. 445 Broadway. J. Wilkes.”

  Until now, the identity of Mudd’s injured visitor had been a matter of speculation. But the inscription in that boot erased all doubt. Dr. Mudd was placed under arrest for harboring Lincoln’s killer.4

  This evidence of Booth’s visit finally confirmed that Booth had gone to Southern Maryland, evidently because he regarded it as friendly territory. Secretary Stanton was sure that residents here were hiding him, and he issued a public declaration:

  The counties of Prince George’s, Charles, and St. Mary’s have, during the whole war, been noted for hostility to the government and their protection to rebel blockade-runners, rebel spies, and every species of public enemy. The murderers of the President harbored there before the murder, and Booth fled in that direction. If he escapes, it will be owing to rebel accomplices in that region. The military commander of the department will speedily take measures to bring these rebel sympathizers and accomplices in the murder to a sense of their criminal conduct.

  William P. Wood and his men learned of Dr. Mudd’s arrest when they saw him in Bryantown. Wood had spent a good deal of time in Southern Maryland, and he firmly believed the best way to deal with the people here was to seek their voluntary cooperation. He had already done some favors for Mrs. Surratt’s brother, whom he had known for years. Now, with the consent of Colonel Wells, he secured the temporary release of Dr. Mudd. They went back to the farm together, and returned to Bryantown, as promised, in about three hours.

  Wood picked up Detectives Allen and Kirby at the tavern there, and they all rode back to the Mudd farm. That interview with the doctor had given him some ideas, and he now took his men out to the stable to begin looking for horse tracks. From what they found, it appeared that the fugitives went out the swamp road, just as Dr. Mudd said, but after riding over the hill, they turned and went in the opposite direction. To Wood, that suggested that Booth and Herold had deceived the doctor. Evidently, they did not regard him as a friend.5

  THE MANHUNT HAD BECOME SCHIZOPHRENIC. While detectives in Southern Maryland focused their search more narrowly, pursuers elsewhere were casting an even wider net. A week after the assassination, government officials were giving full credence to all conspirator sightings, no matter how far from the scene of the crime. In Chicago, they arrested actor James Nagle on the suspicion that he was Booth. In St. Louis, police went on full alert after “Herold” was spotted in a hotel there. In nearly every state of the Union, vigilant citizens were kept on edge by the thought that Booth was hiding among them.

  The St. Louis report may have reminded authorities that Booth had a family connection there. The day after the Herold sighting, Assistant Secretary of War Dana ordered Missouri’s Provost Marshal General, J. H. Baker, to search the premises of Junius Booth’s daughter Blanche and her uncle, Ben DeBar, for correspondence that might shed light on the conspiracy. Such a step might have seemed pointless a week ago, but now anything was worth a try. Baker seemed to enjoy the visit. He reported that Miss DeBar, as she was called, was “possessed of considerable personal attractions, of a vigorous mind and marked histrionic ability.” Judging from her papers, though, she was “an unmitigated rebel.” As to John Wilkes, both she and her uncle Ben “never knew him to squander money in rioting or excesses of any kind—except possibly with wom
en.” Neither approved of the assassination, and Blanche’s only correspondence with him was a personal note, signed from her “Nunkee John.”6

  NED SPANGLER HAD BEEN in Carroll Prison since Monday night, and had come to believe the authorities were holding him only as a witness. He had been called to the prison office several times, only to be identified or interrogated. So he thought nothing of it when called again on Saturday night. This time, however, he was in for a shock. “Come, Spangler,” said a detective, “I’ve some jewelry for you.” He was holding a pair of handcuffs, and an order to transfer the prisoner to the Washington Navy Yard.7

  BOOTH AND HEROLD would set out for Virginia a second time that night. Their first try had taken them upstream from their objective, and to the west of Mathias Point. They were almost directly across from a Confederate signal camp at a place called Boyd’s Hole, but for reasons never explained, they did not go there on their second trip. Perhaps their friends at Nanjemoy told them what the locals knew: that raiding parties had made some important arrests in the area, and that Union bluecoats were still over there in relatively large numbers. Whether Booth and Herold knew this or not, they avoided the short trip to Boyd’s Hole. They rowed instead to the east side of Mathias Point, then down the Virginia shore more than ten miles to Machodoc Creek—a long trip, and all in plain sight of the Potomac Flotilla. They started at nightfall on April 22.

  These days, the Potomac was alive with activity. The fugitives would have to slip past many government vessels on their way across. One would think that the number of ships alone would make the blockade impassable, but experienced watermen had no such illusions. Even the flotilla’s commander knew better. On April 23, Commander Foxhall Parker wrote to his superiors that “twice the number of boats constituting this flotilla could not prevent a canoe from crossing at night from Maryland to Virginia.” Locals were rumored to be crossing at will, and they got away with it in part because of loopholes that allowed legitimate maritime commerce to continue. Fishing boats, for example, were allowed on the Potomac, so long as they did not land below Alexandria. Local watermen knew this, and they took advantage of it.8

  So even though the crossing of Booth and Herold was hazardous, it was hardly a miracle. By sunrise on April 23, they had succeeded in reaching the broad mouth of Machodoc Creek in Virginia. Along its northern bank was the home of Elizabeth Quesenberry, though finding it was a challenge. After hearing someone hail them from a gunboat, the fugitives ducked into Gambo Creek and got lost in its winding reaches. Eventually, Herold set out over land to find the Quesenberry house. Booth waited in the boat.

  Elizabeth Rousby Quesenberry was an extraordinary woman in the most ordinary place. She was one of the Green family, born in Rosedale, near Georgetown, in the District of Columbia. Her grandfather was General Uriah Forrest, her great-grandfather was a governor of Maryland, and her mother was a cousin of Francis Scott Key. One of her sisters married a grandson of George Washington’s sister, while another married the son of Mexico’s last native emperor. Certainly, one wouldn’t expect to find a woman of such circumstances living in a small frame house at the edge of an isolated swamp. Yet there she was, and the reason was simple: Mrs. Quesenberry was keeping a safe house for Confederate signal agents. On April 23, two of them waited there for Booth and Herold.

  It was about one o’clock in the afternoon when Herold found her farm. The lady of the house was not at home, so her fifteen-year-old daughter, Lucy, sent for her. In the meantime, Herold struck up a conversation. He told Lucy that he had just left a nice little rowboat down by the creek, and she was welcome to take it if she wanted it. They had talked for only a moment when Lucy’s mother arrived, and Herold got right to the point. He asked Mrs. Quesenberry if she could furnish him with a conveyance for a trip inland. She asked why he couldn’t walk, and he said that he could, but his brother down by the river could not, as he had broken his leg. He asked if she would sell them a horse, and she said that if she were inclined to help them, she would just give them one—but she was not so inclined. In fact, she wanted them off her property.

  Herold was dismayed at this treatment, and he walked away, much put out. But as he headed back to break the news to Booth, Mrs. Quesenberry called out, “Have you had anything to eat?” She offered to send some food.

  Booth had trusted Herold when nobody else would, and his faith was repaid in times like this. Time and again, Herold had opportunities to go his own way, but he turned them aside. Now, instead of getting away from Booth, he rejoined him on the banks of Gambo Creek. The food arrived a short while later, and to their surprise, it was delivered by Tom Harbin— the same man who had agreed, the previous December, to join Booth’s conspiracy.

  Elizabeth Quesenberry did not speak with Booth, but had she done so, she might have discovered their common interest. In the coming days, Booth would make it clear that he was heading for Mexico, where the Emperor Maximilian was offering large bounties and a safe haven to unrepentant Confederates. The emperor was an Austrian by birth, and was now defending his throne against an indigenous uprising by the followers of Benito Juárez. To shore up support among native Mexicans, he had adopted Agustín de Yturbide, the grandson of the former emperor, as his own heir apparent. That child happened to be the nephew of Mrs. Quesenberry’s.9

  But in fact, there was no talk of Mexico on the banks of Gambo Creek. Mrs. Quesenberry kept her distance, sending Tom Harbin and Joseph Baden to see Booth instead. Harbin was anxious to do his part and be gone. He and Baden gave the fugitives a quick meal, then dropped them off at the farm of William L. Bryant, about a mile away. Their parting advice was to seek out Dr. Richard H. Stuart, eight miles up the road. Stuart was a friend to the Cause.

  Herold told Bryant that he needed a horse to get to the home of Dr. Stuart. He said that his brother John had been thrown by a horse down in Richmond, and had broken his leg. Bryant was not willing to part with either of his horses. The best he could do was give Booth and Herold a ride to Stuart’s. For that, he accepted ten dollars.10

  THE LINCOLN FUNERAL TRAIN was in Philadelphia that day. Its arrival the night before was announced by the report of a cannon. In the subsequent firing of minute guns, a soldier was killed—one of two fatalities associated with the president’s obsequies. Many thousands had packed the streets to catch a glimpse of the coffin on its way from the train station to Independence Hall. An estimated 300,000 people lined up to see the body lying in state there, and some waited as much as five hours to get in. For a time, city leaders feared that the six-hundred-man police detail would be inadequate to keep the crowd under control.

  This was the second Sunday following the assassination, and ministers took the opportunity to expand upon the hurriedly composed sermons they had given the week before. For some, the occasion would mark a high point in their careers. At the Church of the Holy Trinity, Rev. Phillips Brooks delivered a sermon on the deeper meaning of the president’s death. Brooks eulogized Mr. Lincoln as a shepherd who led his flock from evil. The president’s character was fundamentally in conflict with slavery. His assassination had been the final sacrifice necessary for the overthrow of that evil institution. Though still a young man, Brooks was establishing himself as a leading voice in the Episcopal Church, and some of his admirers would regard this particular sermon as one his finer efforts, rendered with the same dignity and eloquence with which he gave the world one of Christianity’s most cherished hymns: “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”11

  THE ARRIVAL IN WASHINGTON of Col. Henry L. Burnett marked a milestone in the conspiracy investigation. Burnett, a star prosecutor for the Bureau of Military Justice, had just finished an assignment out West. He now joined Secretary Stanton in building criminal cases against the alleged conspirators. His first act, on the twenty-third, was to figure out what was missing in the investigation. Then he ordered a report on the fugitives’ horses—what they looked like, where they had been seen, and how they tied the suspects to one another. In subsequent days he tried to
track down the flags from Ford’s Theatre, had handbills distributed up and down the Potomac, and ordered Colonels Foster and Wood to prepare memoranda on all the more viable suspects. He was bringing order to the investigation, and making great strides in the process.12

  DR. RICHARD H. STUART LIVED about eight miles from William Bryant’s farm. He called his house Cleydael, after a family-owned château in Belgium. Stuart was one of the wealthiest men in Virginia, with a blood-line he traced to the House of Stuart and ties to the Lees and the Washingtons as well. His wife was descended from Lord Baltimore, Baron Henri Stier, and the painter Rubens. Oddly enough, Julia Calvert Stuart was also a sister of George H. Calvert, former mayor of Newport, Rhode Island, and the man whose threatening letter had drawn Mary Surratt to her tavern on the day of the assassination.

  Dr. Stuart had come to Cleydael for safety’s sake. His primary residence was Cedar Grove, a magnificent mansion on the Potomac, but since houses on the river were vulnerable to the danger of shelling by federal gunboats, Stuart had moved to this, his inland summer home. For the past four years, he and his family had been sharing the house with guests that once included the daughters of his cousin Robert E. Lee. Stuart’s own daughters were here with their husbands and beaux on the evening of April 23. They had just finished their supper when two horses approached on the narrow lane through the woods. On one was William L. Bryant, and John L. Crismond was on the other. Each was doubled up with a stranger, and one of their passengers had already dismounted.