The Darkest Dawn

by Thomas Goodrich

  Upon hearing the horrific news, other acquaintances wisely worked to put as much distance between themselves and the assassin as possible. “I tried to persuade myself that I did not know Booth,” admitted a Philadelphia theater manager. “When questioned in regard to the subject my memory was a blank.”21

  And for those who knew and loved the dashing idol, their grief was bottomless.22 Clara Morris was in Columbus, Ohio, when word first reached her of Lincoln’s murder. Although startled by the terrible news, the actress knew nothing of the details, or who the assassin was.

  My room-mate and I had, from our small earnings, bought some black cotton at a tripled price, as all the black material in the city was not sufficient to meet the demand; and as we tacked it about our one window, a man passing told us the assassin had been discovered, and that he was the actor Booth. Hattie laughed so she nearly swallowed the tacks that, girl-like, she held between her lips, and I, after a laugh, told him it was a poor subject for a jest, and we went in.23

  A short time later, a friend named Ellsler dropped by to deliver some playbooks as requested.

  We heard his knock. I was busy pressing a bit of stage finery. Hattie opened the door, and then I heard her exclaiming: “Why—why—what!” I turned quickly. Mr. Ellsler was coming slowly into the room. He is a very dark man, but he was perfectly livid then—his lips even were blanched to the whiteness of his cheeks. His eyes were dreadful, they were so glassy and seemed so unseeing. He was devoted to his children, and all I could think of . . . was disaster to one of them, and I cried, as I drew a chair to him: “What is it? Oh, what has happened to them?”

  He sank down—he wiped his brow—he looked almost stupidly at me; then, very faintly, he said: “You—haven’t—heard—anything?”

  Like a flash Hattie’s eyes and mine met. We thought of the supposed ill-timed jest of the stranger. My lips moved wordlessly. Hattie stammered: “A man—he—lied though—said that Wi-lkes Boo-th—but he did lie—didn’t he?” and in the same faint voice Mr. Ellsler answered slowly: “No—no! He did not lie—it’s true!”

  Down fell our heads, and the waves of shame and sorrow seemed fairly to overwhelm us; and while our sobs filled the little room, Mr. Ellsler rose and laid two playbooks on the table. Then, while standing there, staring into space, I heard his far, faint voice saying: “So great—so good a man destroyed, and by the hand of that unhappy boy! my God! my God!” He wiped his brow again and slowly left the house, apparently unconscious of our presence.24

  “My heart feels as if it was cramped in a vise,” confided another actress, Charlotte Cushman, upon hearing the news.25

  The shock, of course, was even more devastating for those women romantically involved with Booth. Lucy Hale, the actor’s fiancée, was all but destroyed emotionally by the news. And Booth’s mistress, Ella Turner, a “rather pretty, light-haired, little woman,” closed the door in her Washington room, stared at her lover’s photo one last time, then tried to kill herself with chloroform. When she was discovered a short time later, doctors were quickly called in and managed to save her. As the unhappy young woman came to, however, she was far from grateful for what the physicians had done.26

  Another woman in Washington desperately prayed for the deliverance of death, but, as with Ella, her fondest hope was not to be.

  “Not there! Oh, not there!” insisted Mary Lincoln as doctors and friends searched for a suitable room in the White House where she might lie. Every chamber, it seemed, had a painful, haunting memory of her dead husband. Finally, a little-used room was located, and the former first lady was at last eased onto a bed.27 For the tormented woman, there would be no rest. She groaned loudly one moment and shrieked hysterically the next, and there was little anyone could do to console her. Although Mary Jane Welles, wife of the navy secretary, and Elizabeth Dixon were some comfort throughout the tortuous night, the widow repeatedly asked for her mulatto seamstress, Lizzie Keckley. When the woman was finally located later in the morning, she was swiftly driven to the White House.

  I was quickly shown to Mrs. Lincoln’s room, and on entering, saw Mrs. L. tossing uneasily about upon a bed. The room was darkened, and the only person in it besides the widow of the President was Mrs. Secretary Welles. . . .

  “Why did you not come to me last night, Elizabeth—I sent for you?” Mrs. Lincoln asked in a low whisper.

  “I did try to come to you, but I could not find you,” I answered, as I laid my hand upon her hot brow. . . .

  Shortly after entering the room on Saturday morning, Mrs. Welles excused herself, as she said she must go to her own family, and I was left alone with Mrs. Lincoln. She was nearly exhausted with grief, and when she became a little quiet, I asked and received permission to go into the Guest’s Room [across the hall] where the body of the President lay in state. . . . When I entered the room, the members of the Cabinet and many distinguished officers of the army were grouped around the body of their fallen chief. They made room for me, and, approaching the body, I lifted the white cloth from the white face of the man that I had worshipped as an idol. . . . I gazed long at the face, and turned away with tears in my eyes and a choking sensation in my throat.28

  Soon after Lizzie left the room, an autopsy began on the dead president. Dr. Edward Curtis:

  Seated around the room were several general officers and some civilians, silent or conversing in whispers, and to one side, stretched upon a rough frame work of boards and covered only with sheets and towels, lay—cold and immovable—what but a few hours before was the soul of a great nation. The Surgeon General was walking up and down the room when I arrived and detailed me the history of the case. He said that the President showed most wonderful tenacity of life, and, had not his wound been necessarily mortal, might have survived an injury to which most men would succumb.29

  “His eyes were both very much protruded—the right one most—and very black and puffy underneath,” observed friend Orville Browning.30

  During the examination, a messenger from Mary Lincoln entered the room requesting a lock of hair. When the strand had been snipped, the servant left and the procedure continued. Edward Curtis:

  Dr. [J. J.] Woodward and I proceeded to open the head and remove the brain down to the track of the ball. The latter entered a little to the left of the median line at the back of the head, had passed almost directly forwards through the center of the brain and lodged. Not finding it readily, we proceeded to remove the entire brain, when, as I was lifting the latter from the cavity of the skull, suddenly the bullet dropped out through my fingers and fell, breaking the solemn silence of the room with its clatter, into an empty basin that was standing beneath.31

  “There it lay upon the white china,” thought Dr. Curtis as he stared at the bullet, “a little black mass no bigger than the end of my finger—dull, motionless and harmless, yet the cause of such mighty changes in the world’s history.”32

  One of those mighty changes spoken of was taking place in a quiet ceremony at the Kirkwood House. At 11 A.M., Chief Justice Salmon Chase administered the oath of office to Andrew Johnson. Sharing the room were several cabinet members and senators. As he looked into the face of the soon-to-be president, a face “full of sorrow & anxiety,” Chase was struck by the sudden change of fortunes.33

  How strange that seemed to me! I could not realize it. Just six weeks before . . . I administered to [Lincoln] the oath of office for the second term; & now I was to administer the same oath to his successor. The duty was performed with a heart as sad, as it had been joyous before. It all went with my lips as I said to Mr. Johns[on] “You are President; may God support, guide & bless you in your arduous duties.34

  “The duties of the office are mine; I will perform them—the consequences are with God,” said the new president simply. “Gentlemen, I shall lean upon you; I feel that I shall need your support.”35

  Because of his drunken display in March and the tragic circumstances he was now thrust into, Johnson was eyed nervously by all. Most in t
he room were greatly relieved.

  “All I have seen of him gives me the greatest hopes. His bearing is modest, firm & manly,” said Chief Justice Chase. “So in darkness there is light.”36

  Unlike Chase, others present were not entirely free of apprehensions.37

  Had Mary Lincoln known of events at the Kirkwood, it would have added to an already crushing load. Despising the man from the depth of her heart for embarrassing her and her husband at the second inaugural, Mary’s bruised and battered mind was now convinced that Johnson had had a hidden hand in the murder. When Lizzie Keckley finally returned to the former first lady’s room, she found the woman entering a new cycle of sadness:

  Robert was bending over his mother with tender affection, and little Tad was crouched at the foot of the bed with a world of agony in his young face. I shall never forget the scene—the wails of a broken heart, the unearthly shrieks, the terrible convulsions, the wild, tempestuous outbursts of grief from the soul. I bathed Mrs. Lincoln’s head with cold water, and soothed the terrible tornado as best I could. Tad’s grief at his father’s death was as great as the grief of his mother, but her terrible outbursts awed the boy into silence. Sometimes he would throw his arms around her neck, and exclaim, between his broken sobs, “Don’t cry so, Mamma! Don’t cry, or you will make me cry, too! You will break my heart.” . . . Every room in the White House was darkened, and every one spoke in subdued tones, and moved about with muffled tread.38

  One of those leaving quietly, glad to escape the White House horror, was Gideon Welles. As the secretary was descending the stairs, Tad Lincoln ran screaming after him. “Oh, Mr. Welles, who killed my father?” cried the boy.39 Outside, others, just as confused, were asking the same question.

  “On the Avenue in front of the White House were several hundred colored people, mostly women and children, weeping and wailing their loss,” noted Welles. “This crowd did not appear to diminish through the whole of that cold, wet day; they seemed not to know what was to be their fate since their great benefactor was dead, and their hopeless grief affected me more than almost anything else.40

  For Mary Lincoln, Lizzie Keckley, Gideon Welles, and countless others, the night of April 15 was an uneasy, restless, haunted night. “I feel like a frightened child,” shuddered Julia Shepard, who was at Ford’s on the fateful evening,. “I wish I could go home and have a good cry. I can’t bear to be alone. . . . Sleeping or waking, that terrible scene is before me.”41

  David Dorn was also tossing and turning his night away. In the audience that evening, the crippled soldier cursed the crutches and missing leg he had lost in battle and pondered what might have been. “I could have caught Booth when he started to fall on the stage,” Dorn mused. “But there I was, helpless. All I could do was cry.”42

  Of all those tormented souls, none suffered more than Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris.43 Again and again the shattered young couple replayed in their minds the last moments in the box—how promising their future appeared to be, and how happy and affectionate the Lincolns seemed.

  “What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?” Mary had said playfully to her husband.

  “She won’t think any thing about it,” the president had smiled.44

  These thoughts, that moment, marked the end of the old life, as Clara and Henry both knew; gone forever were happiness and hope when the shadow silently entered the box. Major Rathbone:

  I heard the report of a pistol from behind me, and on looking around saw dimly through the smoke the form of a man between the President and the door. I heard him shriek out some such word as “Freedom.” He uttered it in such an excited tone that it was difficult for me to understand what he said. I immediately sprang towards him and seized him. He wrested himself from my grasp, and at the same time made a violent thrust at me with a large knife. I parried the blow by striking it up and received a deep wound on my left arm. The man sprang towards the front of the box. I rushed after him but only succeeded in catching his clothes as he leaped over the railing of the box. I instantly cried out, “Stop that man!”45

  Before anyone could react, or even think, the shadowy figure had disappeared with “astonishing” speed. Through the swirl of smoke, Clara remembered seeing a startled and confused Mrs. Lincoln standing and looking over the balustrade, fearing that her husband had fallen to the stage.46 For what seemed an eternity, time in the box was frozen. And then, through the smoke and flowing blood, the silence was shattered by that piercing shriek. For Clara, Henry, and the others who heard that terrible scream, the sound marked an end of lives that could never, ever be recovered.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BLACK EASTER

  UNLIKE THE DAY BEFORE, Sunday, April 16, 1865, broke bright and beautiful over the land. From Maine to Missouri, the dark clouds and rain that had seemingly engulfed the world gave way to warmth and sunshine. All the same, in the hearts and minds of millions, no amount of blue sky or green grass could erase the deep gloom of “Black Easter.” Across the nation, as if fleeing some great calamity, Americans crowded into churches until they could hold no more. In the president’s hometown of Springfield, the places of worship were filled to overflowing, and many pressed close to the doors and windows to hear.1

  On New York Avenue in Washington, the Presbyterian church that Lincoln had attended was quickly packed, and hundreds were forced to listen from outside.2 The space where the first family normally sat was empty now, draped in black.3

  “I sat . . . directly behind the vacant pew of the President,” General Lewis Parsons wrote to his mother. “The remarks and prayers of Dr. G[urley] were impressive and solemn—but nothing so solemn to me as the recollection of seeing Mr. Lincoln in the same now vacant seat when I last attended that church—His greeting then was so kind and he so full of life.”4

  The sense of loss and sadness at Lincoln’s church and thousands more throughout the land ran doubly deep, as Americans had not been given the time to say goodbye and thank the president for his accomplishments. Through four years of terrible strain and stress, Lincoln had visibly passed from youth to old age. Reviled and ridiculed by his enemies, dismissed and denounced even by many of his friends, the simple man with the common roots had succeeded when most felt he would fail. The goal was reached. The nation, one nation, would survive. But he who had made it possible did not live to enjoy the fruit of his labor, and those who would reap the reward now had no opportunity to show their love and appreciation.

  “Just in the hour when the crowning triumph of his life awaited him,” said a sad Springfield editor, “the assassin’s hand at once puts a rude period to his life and to his hopes.”5

  In a world of inequity, Lincoln’s sudden death seemed the most unfair blow of all. Because they had not had the chance to honor him in life, many sad and sincere individuals now rushed to honor him in death. “We knew not how much we loved him until he was gone,” one clergyman tearfully admitted.6

  Eulogized a California journalist:

  The manner of his death adds nothing to his merit, but it gives a peculiar brilliancy to his fate, and throws a halo over his memory. . . . Hot blood called him slow, and cold blood called him hot. . . . Those who would outrun the age called him too slow—those who would lag behind called him too fast; but with his steps a people kept pace.7

  Understandably, from this heart-wrenching sadness and this desperate need to suddenly extol and exalt the slain president, deification was the next and easiest step. Explained one Washingtonian:

  He who had for years been derided by tongue and pen as a “clown,” a “gorilla,” and a “negro lover” was now transfigured and became immortal. People could not do enough to show their love for him and the appreciation of his memory. Booth had turned the execration and hatred of many, even of Lincoln’s own party, who had been his bitterest political enemies, into the most profound reverence.8

  Many compared Lincoln to the great American icon, George Washington; blacks considered him a modern-day Moses;
not a few of both colors likened the slain president to Jesus Christ. Coming as the assassination did on Good Friday, many, especially on Easter Sunday, were quick to note the parallel. “Yes,” assured a Hartford pastor, “it was meet that the martyrdom should occur on Good Friday. . . . Jesus Christ died for the world, Abraham Lincoln died for his country.”9

  The Reverend Warren Cudworth of Boston took the elevation of Lincoln to its Christ-like conclusion when he said, “[C]ould our President have spoken after he was shot, he would have forgiven the cowardly perpetrator of this inhuman act, and rounded the parallel with a final and complete imitation of our Lord’s example.”10

  Some clergymen felt that the great calamity had been brought on by the nation itself—that the bacchanalian victory celebration during the days preceding Holy Week was sacrilegious, or, as one of the devout expressed it, the assassination was “the chastising rod of Providence.”11 Most ministers did not accept this argument. The attacks upon Lincoln and Seward were not proof of God’s wrath, these men argued; on the contrary, the tragedy was the work of Satan. Only hearts “steeped in the venom of hell,” raged an Albany preacher, could commit such acts.12

  Reasoned Sarah Hill of Norristown, Pennsylvania:

  God has permitted the thing to be [so that] the hearts of all loyal people may be filled with hatred for treason . . . and that in avenging the blood of the Martyred Lincoln [they will] root up even the smallest fibre of treason from the soil. . . . [T]he descendants of traitors and traitor sympathizers are to be shunned as a race accursed for all time to come, as were the Jews who had the blood of the Savior on their hands.13