The Darkest Dawn

by Thomas Goodrich

  “‘The Beloved remains’ are knocking the machinery of social life here into a cocked hat,” complained one cynical businessman. “I could not get a bed at any hotel last night—had to sleep in my shawl on some chairs—fought for my breakfast, and am inexorably parted from my baggage.”22

  When the sun rose and the doors to Independence Hall were finally opened at 6 A.M., the streets beyond were crammed “with one living mass of humanity.”23

  “The crowd around the Hall was so dense, and its extent so great, people could not move,” wrote an amazed correspondent of the Chicago Tribune. “They swayed back and forward like a surging ocean.”24

  Because the lines outside the building extended for miles, the wait to view the body was estimated at six to eight hours.25 And all the while, thousands more pressed in from the side streets. Soon the crush was so intense that people became “wedged in like brick.”26 With pressure building and no hope of escape, many now realized for the first time that there was no way out. Adding to the misery and chaos, noted a New York newsman, were “rude, rough voiced hundreds, whose ambition seemed to be to create confusion for the mere sport of the thing.”27 Continues another reporter on the scene:

  About noon, there was great excitement around the Hall, many women and children having fainted. The police and the guards seemed helpless to stay the rush. Large ropes had been fastened to the street corners to keep back the moving, surging masses. Over these ropes hundreds of women were dragged by policemen and the guard to save them from being injured. The soldiers with bayonets fixed strove to drive back the crowd but it was useless. . . . Women shrieked when one of their sex fainted, and little boys cried and struggled to get out of the great jostling masses.28

  Another who was horrified by what he saw was Henry Wilson. In a letter to his brother, Wilson described the horrible sight of humans crushing and mashing each other to death in their madness to view Lincoln’s remains:

  I saw three little boys who had been smothered that were lifted up from the ground and placed upon the Heads of the People until they revied [sic], when they succeeded in crauling upon the heads of the Mass until they finally got out back from the bilding whare the Crowd was not so dense and got out barely with there lives—though quite a Number were so far gone that they could not be restored even with medical assistance.29

  Mingled with the normal dull roar of so many thousands were the shrieks of crushed women, the shrill cries of trampled children, and the cursing and shouting of men. Silk hats, bonnets, and parasols were smashed flat, dresses were ripped, hoop skirts were broken and mangled, the neatly pinned hair of ladies now fell to their waists in a disheveled mess. Ragged and tattered debris, including destroyed mourning badges and black crape, littered the ground below.30

  “[T]his wild, reckless, excited mass of humanity,” noted one observer sadly, “looked and acted like anything else than a vast assemblage who had come to pay respects to the honored dead.”31

  Terrible as conditions were in the crowd, the situation was worse at the narrow entry gates outside Independence Hall. Here, with an irresistible force from behind, the people were pressed through as if by a giant meat grinder. Beautiful dresses and elegant suits were now ripped off entirely, and in some cases, nearly every shred of clothing was stripped from the wearer. Many who were squashed and trampled were squeezed through to the other side unconscious.32 Others who reached the relative safety of the courtyard surrounding the Hall fled without viewing the corpse, happy simply to escape with their lives.33

  Undermanned, under planned, there was little funeral organizers could do to halt the disaster, though many tried. Revealed one reporter:

  [A] civilian, covered with dust and perspiration and wearing a badge, came down the line, entreating the people to move back. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said he, “if you stay here you take a fearful responsibility. Women are fainting and suffocating up there by the gate, and the crowd is so dense that, unless you move back, there will be a half dozen killed before the next half hour. I have just been up there myself and I saw it, or I would not tell you so. I came near being crushed to death too.” . . . Then a military officer appeared at a third-story window of French’s Hotel and tried to get the attention of the crowd in the street below, waving his hat and hands, and shouting: “Go back; do go back, my dear people, go back. You can’t get in without you go back and give more room. All go down to the end of the line and form in single file.” For a long time the majority of the crowd either did not hear, or, hearing, paid no attention to him. His voice was almost lost in the buzzing of talk below, the cries of women, and the shouts of policemen. Finally they attempted to move back two or three times, and each time were pushed up again by the outside of the eager throng. . . . Then another officer appeared at the same window and added his voice to that of the other. Occasionally he would wave his hand, pointing up Park Row to an imaginary file of soldiers or policemen, and call out “Fire, fire, fire,” evidently hoping to scatter the assembly.34

  While thousands of frightened, trapped people longed only to escape—mothers raised children aloft that they might crawl to safety over the carpet of heads—tens of thousands more were “actually wild” to force their way into Independence Hall.35 For those who did manage to survive the crushing mob and the deadly choke point at the gates, their hours of misery were rewarded when they were herded like sheep into the building. As the mourners filed by the casket, tattered and torn, looking more like survivors of a terrible storm than funeral-goers, the few seconds allotted to each—a “mere glance”—were often emotional. Many wanted to touch the body, and others had to be restrained from kissing the cold, marble-like face.36

  “An old colored woman, 65 or 70 years of age, thrilled the spectators with her open expressions of grief,” one witness wrote. “Gazing for a few moments on the face of the dead, she exclaimed, clasping her hands, ‘Oh! Abraham Lincoln! He is dead! He is dead!’”37

  Adding one final note to a day already surreal, before the doors closed at midnight, seventy-five Union veterans, each of whom had lost a leg in the war, somehow managed to hobble through the mob and pay their respects.38 By the time the casket was finally closed early the following morning, an estimated three hundred thousand visitors had viewed Lincoln’s body. Even so, with a line outside still extending for half a mile, and with roughly one million people in the city to view the remains, only a fraction had been successful.39

  “Never before has such a corpse been brought to Independence Hall,” said one editor proudly, if indelicately.40

  When the funeral train departed the city at 4 A.M. on April 24, most of those on board were no doubt greatly relieved to escape Philadelphia. Only by the narrowest of margins had disaster of a monumental kind been averted. Several reported deaths, broken arms, legs, and ribs, a debris field that resembled the aftermath of some great battle—with the nightmarish memories of the past thirty hours racing through their minds, officials on board the train could not be blamed if they looked ahead with trepidation to the next scheduled stop: New York City.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE FOX AND THE

  HOUNDS

  Eight days have intervened since the shocking news of his assassination fell on their startled senses, but their sorrow and anguish abate not. Men walk about the streets with downcast brows and sad features, and . . . they refuse to be comforted.1

  SO WROTE THE EDITOR of the Chicago Tribune. What was true for Chicago was generally true for the rest of the North. In many ways, even eight days was not sufficient space for the shock to fully set in. During the dizzy swirl of events, there simply had not been the necessary time needed to properly understand and appreciate one earthshaking event, much less a dozen.

  Another emotion that had “abated not” in eight days was fear. Indeed, the terror was almost as pervasive as the night of the assassination. So unbelievably bold was the stroke, and so enormous were its consequences, that many horrified Americans felt that Lincoln’s death was o
nly the precursor to even greater events. When a rumor raced through New York one week after the assassination that General Grant had just been murdered, people were shocked, but no one doubted it.2 Much like his slain predecessor, Andrew Johnson—”His Accidency”—continued to receive menacing letters. Unlike Lincoln, however, the new president placed credence in each blood-curdling threat.3 Even Secretary Seward, more dead than alive, was not forgotten.

  “I wish I had cut your dam head off while I was at it instead of only half doing it,” wrote one well-wisher. “If I only had you and Johnson and Stanton out of the way I would feel as if I had done my duty to my Country.”4

  Given the terror and uncertainty abroad, it is not surprising that many in the North continued to strike out blindly at those in their midst who were perceived as threats. At Harrisburg, a man arrested earlier for comments made after Lincoln’s death was now dragged from jail by a mob and forced to ride on a board around town while a band played the “Rogue’s March.”5 When Joseph Shaw returned to Westminster, Maryland, after his newspaper had been destroyed following Black Friday, a mob was waiting. Rushing to his hotel room late at night, the shouting attackers kicked in the editor’s door. Pulling a pistol, Shaw fired, wounding one of the men. An instant later, the editor was riddled by a hail of bullets and expired on the spot.6 Accused of delivering a “secession” speech in New York earlier, another man was chased through Philadelphia by a howling mob. When he was finally overhauled and attacked, the victim broke free momentarily and drew a pistol. Before he could fire, a policeman appeared and arrested the bloody man for carrying a concealed weapon. A short time later, when the victim’s brother appeared to post bail, the man was dragged from his carriage, and he too was beaten savagely.7

  “[H]is face [was] swollen out of all human shape,” wrote a friend, “his shirt & waistcoat [were] drenched in blood. . . . The policemen allowed them to do it for a time & then, merely to save his life, interfered.”8

  At Baltimore and elsewhere, unwitting storeowners who catered to the insatiable demand found their shop windows smashed and their inventory destroyed because they sold photos of the assassin. In the conquered Confederacy, not only were unrepentant Southerners imprisoned or murdered, but public humiliations had become the norm. Some white federal officers took sadistic delight in ordering their black troops to cut the coat buttons from the defeated soldiers because of the “C S,” or Confederate States, imprint on them.9 At Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a former rebel was “persuaded” to raise a United States flag above the courthouse dome. That Yankee soldiers might laugh and joke at the spectacle, the man was ordered to remain dangling from his perch for half an hour.10 Preachers throughout the South who neglected to pay homage to Abraham Lincoln in their sermons could expect imprisonment, exile, or worse.11

  In the emotional backwash of April 14, many rightly felt that the reunited nation had become little better than a brutal, bloody dictatorship in which the Constitution was but a scrap of worthless paper. And at the helm, feverishly working the levers of that repressive regime, was Edwin Stanton. With the burden of catching the assassin and unraveling the conspiracy placed almost entirely on his own back, the secretary of war felt that only an iron hand would suffice. Not surprisingly, the strain on Stanton was crushing, and the long hours with little rest soon took their toll. When two suspects brought in by Brigadier General Henry Burnett were ordered released by the secretary, the officer, of course, obeyed.

  “That evening,” recalled Burnett, “I should think about 12 o’clock, a messenger appeared at my room at Willard’s Hotel.”

  “The Secretary wants you, and the devil is to pay,” said the messenger.

  “What is it?” the surprised general asked.

  “I don’t know, but he is in a terrible temper.”12

  Henry Burnett:

  When I appeared before him, he was walking up and down his office apparently in a great state of excitement, and burst out with, “I hear that Weichmann and Hollahan were in your office today, and that you let them go.” I said, “Yes, Mr. Secretary, but . . . “I got no further when he broke in with, “You had no business to let these men go. They are some of the conspirators, and you have them here at this office by 8 o’clock tomorrow morning, or I will deal with you.” I again commenced, “But Mr. Secretary . . . “(Intending to add that it was by his instruction) but he interrupted by saying, “Not a word sir, you have those men here by tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock.”13

  Outraged by such treatment, the general nevertheless sent his men searching anew for the same suspects he had been ordered to free. After a night spent combing the city, it was only by sheer coincidence that Burnett located the two culprits the following day just before the deadline. Once more Burnett approached the secretary’s office.

  As I came in, Mr. Stanton who was then seated at his desk, looked up and said, “Well have you those men?” I said, “Yes, Mr. Secretary, they are in my office.” His whole manner and countenance changed from that of a grim sort of ill-nature to that of a pleased smile. I was then a good deal aroused and indignant, and I turned upon him and said, “And now, Mr. Stanton, I am through with service under you and I beg here and now to tender my resignation to take effect immediately. You would have condemned and disgraced me without a hearing for obeying your own order, and I am damned if I will serve further under any such man. . . . I am through with you and with the service.”

  He got up from his desk, came over to where I was standing, placed one hand on my shoulder and said, “General, I ask your pardon. I was wrong, but remember the great strain I am under in trying to save the country. In seeking to achieve the best and the public rights, sometimes individual right goes down. I am doing the best I can with all the power with which God had endowed me to save our country. Forget this matter and go back and go on with your work and help me in the great work I am trying to do.”14

  Burnett did cool down and continue as the secretary asked, but he, like everyone else who dealt with Stanton, came to expect such behavior from their overtaxed boss.

  While mob violence continued throughout the North, arrests kept pace, especially in the city of prisons, Washington. Hundreds were jailed—some for tearing down mourning crape placed on their own homes, others for carrying photos of Booth, and some for possessing Confederate flags. While there may have been justification for cases such as these, none whatsoever existed for others imprisoned under the vague, though damning, charge of “disloyalty.” Thomas Green had not a clue why he was arrested. “I have had no charges made against me and know not why I am imprisoned,” explained the confused man. “I have committed no offense to justify it—have done nothing and have expressed no opinions that could be offensive.”15

  Orville Browning visited with another miserable captive caught in the net. “He told me,” wrote Browning in his journal, “they had subjected him to several examinations, and treated him very harshly—keeping him in a close room part of the time on bread and water, and giving him no bed, he having to sleep on a board.”16 Other victims found themselves hurled into dark, smelly holding pens with dozens of others, some of whom were spies paid to listen and report what was said.17

  Even before the paranoid hysteria that followed Lincoln’s assassination, the federal government’s brutal methods of interrogation were widely known.18 Recalled one high-ranking official on the technique employed by Secret Service chief Colonel Lafayette Baker:

  He dealt with every accused person in the same manner; with a reputable citizen as with a deserter or petty thief. He did not require the formality of a written charge; it was quite sufficient for any person to suggest to Baker that a citizen might be doing something that was against the law. He was immediately arrested, handcuffed, and brought to Baker’s office, at that time in the basement of the Treasury. There he was subjected to a browbeating examination. . . . Men were kept in his rooms for weeks, without warrant, affidavit or other semblance of authority.19

  Those implicated in any way with
the assassination itself could expect much harsher treatment. While the prisons on land filled with suspects, many of those directly linked to the conspiracy were held on water. With these prisoners, Stanton was taking no chances. Although Mary Surratt was confined at the Old Capitol Prison, Lewis Powell (alias Payne), George Atzerodt, Michael O’Laughlen, Samuel Arnold, and others were cast into the holds of the ironclad gunboats, the Saugus and the Montauk, anchored off shore in the Potomac. Each captive, the woman included, had “stiff-shackles” placed on their wrists and a seventy-five-pound ball chained to their ankles.20 To prevent communication among the prisoners, two marines stood watch over each.21

  Worried that they might still exchange information among themselves, Stanton ordered each captive hooded. Like something out of a medieval torture chamber, the canvas bags—drawn over the prisoners’ heads and tied at the neck—had only small holes for breathing and eating. Still unhappy, Stanton later directed that new, tighter hoods be used, with cotton pads that pressed tightly over the victims’ eyes and ears. These painful devices, said Samuel Arnold, tended to “push the eye balls far back in their sockets.” For Arnold and the dozens more forced to wear the hoods, the treatment was nothing short of torture.22 Concerned that in the suffocating heat and darkness the prisoners would soon lose their reason, the surgeon in charge, George Porter, requested that the hoods be loosened. The plea was ignored.23

  Rather than concern himself with the health and sanity of traitors in hand, the secretary of war was more worried about the murderer at large. Despite the greatest, most intense dragnet in American history, John Wilkes Booth remained a free man. From Kansas and Kentucky to Minnesota and Maine, thousands of pursuers had done their best to run the assassin to earth, but to no avail. Every day that passed made it less and less likely that the murderer would be caught.