American Brutus

by Michael W. Kauffman

  Chester in Poore, 1:48–51, and LAS 4:155–64; Booth spent much of the afternoon with other friends: David Harkins, late of the Virginia cavalry, Thomas Johnson of the Winter Garden, and actor Harry Pierson were with him and Chester by the time they reached the saloon. Owen Fawcett, C. W. Taylor, and John E. Owens drank with him as well. The latter encounter was mentioned in the April 7 entry of Owen Fawcett’s Diary, Kefauver Library, University of Tennessee.

  Chester in LAS 4:164; William E. Sinn, “A Theatrical Manager’s Reminiscences,” in Abraham Lincoln: Tributes from His Associates (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, 1895), 170.

  Bunker in Poore, 1:32, and LAS 15:261; Evening Star, April 10, 1865, 1, and April 11, 1865, 2.

  N.O.R. I:5, 550; O.R. III:5, 508.

  Lincoln’s speech in the Evening Star, April 10, 1865, 2; Weichmann in LAS 6:499.

  Pierson in LAS 3:168; Weichmann, A True History, 131; Thomas Otway, Venice Preserved; or, A Plot Discovered (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969,) edited by Malcolm Kelsall. The hero is politically ambiguous, and the play is not strictly a celebration of tyrannicide.

  Henry B. Phillips in LAS 7:491; Tracy in LAS 4:437. The other men were H. R. Tracy, of the Attorney General’s office, and B. F. Pleasants, of the Treasury Department.

  Foster in LAS 4:8; Spangler-Butler; Mathews in LAS 5:310.

  The sale of 287 acres was recorded in Equity Case 623, Prince George’s County, and Administration Docket 593, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis. Weichmann in Surratt Trial, 389; Calvert’s letter is in LAS 15:418; The amount of the debt is in Surratt Trial, 390; Acreage is given in Poore, 2:250. Zadock Jenkins testified about the two judgments in Surratt Trial, 759, and said (p. 758) that Nothey lived three or four miles from Surrattsville, in the direction of Piscataway (toward the west). Trip to Surrattsville: Weichmann in LAS 6:454 and Poore, 1:74; Lloyd in LAS 2:199, LAS 5:148, 157, 169–70; Weichmann in Poore, 1:136–37, Emma Offutt in Poore, 1:305–6; Lloyd in Surratt Trial, 295. Riding with Lloyd were his sister-in-law, Emma Offutt, her little son, and Dave Herold’s friend Walter Griffin. The child was not identified, but he may have been her four-year-old son James, who died on April 27.

  Nothey in LAS 4:411; Gwynn in LAS 4:420; Lloyd in LAS 5:157, and 162; Weichmann in LAS 6:456.

  Spangler-Butler.

  Evening Star, April 12, 1865, 1; Frederick Stone supposedly told George Alfred Townsend that his client, Herold, was with Booth that night at the White House. Townsend published it in his novel Katy of Catoctin (Cambridge, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1959), 490. Another source puts Powell, not Herold, at the scene, but the author of that version ( John Clampitt) was even farther removed from the event than Stone was. Powell was said to be paranoid about going out in daylight, and if that was true, he would not have gone to this very public event.

  Sale of carriage: Spangler-Butler; Ford in LAS 5:456, 459, 484.

  Smoot, Ft. Smith Times, May 9, 1906, 4. Smoot said that Mrs. Surratt showed him a letter from her son that mentioned his return on Friday. The letter was addressed to “Miss Mitchell,” who was not further identified. Perhaps this was actually Anna Ward, who had recently received a letter from John Surratt, and who brought it to the Surratt house on the evening of April 10. Weichmann saw that letter, but took no notice that it mentioned Friday night. Weichmann, A True History, 131.

  O.R. III:5, 509–10; Mary Todd Lincoln’s invitation to Grant, dated April 13, 1865, was published in The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 14:483. The original is in the Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

  Like Shakespeare, Booth probably got his information on Brutus from Plutarch’s Lives. It remains available in many editions, including one rereleased in two volumes, entitled Fall of the Roman Republic and another as Makers of Rome. Both have been published in softcover editions by Penguin Classics.

  Booth did not target Seward for strictly legal reasons; the secretary of state was not in line to succeed the president, except in the absence of the vice president, president pro tempore of the Senate, and speaker of the House. Had Lincoln and Johnson both been killed, their successor would have been Senator Lafayette S. Foster, of Connecticut. The “meddlesome” quote is from Welles, Diary, 2:76. Early in the war, it was commonly believed that Seward would actually run the government. Lincoln proved to be his own man, but because he and his secretary of state agreed on so many issues, the notion of Seward’s dominance persisted throughout the war. Asia Booth Clarke quoted her brother as saying, “Other brains rule the country,” and he undoubtedly had William Seward in mind. Clarke, Unlocked Book, 124.

  Powell at Seward house: Evening Star, April 18, 1865, 1; Robinson in LAS 6:96; Someone calling himself “Justice” reported seeing Booth talking to O’Laughlen in Baltimore, and said that O’Laughlen was supposed to accompany Booth to Washington that day. The story has the ring of truth, and makes O’Laughlen’s trip to Washington appear less coincidental. It also shows how Booth tried to keep his summons off the written record, in deference to their friendship. The letter, dated May 6, 1865, is in Record Group 393, Part 1, entry 2347, Letters received by the Secret Service of the 8th Army Corps, Old Book 19, p. 224, National Archives.

  George Wren in LAS 6:495; Dwight Hess in LAS 4:381 and Poore, 2:539.

  Anonymous report in LAS 3:611 and Murphy in LAS 5:242; Early in LAS 4:318, Henderson in LAS 4:420. Henderson’s uniform was mentioned by George R. Grillet in LAS 3:505.

  Atzerodt in LAS 3:535 and 596; Hess in LAS 4:385. Long before the thirteenth, D. A. Strong overheard people talking about the theater exits (LAS 6:261). Hess told George Alfred Townsend that Booth explored the exits and alleys around his theater. San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 1882, 1.

  Evening Star, April 14, 1865, 1; Murphy in LAS 5:244; Early in LAS 4:318, Henderson in LAS 4:420.

  Atzerodt in LAS 3:535; Atzerodt’s “confession” in the Baltimore American, January 18, 1869. All accounts of this meeting came from Atzerodt, and he changed the details with every retelling. He had been staying at the Pennsylvania House since March 18. Greenawalt in LAS 2:1052.

  Mary Todd Lincoln’s note to General Grant was published in Turner and Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters, 219; Hatter in Poore, 1:246; Knox in Poore, 1:242, 244–45.

  New York Tribune, May 1, 1865, 4. The original has apparently been lost.

  Huntt visit: Smoot, Ft. Smith Times, May 9, 1906; Laurie Verge, “That Trifling Boy,” Surratt Courier 27, no. 1 ( January 2002): 4. Herold had left behind a nightshirt that had the name of John Surratt sewn into its neckband. The shirt, still owned by Huntt’s descendants, is on display at the Surratt House museum. Atzerodt: James Kipp in LAS 2:658; Lyman Sprague in Surratt Trial, 324; Powell: Robinson in LAS 6:96.

  Thomas H. Carmichael in LAS 4:197. Nobody explained why O’Laughlen should collect a debt for his brother Billy, who lived and worked in Washington. Sam Arnold said that Mike himself had lent Booth the money. Murphy in LAS 5:240; Early in LAS 4:317.

  Booth had breakfast with Carrie Bean. Daily National Intelligencer, April 29, 1865, 2; Murphy in LAS 5:240; Early in LAS 4:317; Harry Ford in LAS 5:467; John T. Ford manuscript in MS 371, Maryland Historical Society. James Maddox referred to the White House messenger as a “detective,” and he probably inferred that from seeing the same man outside the president’s box that night. He was Charles Forbes. Maddox in Poore, 2:110.

  Fletcher in LAS 5:418, 420, Surratt Trial, 227, and M-619, 456:299.

  Welles, Diary, 281–83.

  Smoot in Ft. Smith Times, May 9, 1906, 4; Weichmann in Surratt Trial, 443, 445, and LAS 6:454.

  John Miles in LAS 5:211; Frederick Seward overheard Lincoln ask the general as he was leaving the Cabinet meeting. Seward at Washington, 276; Evening Star, April 14, 1865, 1.

  Murray in Surratt Trial, 249; Margaret Rozier in LAS 3:659; William P. Wood in LAS 6:47; Pumphrey in LAS 6:01–4; Foster in LAS 5:348; Pumphrey in Poore, 1:175.

  Mary Lincoln to Francis B. Carpenter, as quoted in Turner, M
ary Todd Lincoln, 218; William Wallace Lincoln (b. 1850) had died in the White House on February 20, 1862, of bilious fever. Evening Star, March 19, 1865, 2; April 15, 1865, letter by Dr. George B. Todd, surgeon of the Montauk. Copies in the Chicago Historical Society and the University of Oklahoma Library. Knife incident: Grillo in Surratt Trial, 176–77.

  Evening Star, April 15, 1865, 3; April 13 memo from William F. Potter to Thomas Ingraham, Record Group 393, Part I, entry 5444, National Archives; National Intelligencer, July 18, 1867. Mrs. Grant noticed a dark-haired man “with a wild look” peering into the carriage at her. She told her husband he was the same man who had followed her into the Willard’s Hotel dining room earlier and stared at her there. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (New York: The Century Co., 1897), 498–99.

  Fletcher in Surratt Trial, 227; Robert R. Jones in LAS 2:655; The card is at LAS 15:312. Nevins in LAS 3:48; Lyman Sprague in Surratt Trial, 324; Johnson was in Room 68, at the top of the stairs by the desk. Contrary to rumors, it was nowhere near Atzerodt’s room.

  Harry Ford in LAS 5:456. Dick Ford came back from the Treasury Department with one flag, and a man from the department brought the other one over later.

  Weichmann in LAS 3:1154 and Poore, 1:75; Lloyd in LAS 5:151, 170–73, LAS 14:162, LAS 14:141, and Surratt Trial, 298. The defendant at Upper Marlboro was Edward L. Perrie, who had stabbed Lloyd on or before February 17. Office Dockets, Case 85, April Term 1865 of the Circuit Court. Maryland State Archives. Emma Offutt, who was at the tavern when Mrs. Surratt arrived, said that Lloyd was more drunk than she had ever seen him before. LAS 14:145.

  Lloyd in LAS 5:151; Gwynn in LAS 4:420 and Surratt Trial, 755. The note is in LAS 15:414 and was mistakenly dated 1864 in Surratt Trial, 402; Mary Surratt in LAS 6:178; Weichmann in LAS 6:454 and Surratt Trial, 392; Lloyd in LAS 14:140; Mary Surratt in LAS 6:182; Gwynn in Surratt Trial, 756; Lloyd in Surratt Trial, 288. The field glass was distinctive in that it had adjustable settings for field, marine, and theater use.

  Ferguson in LAS 7:489. In a more publicized version, he quotes Booth as saying, “See what a nice little horse I have?” LAS 5:384; Merrick story in The Baltimore Sun, April 18, 1865, 1; Atzerodt: John A. Foster in LAS 3:535, 5:348.

  The Ashmun note was first quoted in The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 15, 1865, 1; John T. Ford had arranged for a police officer to stand duty there regardless of Mr. Lincoln’s presence, and this had been his practice for many years. Gifford in Surratt Trial, 559; LAS 4:83.

  Weichmann did not see Booth in the parlor, but said he heard a man’s footsteps, and inferred it had been Booth from a remark made by Anna Surratt the following morning. LAS 3:1155–56. He later refuted Holohan’s testimony that this was just a friend of the family, who was never identified. Weichmann in Holt Papers, 92:444, December 18, 1883. Mary Jane Anderson in LAS 3:488; Spangler in LAS 4:64 and Spangler-Butler; Frederick Seward, Seward at Washington, 276. The doctor was Basil Norris; John E. Buckingham in LAS 4:50, 51; Peter Taltavull in LAS 6:368; John Miles in LAS 5:210.

  William H. Bell in LAS 4:78; Fletcher in LAS 3:1154; Weichmann’s quote of Mrs. Surratt in LAS 5:417 and Surratt Trial, 451; Theodore McGowan, who sat a few feet away from the entrance to the president’s box, said that Booth had shown a card or an envelope, he wasn’t sure which. I assume that McGowan had seen Simon P. Hanscom enter the box, and since he paid little attention at the time, he wasn’t sure which man showed an envelope and which showed a card. We know that Hanscom brought the president an envelope.

  Chapter 12: “Sic semper tyrannis!”

  This version of the shooting differs from Harry Hawk’s, but is more in line with the typical eyewitness account. James P. Ferguson also heard Booth say, “I have done it” as he passed beneath him. See LAS 4:340.

  Cobb’s account is from LAS 4:173, with minor details from his trial testimony in Poore, 1:251–55. The assassination occurred at 10:20 P.M., and Cobb thought that Booth reached the bridge about twenty minutes later. According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, Astronomical Applications Department, the moon rose at 10:10 in Washington that night, four days past the full moon. Thirty-one years later, an imaginative witness recalled that it looked slightly reddish, and Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg exaggerated this in naming his account of the assassination “Blood on the Moon.” Philadelphia Press, April 12, 1896, 29–30. Farm wagons were allowed into the city at any time, even after the assassination. For these and all orders pertaining to the bridge guards, see Record Group 393, Part 1, National Archives.

  Samuel Smith in Poore, 2:510; James Walker in Poore, 1:391; Washington Briscoe in Poore, 1:403.

  John Lloyd in LAS 5:152, LAS 5:173–75, and Surratt Trial, 296.

  Henderson in LAS 4:418. John Mathews kept quiet about Booth’s letter, and never referred to it in questioning. But Booth himself mentioned the letter in the course of his escape. In 1867, the editor of the National Intelligencer, to whom it was addressed, was accused of suppressing the letter, and Mathews came to the man’s defense. He was called to testify about it at John Surratt’s trial, but he could not produce the original document, and his mental reconstruction of it was not deemed competent evidence. National Intelligencer, July 18, 1867. By April 14, Mathews no longer lived in the Petersen house.

  A statement written by Col. Henry H. Wells is in LAS 5:226. Mudd refused to sign the Wells statement (hereinafter Mudd-Wells), and wrote his own, which is in LAS 2:1025. Edward Steers has confused Wells’s work with Mudd’s, and claimed that both were in Mudd’s own handwriting, though clearly they were not. He and others have held Mudd accountable for differences between them. See Steers, His Name Is Still Mudd, 106, 111. Frank Washington (farmhand) in LAS 6:485, 489; Thomas Davis fed the horses, but did not see the visitors at all. Davis in LAS 4:255–56. Mudd claimed that Booth kept his face to the wall, and if so, Booth would have been able to see out the front window—the one with a view of the road leading up to the house; Mudd told Colonel Wells that Herold had given Booth’s name as “Tyson or Tyser,” and that he called himself “Henson.” Herold himself stated that Booth had gone to a doctor by himself, and had told the doctor his name was Tyson. Later in the same statement, Herold claimed that, according to Booth, there was a man in the plot named Henson or Hanson. No such person existed, and both “Tyson” and “Henson” were products of Herold’s imagination. LAS 4:458, 463; Mrs. Mudd’s statement, sworn on July 6, 1865, was never admitted into any public record, as the testimony of a spouse was inadmissible. It is in the Ewing Family Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress. All information from Mrs. Mudd comes from this document and another, written on June 16, also in the Ewing Family Papers.

  National Intelligencer, April 15, 1865, 2; New York Herald, April 15, 1865, 1; Clarence Seward’s death reported in Record Group 393, Part 1, entry 5459, 413:96. The same source reported “Booth captured this a.m. ten miles this side of Baltimore.” James A. Hardie’s message is in M-473, telegrams sent by the War Department, 88:1015, National Archives.

  Trains stopped: The Baltimore Sun, April 15 and 16, 1865, 2, and O.R. I:46 (3) 778; ibid., 776 and Weichmann in Poore, 1:377. Baltimore police notified: The Baltimore Sun, April 16, 1865, 1, and O.R. I:46 (3) 777. The original Richards telegram is in the Butler Papers, Library of Congress. McPhail in M-619, 456:319. McPhail to Charles A. Dana, M-619, 458:280.

  Stanton’s warning to Sherman, M-473, 88:1017, and Halleck’s details. O.R. I:47 (3) 221. Their information came from a secret agent referred to as “B” stationed in Paris. On March 17, F. H. Morse, at the U.S. consulate in London, informed Seward of the impending attack. Morse considered the whole story improbable, since the Confederates had other agents who were closer to the general’s location. LAS 7:315–26.

  O.R. I:46 (3) 767; M-619, 458:466; RG 393, Part 2, entry 6714, book 186. Thomas H. Watkins was murdered on March 25 by John H. Boyle, who was captured on April 15 in Frederick, Maryland. See James O. Hall, “The Guerrilla Boyle,” Surratt Society News 10 (April 1985): 1, 5–6. Dan
a in M-619, 458:467. The identification of Mr. Anderson came from George Cottingham in his affidavit for the Committee of Claims, RG 233. Regarding Lloyd’s denials, see A.C. Richards to Henry L. Burnett, May 9, 1865, in LAS 2:940; Clarvoe in LAS 2:199; Lloyd in LAS 5:148 and LAS 5:180.

  O.R. I:46 (3) 783; Dana quote in M-473, 88:1029; McPhail in M-619, 458:338; The Harriet DeFord was hijacked at Fair Haven on April 5 and burned shortly thereafter. It is possible that Booth had sent the men to keep an eye on O’Laughlen, who had just left the plot. The O’Laughlen house was a few doors away from the home of Mrs. Henry, where they stayed. Barnes’s explanation—that he had gone to pick up liquor for his business—did not explain why he was there for two weeks (LAS 6:461).

  Greenawalt in LAS 2:1056 and Poore, 1:342–46; James Walker in Poore, 1:392; William Clendenin in Poore, 1:395–96; Dana in M-473, 88:1029 and O.R. I:46 (3) 783.

  Weichmann had met John Holohan on the street, and they agreed to tell authorities about Atzerodt. See Weichmann in Surratt Trial, 442, 453, and A True History, 122.

  Tiffany’s story in the Utica Saturday Globe, clipping in an unidentified scrapbook, courtesy of Mark S. Zaid; Ellen Starr suicide in The Baltimore Sun, April 17, 1865, 2, and LAS 6:259; W. B. Lyndall to Mary A. Lyndall, November 11, 1866, in Lyndall Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; St. John was sentenced to six months at hard labor. His case was discussed in House Report 559, Fiftieth Congress, First Session; Husband in the Cleveland Leader, April 17, 1865, 4; Springfield case: Utica Daily Observer, May 4, 1865, 2; The Hilton Head shooting was mentioned by Pvt. William L. Mead, 127th New York Volunteers, in a letter to “Dear Friend Louise,” April 19, 1865, Cornwell-Mead Letters, Maryland Historical Society; The hanging in Iowa: Eugene Marshall letter to his sister, Mrs. F. L. Trow, dated April 23, 1865, in Eugene Marshall Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; The Fort Jefferson incident: Henry B. Whitney Diary, April 22 entry, Perkins Library, Duke University; A survey of twenty-five newspapers found reports of eighty mob incidents relating to the assassination. Charles J. Stewart, “A Rhetorical Study of the Reaction of the Protestant Pulpit in the North to Lincoln’s Assassination” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1963), 11.