American Brutus

by Michael W. Kauffman

  “We are Marylanders in want of accommodations for the night,” said Herold.

  Stuart looked him over closely. “It is impossible,” he said. “I have no accommodations for anybody.”

  Herold said that his brother had broken his leg, and that Dr. Mudd had recommended they see him. Stuart did not know a Dr. Mudd, and had not authorized anyone to recommend him. Besides, he was a physician, not a surgeon. Herold continued to plead for help, and when the injured man spoke up to identify himself, Stuart cut him off. “I don’t want to know anything about you,” he snapped.

  “But if you will listen to the circumstances of the case, you will be able to do it.”

  Dr. Stuart remained unsympathetic, and refused to budge on accommodations. He did not like the appearance of these men. They were too pushy, he thought, and when Herold said that they wanted to join up with Mosby, Stuart’s suspicions intensified. He told them that Mosby had surrendered, and they would have to get their paroles.

  Stuart was cautious for good reason. As a cousin of General Lee, he had been a special target of the Yankees. He had always opened his doors to strangers, but sometimes they had turned out to be spies. For his hospitality, Dr. Stuart had paid with months spent on a prison barge. These days, the most he would do for travelers was to give them a meal. But as Booth and Herold took their seats in his kitchen, Stuart suddenly realized that their transportation had gone away. Bryant and Crismond had taken their leave and were halfway down the lane before the doctor chased them down.

  Meanwhile, Booth and Herold ate their supper with an audience. S. Turbeville Stuart, the doctor’s son-in-law, was there, and so was Major Robert Waterman Hunter, from the staff of General John B. Gordon. Hunter, who was engaged to Stuart’s daughter Margaret, apparently knew who the visitors were, and he talked with them about the assassination. Not much is known of their conversation, but Booth did say that the actual shooting was planned in a single day.13

  Outside in the lane, Dr. Stuart asked William Bryant what he knew about these strangers. Bryant said he didn’t even know their names; they had come out of the marsh, asking if he could take them to Dr. Stuart. They seemed to know what they wanted, and they paid him for the ride. The doctor was puzzled. “It is very strange,” he said. “You will have to take them somewhere else.” So Bryant and Crismond returned to the house to wait for the strangers.

  When Stuart returned to the house, he found the men finishing up their meal. “The old man [Bryant] is waiting for you,” he told them. “He is anxious to be off; it is cold; he is not well, and wants to get home.” As Booth and Herold were hustled out the door, Herold asked if there was someone else around who might accommodate them. “I have a neighbor near here, a colored man who sometimes hires his wagons,” said the doctor. “Probably he would do it if he is not very busy.”

  Stuart’s brusque manner must have reminded Booth of how different his situation had become. He was in Virginia now, and Virginians did not see things as Booth did. For them, the war had ended on April 9, and anything that occurred after that date was beyond the bounds of civilized warfare. Clearly, they did not approve of the assassination. That is one reason why Booth and Herold were given such a hostile reception on this side of the Potomac. And it was not going to get any friendlier.

  In a small cabin just across a field from Cleydael, William Lucas and his family were awakened by the barking of their dogs. Lucas heard the sound of a horse outside, and feared that someone might be trying to steal his farm animals. Cautiously, he stepped up to the door just as a man called his name. He asked who was there, and the man outside gave three names. Lucas did not recognize any of them, but when he heard the voice of William Bryant, he opened the door.

  Before him stood two strangers, one of them on crutches. “We want to stay here tonight,” said one of the men.

  “You cannot do it,” said Lucas. “I am a colored man, and have no right to take care of white people. I have only one room in the house, and my wife is sick.”

  It was already late at night, and Herold’s patience was wearing thin. “We are Confederate soldiers,” he said, his voice rising with anger. “We have been in service three years. We have been knocking about all night, and don’t intend to any longer, but we are going to stay.” As he said this, Booth forced his way into the house and took a seat inside.

  “Gentlemen,” said Lucas, “you have treated me very badly.” He stopped short when Booth dramatically flourished a knife in his face.

  “Old man, how do you like that?” he taunted.

  Lucas was terrified. “I do not like that at all,” he remembered saying.

  Booth explained that they had been sent there; that they heard he had good horses, and they needed a good team. Lucas told him that he needed his horses; hired hands were coming to plant corn in the morning. He suggested that the strangers borrow an extra horse he was keeping out in the pasture. “Well, Dave,” said Booth. “We will not go on any further, but will stay here and make this old man get us this horse in the morning.” Lucas nervously gathered up his family and took them outside. They sat on the step until daylight.14

  JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, the search on the lower Potomac turned tragic when two ships collided. The Black Diamond was a small steamship carrying twenty volunteer firemen from Alexandria. She was lying at anchor near Blakistone Island when out of the darkness came the U.S.S. Massachusetts, a sidewheel steamer laden with three hundred men recently released from prison camps. The Massachusetts struck the smaller ship on her port side, and a hundred or more men were thrown from the larger vessel into the frigid water. Since damage to the Black Diamond appeared slight, nearly all of the men swam to her. It was a fatal mistake. Unknown to the soldiers, the vessel’s boiler had ruptured, and she was taking on water. She went to the bottom in three minutes. Bodies would wash up on shore for weeks. At final count, eighty-seven men had lost their lives.15

  ON MONDAY MORNING, April 24, Booth and Herold got into William Lucas’s wagon. Lucas asked if they were going to take his horses without paying, and Herold asked how much he would charge for a ride to Port Conway. Lucas said that he usually got ten dollars in gold or twenty in greenbacks. He asked if his son Charley could go along, but Booth didn’t like the idea. Herold disagreed. “Yes, he can go,” said Herold. “You have a large family, and a crop on hand. You can have the team back again.” Lucas was relieved, but couldn’t resist making a comment about the Confederate collapse.

  “I thought you would be done pressing teams in the Northern Neck since the fall of Richmond.”

  That raised Booth’s ire. “Repeat that again,” he said.

  Lucas held his tongue, but his point was made: Confederates were no longer in power.

  Herold counted out some greenbacks and handed them to Mrs. Lucas. In a moment they were on their way to Port Conway.16

  NEW YORKERS WITNESSED an unusual sight that day as the president’s funeral car was brought across the Hudson River—sideways—on the Jersey City ferry. The car had to be hoisted aboard the only way it would fit, and it was a precarious ride. The New York obsequies would be the most elaborate yet, and the hearse was so enormous that it had to be drawn by sixteen horses. It was the creation of Peter Relyea, a forty-nine-year-old undertaker who had been placed in charge of arrangements with only three days’ notice. He had not slept since then, nor had the sixty employees working under him. Such toil and sacrifice were typical all along the funeral route.

  The coffin was taken to the rotunda of City Hall and placed on a black velvet dais at the top of the stairs. A tasteful arch of black, white, and silver hung above it, and high-ranking officers of the army and navy stood guard at either end. More than half a million people lined up to view the remains, but most were unable to get in. Though mourners were herded in at a rate of nearly one hundred per minute, there was simply not enough time to get them all through. The funeral train was on a rigid timetable, and could not be delayed for any reason.

  Scheduling was the responsibil
ity of Stanton’s right-hand man, Gen. Edward D. Townsend. General Townsend had been involved in planning the funeral from the start, and was invested with all the authority of the secretary himself when traveling with the cortège. He nearly lost that responsibility when Stanton learned what he had done in New York City that day. Townsend gave photographer Jeremiah Gurney thirty minutes to photograph the president’s body as it lay in City Hall. Gurney recorded two images, both of which included the entire scene, not just the remains. They showed the coffin, with Townsend himself and Admiral Charles A. Davis standing at either end with their arms crossed. Though there was nothing unusual about postmortem photographs, Stanton thought the president’s family should have been consulted first. With “surprise and disapproval,” he ordered General Townsend to seize and dispose of the plates and all proofs made from them. After seeing the first plate destroyed, Gurney appealed the decision. He was sure the Lincolns would approve, and through General Dix, he got the order suspended until they could know the family’s wishes. But Robert Lincoln concurred with Stanton, and the second plate was destroyed. Somehow one proof survived, which Stanton kept in his files.17

  JAMES O’BEIRNE’S DETECTIVES put great stock in Richard Claggett’s report that two men had crossed to Virginia on April 16. On the twenty-fourth, Officers Michael O’Callaghan and Lorenzo DeAngelis went to the Northern Neck in search of them. They went some distance inland, but found no trace of the fugitives. They did find the boat, though, and they brought it back to Chapel Point on their return.

  Meanwhile, O’Beirne himself ran into Samuel H. Beckwith, General Grant’s cipher operator, at a house just below Port Tobacco. Beckwith and a man named Cheney had gone there to help in the search, and when O’Beirne saw them, he suggested they tap the wires and send a report back to the War Department. He said that there were two theories about where the fugitives had gone: one, that they were still holed up in the swamp; and two, that they had crossed over to White’s Point, Virginia, on the sixteenth. Beckwith got his field telegraph working, and at about ten o’clock in the morning, he sent O’Beirne’s message to Washington.18

  THE DRAGNET CONTINUED withoutletup and, onemight say, without a clue. From a tavern in Bryantown, William P. Wood confidently asserted that “all the tales about Booth being in Washington, Pennsylvania, or Upper Marlboro are a hoax. We are on his track, rely on it.” Wood and his men still hovered around the Mudd farm. Manager Thomas A. Hall of the Holliday Street Theatre persuaded authorities in Baltimore to let him lead a cavalry expedition to the old Booth residence, Tudor Hall. They found the place abandoned. No clever idea and no amount of effort seemed to bear fruit. Secretary Stanton was feeling the pressure, and on the twentyfifth, he ordered Major General Winfield Scott Hancock to take personal charge of security in the capital. Hancock set up his headquarters in the tavern at Bryantown.19

  IT WAS ALMOST MIDDAY on April 24 when Booth and Herold arrived at Port Conway. In colonial times, this village had been a bustling port town on the Rappahannock, but a century after its heyday, all that remained were four houses and a church. Though one of these houses was the birthplace of President James Madison, the village had little else to recommend it. Most travelers considered it a brief stop on the way to somewhere else.

  As soon as Charley Lucas stopped his wagon by the old ferry landing, Booth handed him a note to give to Dr. Stuart. Herold jumped down and took a look around. The place was almost deserted. A fisherman stood nearby, and Herold asked if he could get a drink of water for his brother. William Rollins handed him a dipperful, and Herold took it over to the wagon. He then asked if Rollins knew where he might get a conveyance to Orange Court House, on the way to the Shenandoah Valley. Rollins didn’t know, but with a little prodding, he agreed to consider taking them at least part of the way himself—say, to Bowling Green. That was only fifteen miles, but there was a hotel there, and the railroad was only two and a half miles beyond the town. They would have to wait in any event. The shad were running, and Rollins needed to get out on the river. The ferryboat was across the river, at Port Royal, and he would summon it as soon as he got a chance.

  As Rollins and his employee, Dick Wilson, headed toward the river, three young men rode up to the landing. Their Confederate uniforms put Herold at ease, and he struck up a conversation. “Gentlemen, what command do you belong to?”

  One man spoke up. “Mosby’s command.” He was Mortimer Bainbridge Ruggles, a lieutenant in the 43rd Virginia, and the son of a general. Standing next to Ruggles was his cousin and fellow Ranger, Absalom Ruggles Bainbridge.

  “If I am not inquisitive, can I ask where you are going?” said Herold.

  Ruggles started to answer, but one of the others cut him off. “That is a secret. Nobody knows where we are going because I never tell anybody.” This was a younger man—a boy, really, with dark hair, and a soft, pink complexion that made him look even younger than his eighteen years. He was William Storke Jett, a former private whose brief service in the 9th Virginia Cavalry ended with a near-fatal wound in the abdomen. Jett had been sent to recuperate in the Star Hotel, at Bowling Green, and had fallen in love with the hotel owner’s daughter, Izora Gouldman. He was on his way to see her now.

  Recently, Jett had been serving as a civilian commissary agent, issuing draft exemptions to local farmers in exchange for crops or cattle. But after hearing of the fall of Richmond, he donned his uniform and tried to rejoin his old unit. He never found them, but he did manage to find Mosby’s Rangers, with whom his brother served. Mosby apparently told him to go home. Now he and his companions were heading for Ashland, outside Richmond, to certify that they had laid down their arms. They would be issued a parole certificate, as required by the terms of surrender.

  After an awkward silence, one of Jett’s companions resumed the conversation. “What command do you belong to?”

  “We belong to A. P. Hill’s corps,” replied Herold. “I have my wounded brother, a Marylander who was wounded in the fight below Petersburg.” He said that his name was David E. Boyd, and that his brother was John W. Boyd. As he said this, Booth hobbled over on crutches. He stood near the group, but said nothing, and kept looking toward Port Royal. Jett thought he seemed anxious for the ferryboat to come over.

  “I suppose you are all going to the Southern army,” said Herold. “We are also anxious to get there ourselves and wish you to take us along with you.” Jett was suspicious of strangers, and declined to speak with them. His demeanor bothered Herold. When he walked to a house nearby, Herold pulled him aside.

  “I take it you are raising a command to go south to Mexico,” he said in a trembling voice. “I want you to let us go with you.”

  Jett did not know what to say. Something about these men wasn’t right; soldiers shouldn’t be so desperate at the end of a war. So he just blurted out, “Who are you?” Jett was quite unprepared for the answer:

  “We are the assassinators of the president.”20

  A T THE WAR DEPARTMENT telegraph office, Lafayette Baker noticed a message from Captain Beckwith at Port Tobacco. Baker was intrigued by the idea put forth in the telegram that Booth might have gone to Virginia. Few troops were looking in the Northern Neck, and Baker thought it might be a good time to expand the search into that area. He sent a request to General Augur’s office for a detachment of cavalry.

  An order went out for a “reliable and discreet commissioned officer” to command the mission, and Lt. Edward P. Doherty, twenty-five, answered the call. Doherty, a native of Canada, had enlisted as an infantry private, but he transferred to the cavalry in 1863 and had been serving in the 16th New York ever since. When he and Capt. Joseph Schneider, of the same regiment, reported to Colonel Baker’s office, the colonel handed Doherty some circulars and photographs and told him to take twenty-five men to Virginia. He should divide his command and search everywhere between the Potomac and the Rappahannock. Everton Conger and Luther Byron Baker, who had both served in Colonel Baker’s old unit, the 2nd District of Columbia Cava
lry, would go along as civilian detectives.

  The 16th New York Cavalry had been based in Vienna, Virginia, and had spent the last two years chasing after Mosby in that vicinity. But recently, much of the regiment had been transferred into the city. They had taken part in the president’s funeral, and were now giving all their attention to the search for Booth. Some had just come back from a foray when the bugler blew “Boots and Saddles,” announcing a call for volunteers. Though the request had gone out for twenty-five privates, Lieutenant Doherty took everyone who responded, regardless of rank.21

  EVENTUALLY WILLIAM ROLLINS RETURNED from fishing, and he asked if Booth and Herold were ready to cross the river. By that time Herold had changed his mind. He had been talking to the soldiers, and they convinced him that he was better off without Rollins’s help. “If you are in a hurry, go on,” Herold said; “we are not going over now.” So Rollins went about his business.

  Unable to get over the fact that he was actually in the presence of Lincoln’s killer, Jett couldn’t help but stare. Every so often, he tried to sneak a furtive glance at the “J.W.B.” tattoo on the back of Booth’s hand, and he even asked the fugitives to sign something for him as a memento. Booth gratified his request with something less incriminating than an autograph; he wrote a poem.

  There is no question that Booth had a lifelong passion for verse, and had occasionally written poems for friends by request. In this case, it was a good way to ingratiate himself with Jett, who might lead him to safety. And it offered one more opportunity—possibly his last—to express his thoughts on the assassination. His letter to the Intelligencer had not been published, and his diary might well be suppressed. But in the subtle phrasing of a poem, Booth could reassert the message he had failed to send in other ways: that his motives were pure, and his suffering great. He wrote: